Lucius Richard O'Brien

Infobox Artist
name = Lucius O'Brien


imagesize = 200px
caption = Lucius O'Brien, undated.
birthname = Lucius Richard O'Brien
birthdate = 15 August 1832
location = Shanty Bay, Ontario, Canada
deathdate = death date and age|1899|08|15|1832|12|13
deathplace = Toronto, Ontario
nationality = Canadian
field = Painting
training =
movement =
works = "Sunrise on the Saguenay" (1880)
patrons =
influenced by = Luminism, Fitz Hugh Lane, Martin Johnson Heade,John F. Kensett
influenced =
awards =

Lucius Richard O'Brien (15 August 1832 – 13 December 1899) was an influential 19th century Canadian oil and watercolour landscape artist.

Life and career

Lucius O'Brien was born in Shanty Bay, Ontario, a village his father founded on the shore of Lake Simcoe. [Reid, 85.]

He graduated from Upper Canada College in 1847 and is said to have directly started work in an architect's office where he did drafting. In 1852, he won two prizes at the Ontario Provincial Exhibition for painting. In 1856, he was listed as an artist in Toronto's City Directory. [Reid, 85.]

In 1872, Lucius began landscape painting, and quickly excelled in the genre. Two year later, after a dispute with artist John Arthur Fraser, O'Brien took Fraser's position as Vice-President of the Ontario Society of Artists, a position he held until 1880, when he became founding President of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. [Reid, 85.]

He is best known for landscape paintings from across Canada in oil and watercolour, such as, "Sunrise on the Saguenay" of 1880, which was the first academy dimploma piece in the Royal Canadian Academy's first annual exhibition. [Reid, 86.]

Also in 1880, O'Brien began to work on "Picturesque Canada," (1882-4) which he edited. O'Brien toured across Canada meeting with the country's artists and commissioned artists to produce woodblock prints for illustration of the text. [Harper, 194.] O'Brien's art, and in particular "Pictureesque Canada," aimed to celebrated Canada's natural landscape united under confederation. [Harper, 193-195.]

O'Brien was one of the first artists invited to travel to and paint the Rocky Mountains on the newly completed Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886.

He died in Toronto, Ontario at the age of 67.

Notes

References

*Harper, Russell. "Painting in Canada: A History 2nd ed." Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981. ISBN 0802063071

* Reid, Dennis "A Concise History of Canadian Painting" 2nd Edition. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988. ISBN 019540663X.

External links

* [http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/search/artist_work_e.jsp?iartistid=4071 Examples of O'Brien's landscapes] from the National Gallery of Canada's image database "Cybermuse."
* [http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=6339 Biography at the "Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online"]