View source for Homer Watson

You do not have permission to edit this page, for the following reason:

This IP address range has been globally blocked.
This does not affect your ability to read Wikipedia pages.

Most people who see this message have done nothing wrong. Some kinds of blocks restrict editing from specific service providers or telecom companies in response to recent abuse or vandalism, and can sometimes affect other users who are unrelated to that abuse. Review the information below for assistance if you do not believe that you have done anything wrong.

This block affects editing on all Wikimedia wikis.

The IP address or range 62.210.0.0/16 has been globally blocked by ‪Hasley‬ for the following reason(s):

Open proxy/Webhost: See the help page if you are affected:

This block will expire on 16:21, 18 December 2025. Your current IP address is 62.210.136.28.

Even while globally blocked, you will usually still be able to edit pages on Meta-Wiki.

If you believe you were blocked by mistake, you can find additional information and instructions in the No open proxies global policy. Otherwise, to discuss the block please post a request for review on Meta-Wiki. You could also send an email to the stewards VRT queue at stewards@wikimedia.org including all above details.

Other useful links: Global blocks · Help:I have been blocked

You can view and copy the source of this page:

{{Short description|Canadian landscape painter (1855-1936)}}
{{Infobox artist
| name          = Homer Watson
| image         = Homer Watson.jpg
| caption       = 
| birth_name     = Homer Ransford Watson
| birth_date     = {{birth date|1855|01|14}}
| birth_place      = [[Doon, Ontario|Doon]], [[Canada West]]
| death_date     = {{death date and age|1936|05|27|1855|1|14}}
| death_place    = Doon, Ontario
| nationality   = 
| field         = [[Painter]]
| spouse        = Roxanna Bechtel (m. 1881) 
| training      = 
| movement      = [[Barbizon school|Barbizon School]], founding member [[Canadian Art Club]] (1907-1915) and first president (1907-1911)
| works         = ''The Flood Gate'' (1900)
| patrons       = 
| influenced    =
| awards        = 
}}

'''Homer Ransford Watson''' {{Post-nominals|country=CAN|RCA|size=100%}} (January 14, 1855 &ndash; May 30, 1936) was a [[Canadians|Canadian]] [[landscape painter]]. He has been characterized as the painter who first painted Canada as Canada, rather than as a [[pastiche]] of European painting.<ref name="Foss" /> He was a member and president (1918–1922) of the [[Royal Canadian Academy of Arts]], as well as a founding member and first president (1907–1911) of the [[Canadian Art Club]].<ref name="Foss" /> Although Watson had almost no formal training, by the mid-1920s he was well known and admired by Canadian collectors and critics, his rural landscape paintings making him one of the central figures in Canadian art from the 1880s until the First World War.<ref name="Foss">{{harvnb|Foss|2018}}</ref>

==Life and career==
[[File:Homer Watson birthplace, 1866.jpg|left|thumb|Homer Watson's birthplace, pictured in 1866. Watson's grandfather, James Watson, built the house {{circa|1844}}.]]
Homer Ransford Watson was born on 14 January 1855, in [[Doon, Ontario]], the second of Ransford and Susan Mohr Watson's five children.{{sfn|Foss|2018|pp=3–4}} A small village founded in the 1830s at the junction of Schneider's Creek and the [[Grand River (Ontario)|Grand River]], Doon's earliest documented population was 150 in the [[1871 Canadian Census|1871 census]].{{sfn|Bloomfield|1995|p=201}} Watson descended from [[Germans|German]] [[Mennonites|Mennonite]] settlers who arrived in Ontario in the early 19th century.{{sfn|Foss|2018|p=4}} His father, a mill and factory owner, died in 1861 when Watson was six years old.<ref>{{harvnb|Watson|1987|p=144}}: mill and factory owner; {{harvnb|Foss|2018|p=4}}: died in 1861.</ref> Following Ransford's death, the family's only source of income was Susan's work as a [[Dressmaker|seamstress]].{{sfn|Foss|2018|p=4}} Ransford left behind a library of books that Watson studied from and influenced his early drawings.{{sfn|Watson|1987|p=4}} A gift of a set of paints from an aunt made him decide to become an artist. He sought the advice of [[Thomas Mower Martin]] in [[Toronto]], and moved there in 1874.{{sfn|Watson|1987|p=144}} He copied works at the [[Toronto Normal School]] and was mainly self-taught, but met other artists in Toronto (e.g., [[Lucius Richard O'Brien|Lucius O'Brien]]) while working part-time at the Notman-Fraser photography studio.

