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Commentary Papers ofthe Period: Marmaduke Matthews (1839-1913) JOAN MURRAY In 1966, Trent University received a collection of sketchbooks and papers of the pioneer Canadian painter Marmaduke Matthews. Given by two descendents of the artist, Mrs. A.C. Mackie of Lakefield and Toronto, and her sister, Mrs. Margaret A. Freidman of Churchville, New York, it is an important resource in Canadian art history, especially of the Edwardian era. It includes a significant document in the founding of art societies, "Why Are Our Artists So Poorly Encouraged," and a rare document of early art theory in Canada, "Art and Its Uses." Matthews was singularly well placed to record the founding of two societies, the Ontario Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy, and not only because he was present at their birth. In 1875 he served as Secretary of the 0.S.A. (founded in 1872) and from 1880, when the R.C.A. was founded, till 1890, was its Secretary. Born in 1837 in Barcheston, Warwickshire , he came to North America in 1860. After four years in New York, he settled in Toronto in 1869. His British background served the society; he was among the artists deputed to go to London to choose suitable prints for the Art Union's art lottery and auction. Matthews had considerable prestige, especially in the 1890s - enough to make him President of the 0.S.A. from 1894 to 1895, and to lead to his selection, along with fellow R.C.A. members, as a painter of the Rockies for the C.P.R. (His first trip to the mountains was in 1887, his second in 1889.) Matthew's essays probably date from the last years of his life. In 1909, he resigned from the O.S.A. because he felt that for years past he had been, for "some reason... pointedly and insultingly treated by the Committees ...as regards the acceptance and hanging " of his work.I (In fact, there very likely had been Jess interest in Matthews's work. A 172 new generation was coming to the fore. 1909 was the year which saw the election of J.E.H. MacDonald.) Matthews added in his letter of resignation, "having no benefit by sales or otherwise through the Exhibitions, I have been forced to the auction block in order to live."2 His manuscript concerning Canada's lack of encouragement to artists may have been written at this time. "Art and Its Uses" may be earlier; the word "refinement" helps to date it, having first become current with Bernard Berenson's The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance (1894). (Berenson said the Venetians sought "refinement of manner.") That art could exert a refining influence is a related idea. Possibly both papers were for reading aloud as Matthews may have given lectures on Art, particularly in his capacity as President of the 0.C.A. "At present landscape must be the predominant theme and no other land can boast its equal for this," said Matthews in "Art and Its Uses." His love of the country resembles that of other Canadian artists of his generation, notably F.M. Bell-Smith, who wrote on behalf of the O.S.A. to His Excellency the Earl Grey, Governor General of Canada, in 1905, in exuberantly poetic prose: Our Land, Sir, is indeed Fair; Fair to look upon and good to dwell within. Fair are her boundless fields of fruitful grain, her wooden slopes and mountain heights with shining glaciers crowned; deep and exhaustless our mines and vast our forest store; her inland seas and mighty streams bear our commerce oceanward ; rich in historic colouring, and picturesque in the remnant of a past day and Race, she supplies the sculptor and painter with unlimited material for the exercise of their artistic skill, and our Country is ripe for the development' of a distinctly Canadian art, which if intelligently recognized should result in masterworks comparable with those of older Lands.3 Along with Bell-Smith and the 0.S.A. itself, Matthews wished to promote a national art. As early as 1898 the 0.S.A. added the Revue d'etudes canadiennes Vol. 18, No. 4 (Hiver 1983-84...

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