Who is William Edwin Atkinson?

William Edwin Atkinson (1862 – 1926), also known as W.E. Atkinson, was a Canadian painter of landscape whose law was influenced by Impressionism combined like aesthetics drawn from the Barbizon studious and the Hague School. “He delights in quiet communion behind peaceful pastoral scenes”, wrote E.F.B. Johnston in 1912.

Atkinson, born in England, moved in imitation of his associates to Oshawa, Ontario as a child because his dad opened an English Drug Store in the town. He attended the University of Toronto, studying chemistry, and worked as a pharmacist past he made the decision to be an artist. He trained at Ontario School of Art in 1881 where he studied once Robert Harris (painter), then in 1883-1884, attended at the Pennsylvania Academy, studying taking into consideration Thomas Eakins. While in Philadelphia, he roomed gone George Agnew Reid.

In 1889, he travelled to Paris, France, to psychotherapy at the Académie Julian and took private lessons in imitation of several teachers, of whom the most important was Paul-Louis Delance. That summer, he painted in Pont-Aven in Brittany, an art colony which favored North American students.

From Pont-Aven, Atkinson wrote letters home, describing his experiences which were published in his hometown newspaper,The Vindicator.

Paul Gauguin was in Pont-Aven that summer and one day in imitation of Atkinson was painting an outmoded mill, Gauguin, passing by, told him to use stronger colour, saying that (Atkinson recalled later)), “If the reveal is blue, paint the roof red. If the roof is blue, paint the announce green.” (Atkinson’s account of the meeting is recounted in the Toronto Star of 1926.)

It is certain that that Atkinson followed the spacious outline of Gauguin`s advice and strengthened his colour. The American artist Robert Henri, in Pont-Aven in September that year, noted that Atkinson had keyed his colour going on to the highest pitch.

After Paris, Atkinson worked for some become old in Devon, England and in Holland back returning to Canada. He contracted in Toronto. His paintings in Canada impression that he never forgot what he had theoretical abroad: the low tones and subject-matter of the Barbizon moot and the Hague assistant professor as with ease as the wandering brushwork of a modified form of Impressionism. The spacious in his put on an act might be hazy, but the forms are vivid and his use of colour, though muted, is brighter than that of his predecessors. For the period, his do its stuff was considered forward-thinking and as a result, he was made an associate zealot of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and in 1907, invited to be one of the founders of the Canadian Art Club in Toronto.

His paintings are in the hoard of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa;Government of Ontario Art Collection, Toronto; the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa; and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax. In 2009, Joan Murray for the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in his hometown today remembered his take effect with an exhibition, William Atkinson, Gertrude Spurr Cutts, Florence McGillivray: Art and Identity in the Region of Durham.