In 1876, Watson traveled to [[New York (state)|New York State]], and may have seen the work of painter [[George Inness]].<ref name="Foss" /> Although he never met Inness, he was influenced by the [[Hudson River School]] and painted along the [[Hudson River|Hudson]] and [[Susquehanna River]]s in the [[Adirondack Mountains]].<ref name="Foss" /> In 1880, the [[Marquis of Lorne]] opened the first exhibition of the [[Royal Canadian Academy|Canadian Academy]]; Watson's work was displayed and he was elected an Associate member.<ref name="Foss" /> That same year, he sold a major work, ''The Pioneer Mill,'' to the Marquis for [[Queen Victoria]].<ref name="Foss" />

Watson married Roxanna (Roxa for short) Bechtel in 1881, and the couple moved into the Drake House at Doon.<ref name="Foss" /> They bought the house in 1883, and he kept the house as his permanent residence until his death. Watson painted the rural [[Grand River (Ontario)|Grand River]] countryside for most of his artistic life.<ref name="Foss" /> He was noted for his commitment to Canadian landscapes: he said at a lecture on "The Methods of Some Great Landscape Painters" at the University of Toronto in 1900: "there is at the bottom of each artistic conscience a love for the land of their birth... no immortal work has been done which has not as one of its promptings for its creation a feeling its creator had of having roots in his native land and being a product of its soil".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Foss |first1=Brian |title=Into the New Century: Painting, c.1880-1914, The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century  |date=2010 |publisher=Oxford |location=Canada |pages=22, n.6 who quotes from Appendix 1 of Gerald Noonan, Refining the Real Canada: Homer Watson's Spiritual Landscape. Waterloo: mlr editions canada, 1997|url=https://search.library.utoronto.ca/search?N=0&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nu=p_work_normalized&Np=1&Ntt=visual%20arts%20in%20canada%3A%20twentieth%20century&Ntk=Anywhere |access-date=2020-09-04}}</ref>

The artists with whom Watson was most often associated were the English landscape painter [[John Constable]] (1776–1837) and such French [[Barbizon school|Barbizon]] artists as [[Théodore Rousseau]] (1812–1867), [[Charles-François Daubigny]] (1817–1878), [[Narcisse Virgilio Díaz|Narcisse Díaz de la Peña]] (1807–1876), [[Constant Troyon]] (1810–1865), [[Jules Dupré]] (1811–1889), and tangentially [[Jean-François Millet]] (1814–1875) because Watson didn`t share Millet`s focus on the nobility of human figures.<ref name="Foss" /> The thematic, formal, and psychological similarities between Watson, John Constable, and the Barbizon artists were strong. They were emotionally and psychologically devoted to landscapes with whose topography and inhabitants they were intimately familiar.<ref name="Foss" /><ref name="foss2">{{cite book |last1=Foss |first1=Brian |title="Barbizon Aesthetics in Canadian Landscape Painting". Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven |date=2015 |publisher=Vancouver Art Gallery and Black Dog Publishing |others= Ian M. Thom (ed.)|location=Vancouver and London, Eng. |pages=42ff|url=https://librarysearch.library.utoronto.ca/discovery/search?query=any,contains,Embracing%20Canada:%20Landscapes%20from%20Krieghoff%20to%20the%20Group%20of%20Seven.&tab=LibraryCatalog&search_scope=UTL&vid=01UTORONTO_INST:UTORONTO&offset=0 |access-date=2021-05-20}}</ref>

