Name/Title
Portrait of Samuel Maclure (1860-1929), Architect and artistEntry/Object ID
2015.04.08Description
Photograph
Photographic reproduction (2015) from the 1904 b/w photograph by Harold Mortimer-Lamb.
This black and white Pictorial-style image shows Samuel Maclure (1860-1929), a well-known B.C. architect and painter. He was a self-taught architect of over 450 commissions and is best known for his Tudor Revival and Craftsman style houses. As a painter, he documented local landscapes and did First Nations portraiture in watercolour. This photograph is a head and shoulders 3/4 view. He is pensive, sporting a suit with white shirt and tie and is leaning on his right hand revealing a pinkie ring. Maclure was a member of the Union Club.Photograph Details
Type of Photograph
Reproduction, black and white photo on paperSubject Place
Region
Pacific NorthwestContinent
North AmericaContext
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Sapperton, New Westminster, British Columbia, Samuel Maclure was a successful and influential Canadian architect and artist. He became the foremost domestic architect in the province from 1890 to 1920 establishing an enduring and distinctive West Coast building style, noted for the quality, ingenuity, and sheer quantity of the work with over 350 documented commissions.
A self-taught architect, he originally wanted to be an artist, and studied painting in Philadelphia from 1884 to 1885. Later he taught himself the profession of architecture. On returning to Victoria, he supported himself as a telegrapher, studied architecture at home, taught painting and produced paintings for sale. Art was always more than a diversion. For his architecture work, he produced meticulous architectural drawings and plans, but throughout his life Maclure also produced impressionistic watercolours featuring Vancouver Island.
In 1891, Maclure partnered with an experienced English architect, Richard P. Sharp (1864-1936), and he learned about the new Arts and Crafts style of architecture, inspired by English artists such as William Morris (1834-1896). The next year, Maclure partnered with Cecil Croker Fox (1879-1916) in Vancouver, initiating the most productive and acclaimed period of his career. Maclure and Fox were commissioned to design numerous Arts and Crafts and Tudor Revival homes for upper class neighbourhoods in Victoria and in Vancouver.
Maclure then returned to Victoria, and in 1908 he landed his most ambitious project, when commissioned to design a massive Gothic Revival estate house and park for James Dunsmuir, former B.C. premier and then Lieutenant Governor. Now known as Hatley Park National Historic Site, the mansion and estate in Greater Victoria have been used for the public Royal Roads University since 1995. From the 1940s to 1995, it was used for the Royal Roads Military College, a naval training facility. Maclure also provided advice to the Butchart family on landscape design and helped redesign and enlarge the family house, 1911 to 1925. The world-renowned Butchart Gardens near Victoria have been designated a National Historic Site of Canada. After 1912, with an economic recession and then the outbreak of World War I, Maclure worked mostly in the Victoria area into the 1920s.
Maclure was active across the arts community. In 1890 he became one of the earliest artists to exhibit in Vancouver, showing a number of paintings in the First Annual Exhibition of the Vancouver Art Association. He exhibited architectural illustrations with the Royal Canadian Academy in 1906, showed with the B.C. Society of Fine Arts in 1909 and 1910. He and his wife, Margaret Catherine (Daisy), a pianist and portrait painter, were founding members of the Vancouver Island Arts and Crafts Society in 1909 and he exhibited work with the group from 1914 to 1916. His work was widely published in Canadian, American and British Journals. He was also a member of the B.C. Society of Fine Arts (now BCSA), the Vancouver Art Association and the Victoria Sketch Club. Most of Maclure’s architectural plans and drawings are held by the University of Victoria. His paintings are held by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the B.C. Museum and Archives and the Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery, University of Victoria.
For further information see -
Martin Segger. "The Buildings of Samuel Maclure: In Search Of Appropriate Form" (Victoria, B.C., Sono Nis Press, 1986), available in the UCBC Library
______________________
Pictorialism was an international style and the predominant aesthetic movement in photography during the later 19th and early 20th century, and beyond into the 1940s in some areas. It began in response to the advent of the amateur Kodak camera in 1888 and claims that a photograph was easily taken, simply a record of reality, and it later transformed into a movement to advance the status and principals of photography as a true art form. Pictorialists believed that photography should be understood as a means of personal expression and creativity equal to other fine arts like painting and printmaking.
Pictorialism had its roots in England with the establishment in 1892 of the Linked Ring Brotherhood by Henry Peach Robinson (1830-1901), George Davison (1854-1930) and Henry Van Der Weyde (1838-1924). This invitation-only British pictorialist group seceded from the Royal Photographic Society. And similar groups were formed in Paris, Berlin, Hamburg and Brussels. In 1902 Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) formed the American Pictorialist photographers group, the Photo Secession movement, with Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966), Frederick Holland Day (1864-1933), Frank Eugene (1865-1936), Gertrude Käsebier (1852-1934), Edward Steichen (1879-1973) and Clarence White (1871-1925). In 1916 Coburn, Käsebier, White and others formed an organization called the Pictorial Photographers of America (PPA) to continue promotion of the pictorial style. A year later Stieglitz formally dissolved the defunct Photo Secession group.
