Artist Information
Artist
Lillian Irene Hoffar Reid (1908-1994)Role
ArtistDate made
1972Time Period
20th CenturyNotes
ARTIST STATEMENT
“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 designed canvases.”
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Born in Vancouver, Lillian Irene Hoffar Reid was a celebrated Canadian painter of portraits, murals, and decorative panels, as well as an educator. She attended the newly opened Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (VSDAA, now Emily Carr University of Art and Design), where she was trained by Jock Macdonald RCA, (1897-1960), Frederick Varley RCA, (1881-1969) and Charles H. Scott (1886-1964), and learned about the famed Canadian Group of Seven. Of note, Scott served as principal from 1926 until 1952 and was key in getting Macdonald and Varley to teach at the school.
In 1929, she and 11 of her classmates were the VSDAA's first graduating class. Following her graduation, she helped form the “Pioneer Art Students of the Vancouver Art School’ group that mounted annual exhibits. Reid took sketching trips to the North Vancouver Indian Reservation, Burrard Street Bridge squatter's huts and shorelines around Vancouver. In 1930, she was awarded a scholarship for a year’s study at the Royal Academy, London for a year. Reid first worked in oil, and later focused on drawing in graphite, pastels and painting in watercolours. The subject matter of her paintings shifted as well as domestic life took up more time. However she still managed to make sketching trips such as to the Cariboo, Jervis inlet and Bowen Island.
On her return from London, Reid established a studio and became a teacher of drawing and painting at her alma mater (1933-1937). A significant and active member of the Vancouver art community, she was a member of both the British Columbia Society of Artists (1940-1967, and president 1965-1967) and the Canadian Group of Painters (1959-1967, and president in 1958, 1960, and 1966-1967). She showed extensively in solo and group exhibitions in Vancouver, central and western Canada and once in the United States.
Reid received the Beatrice Stone Medal at the B.C. Artists' Annual (1940), and the Canadian Centennial Medal for her contribution to the arts in Canada. Her work is represented in a number of private and public collections. Reid and the other women in her graduating class were awarded honorary diplomas in 1989 from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design (previously VSDAA). She died in Sidney, B.C. at age 86.