In 1882, while touring Canada, [[Oscar Wilde]] first noted the similarity between Watson and Constable, dubbing him the "Canadian [[John Constable|Constable]]" due to the similarity between Watson's work and of the great English landscape painter.<ref name="Foss" /> Wilde and Watson may have met at public events.<ref name="Foss" /> There may have been letters between the two men which could be in a private collection or lost.

Watson moved to [[England]] in 1887 for three years (1887–1890), and further established his reputation.<ref name="Foss" /> Over the next few years, his works became increasingly popular among collectors and received prizes at expositions across North America. In 1902, at the height of his British career, he exhibited ''The Flood Gate''. In 1904, he won a bronze medal at the [[Canadian exhibition at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition]] in St. Louis, Missouri.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Williamson |first1=Moncrieff |title=Robert Harris: An Unconventional Biography|pages=180–183 |url=https://search.library.utoronto.ca/search?N=0&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nu=p_work_normalized&Np=1&Ntt=Williamson%2C%20Moncrieff%20(1970).%20Robert%20Harris%201849-1919%20An%20Unconventional%20Biography&Ntk=Anywhere |website=search.library.utoronto.ca |publisher=McClelland & Stewart, Toronto |access-date=2021-05-02}}</ref>

He campaigned to save the [[Waterloo County]] woodlands that he had preserved in his landscapes. Due to the [[Wall Street Crash 1929|Stock Market Crash of 1929]] in which he lost his savings, he was forced to hand over many works from his personal collection to the local savings & loans firm, which held them for security and then tried to sell the paintings itself.<ref name="Foss" />

Homer Watson died in Doon on May 30, 1936.<ref name="Harper">{{cite web|last1=Harper|first1=J. Russell|title=Homer Ransford Watson|url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/homer-ransford-watson|website=The Canadian Encyclopedia|publisher=Historica Canada|access-date=29 March 2017|language=en|date=25 May 2008}}</ref>

==Legacy==
[[File:Homer Watson House front.jpg|thumb|Homer Watson House in [[Doon, Ontario]].]]
Many of Watson's works are still on display at his old house, which he and his sister had transformed into a small art gallery. Homer Watson's letters, his unpublished manuscripts, and his paintings, drawings, and prints document the issues that most interested him as an artist. Of his concerns, the commemoration of southern Ontario's pioneers and early settlers and the visual expression of Canadian regional and national identities locate Watson firmly within the milieu of many of his fellow artists of the time. In addition to these priorities, his dedication to safeguarding the natural environment was exceptional and far-sighted.<ref name="Foss" />

On May 27, 2005, [[Canada Post]] issued a pair of [[postage stamp]]s in his honour. Two stamps of denominations 50 and 85 cents were issued depicting two of his works, ''Dawn in the Laurentides'' and ''The Flood Gates''.<ref>{{cite web|title=Art Canada: Homer Watson (1855-1936)|url=http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/personal/collecting/stamps/archives/2005/2005_may_homerwatson.jsf|publisher=Canada Post|access-date=13 October 2013|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131017031709/http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/personal/collecting/stamps/archives/2005/2005_may_homerwatson.jsf|archive-date=17 October 2013}}</ref> 
An arterial road in [[Kitchener, Ontario|Kitchener]], which connects the Doon area to the main parts of the city, is named Homer Watson Boulevard.