Pictorial photographers were dedicated to conveying an emotion, thought or sentiment through their careful choice of subject matter, composition, tonal balance and technique. There is no standard definition of 'pictorialism', but overall it refers to a style in which the photographer has "created" rather than just accurately "recorded" an image. Typically, such photos have a soft focus, and may be printed in colours such as warm brown or deeper blue, and may have visible surface treatments that were created in the darkroom.Made/Created
Artist Information
Artist
Harold Mortimer-Lamb, RPS (1872-1970). Former UCBC Member Artist.Role
PhotographerArtist
Royal B.C. Museum and ArchivesRole
PrintmakerDate made
n.d.Time Period
20th Century, 21st CenturyNotes
PHOTOGRAPHER BIOGRAPHY
Born in Surrey, England, Harold Mortimer-Lamb was, in the early 20th century, the leading artistic photographer in Canada, a proponent of Pictorial photography that focused on figure studies, portraits, genre and landscape views. He was also a successful mining engineer, journalist, art critic and artist perhaps best known for his early championing of the Canadian Modernist Group of Seven in the 1920s. In addition, he is more recently recognized for his influence on, and support of, the development of the arts in both Victoria and Vancouver, and beyond.
Mortimer-Lamb came to Canada in 1889, settling in first in B.C., arriving in Victoria in 1895 to become secretary of the British Columbia Mining Institute. Most of Mortimer-Lamb’s professional life was in the mining industry of Canada. However, he developed a keen interest in photography, especially soft-focus images, and helped bring about the first exhibition of ‘photography as art’ in the province. His subjects included his family as well as many notables such as B.C. Premier Richard McBride, writer Clive Phillipps-Wolley and artists such as Sophie Pemberton (1869-1959).
Mortimer-Lamb left Victoria in 1905, heading to Montreal, where he came to know many leading artists of the day including William Brymner (1855-1925), Laura Muntz Lyall (1860-1930) and later, members of the Group of Seven, in particular A.Y. Jackson (1882-1974), whose work he first noted in print in 1911. He was a charter member of the Arts Club of Montreal, contributed art criticism to The Montreal Star and became the Canadian correspondent for the leading art journal, “The Studio“.
In 1920, he and his family including his wife, Kate, five children and housekeeper (pregnant with Mortimer-Lamb’s child) returned to Burnaby in B.C. where Molly was soon born, later to become the famed New Brunswick artist, writer and teacher, Molly Lamb Boback (1920-2014). The housekeeper Mary Williams stayed with the Mortimer-Lamb family for 23 years. And in 1942, after the death of his first wife, Mortimer-Lamb married Vera Weatherbie (1909-1977), also an artist, and a muse of Frederick Varley's.
In 1928, after his move back to B.C., Mortimer-Lamb, with fellow photographer John Vanderpant (1884-1939), opened the Vanderpant Galleries on Robson Street in Vancouver where arts groups met and artists were showcased including members of the Group of Seven. As in Montreal, Mortimer-Lamb was fully engaged in the arts community – he was a neighbour of Lawren Harris (1885-1970), a patron of Frederick Varley (1881-1969) and was also an early advocate of Emily Carr (1871-1945). He helped to found the Vancouver School of Art in 1925 and the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1931. After Mortimer-Lamb retired in 1941 he began to paint, his works were exhibited in Montreal and Vancouver. His photographic work was widely exhibited in Canada, New York and London, and he was eventually elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS). His photographs are held in many public collections, such as the RPS, the University of British Columbia and the National Gallery of Canada. The Royal BC Archives and Museum holds Mortimer-Lamb’s letters, published notices and over 260 photographs.
For many years, Mortimer-Lamb fostered a keen interest in the arts overall, frequently lecturing and contributing articles to journals and newspapers. In 1954, Mortimer-Lamb started to give works from his extensive art collection to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and on his and later Vera’s death, they left the contents of their estate to the Victoria gallery including works of art, photographs, his papers and a large financial donation for the purchase of art. This donation was made on the condition that a modern extension to the old building would be built. The new gallery wing opened in 1957. The Vancouver Art Gallery and the Vancouver Museum were also the beneficiaries of Mortimer-Lamb and Vera’s generosity. Mortimer-Lamb died in Burnaby at age 99.
For further information see -
Robert Amos, “Harold Mortimer-Lamb: the art lover” (Victoria, B.C.: TouchWood Editions, 2013), available in the UCBC Library.Inscription/Signature/Marks
Type
SignatureLocation
Lower right on original - M-L monogram with date of 04 [1904]Dimensions
Dimension Description
SupportHeight
15.2 cmWidth
11.4 cmAcquisition
Acquisition Method
GiftDate
2015Notes
Image PH 983.1.189 courtesy of Royal B.C. Museum and Archives.Relationships
Related Entries
Notes
Reproduction photos after photographs by Harold Mortimer-Lamb:
2015.04.01 Boy in Lace Collar
2015.04.02 Dolly with Flower in her Hair
2015.04.04 Portrait of Laura Adeline Muntz Lyall
2015.04.05 Portrait of Sir Richard McBride
2015.04.06 Portrait of Sir Clive Phillipps-Wolley
2015.04.07 Portrait of Sir William Van Horne
2015.04.08 Portrait of Samuel Maclure
2015.04.09 Portrait of Lady Grace Julia Parker Drummond (Mrs. George A. )
2015.04.10 Portrait of James Jervis Blomfield
2015.04.11 Woodland Scene
2015.04.12 Boats at Dock
2015.04.16 Two Sisters (Daughters of Sir and Lady George Drummond)
2015.04.17 Vera with Glass Globe
2015.04.18 Portrait of Fred Varley
2015.04.19 Dolly at a Tea Party
2015.04.20 Vera Mending in the Doorway
2015.04.21 Woman with Shawl and Blossoms
2023.04.03 Portrait of Lawren Stewart Harris
2023.04.06 Portrait of Samuel Maclure
By Maclure
2024.10.01Olympic Mountains Through Beacon Hill ParkCopyright
Notes
Images are provided for research and reference use only. Permission to publish, copy, or otherwise use these images must be obtained from the copyright holder. It is the sole responsibility of the applicant to determine the copyright holder and to obtain permission(s) as needed.
