Irene Hoffar Reid was a well-known and celebrated BC artist whose career spanned the 1930s-1980s. She used oil, watercolour, pastel, graphite, monoprint and mixed mediums to create mostly portraits and landscapes, but also figurative and still life paintings. Her work was greatly influenced by the Group of Seven, as well as Post Impressionism and Expressionism.
Reid was part of the Vancouver School of Arts’ first class in 1925, and the first graduating class in 1929. After a year of postgraduate studies at VSDA, she attended the Royal Academy Schools of Painting and Sculpture in London. In 1931, photographer John Vanderpant exhibited her work along with the work of several other promising photographers and young painters, which led to Reid’s appointment as an instructor in drawing and painting at the Vancouver School of Art. She taught there from 1933-1937.
After her marriage and the birth of her two children, Reid began to work on a smaller scale, concentrating more on her immediate surroundings. She made sketching trips, travelling to the Cariboo, Jervis Inlet and Bowen Island with other fellow BC artists, and remained active in several arts organizations, including the BC Society of Artists and the Canadian Group of Painters. She participated in numerous exhibits at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the Seattle Art Museum, as well as small commercial galleries in Vancouver. She received numerous awards for her work, including the prestigious Beatrice Stone Medal in Black and White Drawing in 1940 and the Centennial Medal for Service to the Nation in Arts in 1960. Her artwork is in the collections of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Her work continues to be avidly collected. Irene Hoffar Reid died in 1994.
“In 1928, at the Pacific National Exhibition, I viewed paintings by the Group of Seven. I saw a large painting of a mountain by Lawren Harris, and I felt that I had never seen a mountain before. I was influenced by the Group and began to paint larger and more boldly design canvases.” Quote from Lillian Irene Hoffar Reid, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Hoffar_Reid.
Shall we do a deep dive?
More info on Irene Hoffar Reid: Feckless Collection + Pegasus Gallery
More info on photographer John Vanderpant: Art Canada Institute
The Canadian Art Preservation Foundation posts short biographies and information on artists and artwork from its permanent collection in a not-so-subtle attempt to capture your attention and interest in our mission, but we also just want to keep this artwork in view. We are excited about the art we collect and want to share it with you. CAPF is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the artwork of Canada’s superstar artists for future generations to examine, study and exhibit – the ones you know and the ones you might not know so well. We accept artwork, journals, notes, letters, exhibition catalogues and anything else that might comprise a visual and/or intellectual “portrait” (ahem, please pardon the pun) of a particular artist.
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