Watson has been designated a [[Persons of National Historic Significance|Person of National Historic Significance]] in Canada.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/dfhd/default_eng.aspx |title=Directory of Federal Heritage Designations |website=Parks Canada |access-date=2022-05-29}}</ref>
Watson's former house in Doon, now the Homer Watson House & Gallery, was designated a [[National Historic Sites of Canada|National Historic Site of Canada]] in 1980.<ref>[http://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/lhn-nhs/det_E.asp?oqSID=0416&oqeName=Homer+Watson+House+%2F+Doon+School+of+Fine+Arts&oqfName=Maison+Homer%2DWatson+%2F+%C9cole+des+beaux%2Darts+Doon Homer Watson House / Doon School of Fine Arts],  Directory of Designations of National Historic Significance of Canada</ref><ref>[http://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=1143&pid=0 Homer Watson House / Doon School of Fine Arts], National Register of Historic Places</ref>

==Selected works==

<gallery mode="packed">
File:Homer Watson - Old Mill and Stream - 1879.jpg|''Old Mill and Stream'' 1879
File:The Castellated Cliff 1879.jpg|''The Castellated Cliff'' 1879
File:The Stone Road 1881.jpg|''The Stone Road'' 1881
File:Down in the Laurentides 1882.jpg|''Down in the Laurentides'' 1882
File:Near the Close of a Stormy Day 1884.jpg|''Near the Close of a Stormy Day'' 1884
File:Nut Gatherers in the Forest 1900.jpg|''Nut Gatherers in the Forest'' 1900
File:Rushing Stream by Moonlight 1905.jpg|''Rushing Stream by Moonlight'' 1905
File:Pink Bush 1906.jpg|''Pink Bush'' 1906
File:Study for Red Oak 1917.jpg|''Study for Red Oak'' 1917
File:Moonlight, Waning Winter 1924.jpg|''Moonlight, Waning Winter'' 1924
File:Mountain River 1932.jpg|''Mountain River'' 1932
</gallery>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Sources==
{{refbegin|indent=yes}}
*{{cite book |last1=Bloomfield |first1=Elizabeth |title=Waterloo Township Through Two Centuries |date=1995 |location=Kitchener |publisher=Waterloo Historical Society |isbn=0-9699719-0-7}}
*{{cite book |last1=Foss |first1=Brian |title=Homer Watson: Life & Work |date=2018 |publisher=[[Art Canada Institute]] |location=Toronto |isbn=978-1-4871-0183-1 |url=https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/homer-watson/ |language=en}}
*{{cite book |last1=Miller |first1=Muriel |title=Homer Watson: The Man of Doon |year=1988 |orig-year=1937 |publisher=Summerhill Press |location=Toronto |isbn=0-920197-58-2}}
*{{cite journal |last1=Watson |first1=Jennifer C. |title=Homer Watson in the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery |journal=RACAR: Revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review |date=1987 |volume=14 |issue=1/2 |pages=143–150 |doi=10.7202/1073457ar |jstor=42630360 |issn=0315-9906|doi-access=free }}{{Subscription or libraries}}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite book |title=Homer Watson – Not Your Average Pastoral Picnic: Selections From the Permanent Collection |location=Kitchener |publisher=Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery |year=2005}}
* {{cite journal |last=Foss |first=Brian |title=Homer Watson and 'The Pioneer Mill' |date=2012 |journal=Journal of Canadian Art History |volume=33 |number=1 |pages=46–85 |jstor=42616580}}
* {{cite web |last1=Foss |first1=Brian |title=Homer Watson: Life and Work |publisher=Art Canada Institute, Toronto, 2018 |url=https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/homer-watson/biography|access-date=18 October 2022}}

==External links==
* [http://www.homerwatson.on.ca/ Homer Watson House & Gallery]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070207092626/http://www.mta.ca/faculty/arts/canadian_studies/english/about/study_guide/artists/homer_watson.html  Biography at Mount Allison University]
* [http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/pm_v2.php?lg=English&ex=00000563&fl=0&id=exhibit_home Virtual Museum on Homer Watson]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070927201038/http://www.londonmuseum.on.ca/Historical/First_Ren/watson.html London Ontario Museum on Homer Watson]
* [http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/discipline/SpecColl/archives/watson.html University of Waterloo Library Holdings on Homer Watson]
* [https://www.gallery.ca/library/ngc081.html Homer Watson fonds] at the [[National Gallery of Canada]], Ottawa, Ontario

{{S-start}}
{{s-culture}}
{{Succession box
 | title  = President of the [[Royal Canadian Academy of Arts]]
 | years  = 1918-1922
 | with   =
 | before = [[William Brymner]]
 | after  = [[George Horne Russell]]
}}
{{S-end}}

{{Authority control (arts)}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Watson, Homer}}
[[Category:1855 births]]
[[Category:1936 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century Canadian painters]]
[[Category:Canadian male painters]]
[[Category:20th-century Canadian painters]]
[[Category:Canadian landscape painters]]
[[Category:Artists from Kitchener, Ontario]]
[[Category:Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada)]]
[[Category:19th-century Canadian male artists]]
[[Category:20th-century Canadian male artists]]
[[Category:Members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts]]
[[Category: World War I artists]]
[[Category:Canadian war artists]]

Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page (help):

Template:Authority control (arts) (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Birth date (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Br separated entries (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Circa (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Cite book (view source) (protected)
Template:Cite journal (view source) (protected)
Template:Cite web (view source) (protected)
Template:Count (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Death date and age (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Delink question hyphen-minus (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:For loop (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Harvard citation no brackets (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Harvnb (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Hlist/styles.css (view source) (protected)
Template:If empty (view source) (protected)
Template:Infobox artist (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Infobox person (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Link note (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:MONTHNAME (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:MONTHNUMBER (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Main other (view source) (protected)
Template:PAGENAMEBASE (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Pagetype (view source) (protected)
Template:Pluralize from text (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Post-nominals (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Post-nominals/CAN (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Refbegin (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Refbegin/styles.css (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Refend (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Reflist (view source) (protected)
Template:Reflist/styles.css (view source) (protected)
Template:S-aft (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:S-aft/check (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:S-aft/filter (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:S-bef (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:S-bef/check (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:S-bef/filter (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:S-culture (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:S-end (view source) (protected)
Template:S-start (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:S-ttl (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:S-ttl/check (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:SDcat (view source) (protected)
Template:Sfn (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Short description (view source) (protected)
Template:Short description/lowercasecheck (view source) (protected)
Template:Subscription or libraries (edit)
Template:Succession box (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Succession box/check (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Trim (view source) (protected)
Template:Wikidata image (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Age (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Arguments (view source) (protected)
Module:Authority control (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Authority control/config (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Check for clobbered parameters (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Check for unknown parameters (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1 (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1/COinS (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1/Identifiers (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1/Utilities (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css (view source) (protected)
Module:Date (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Detect singular (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Disambiguation/templates (view source) (protected)
Module:EditAtWikidata (view source) (protected)
Module:Footnotes (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Footnotes/anchor id list (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Footnotes/anchor id list/data (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Footnotes/whitelist (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:For loop (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:If empty (view source) (protected)
Module:Infobox (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Infobox/styles.css (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:InfoboxImage (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:MultiReplace (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Navbox (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Navbox/configuration (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Navbox/styles.css (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Pagetype (view source) (protected)
Module:Pagetype/config (view source) (protected)
Module:Pagetype/disambiguation (view source) (protected)
Module:Pagetype/rfd (view source) (protected)
Module:Pagetype/setindex (view source) (protected)
Module:Pagetype/softredirect (view source) (protected)
Module:ParameterCount (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:SDcat (view source) (protected)
Module:Separated entries (view source) (protected)
Module:String (view source) (protected)
Module:TableTools (view source) (protected)
Module:Template wrapper (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Text (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Wd (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Wd/i18n (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Wikitext Parsing (view source) (protected)
Module:Yesno (view source) (protected)

Return to Homer Watson.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Watson"