Arthur Heming (1870 - 1940)
About the Artist:
Like many of his contemporaries, Arthur Heming attended the Hamilton Art School in the evenings or on weekends while working during the day. He became an instructor at the school while still in his teens and by 1890 was supporting himself as a freelance illustrator. It was at the art school that Heming was told he was colour blind and consequently did not work in colour until he was sixty years of age.
In 1925 the Hamilton Spectator said of Heming, "If there never was a Canadian school of art before, there is now and Hamiltons' Arthur Heming is head master and chief exponent thereof". During his life he made many trips to the far north, writing and illustrating his own books, one of which "Spirit Lake" still survives in the Hamilton Public Library's archival collection. Heming's work became known nationally and internationally and by the 1930's he was "undoubtedly the best known Canadian artist in Europe. His paintings, full of adventure and romantic allure, were synonymous with Canada in the minds of millions." By 1932 Heming had been discovered both in Europe and in the United States, his work was to be found in such publications as the Illustrated London News, the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, the New York Times and Le Gazzetta del Popolo della Sera, to name a few.
Of his passing in 1940 the Globe and Mail had this to say, "one of the world's greatest artists...(who) depicted in his painting, as perhaps no one else, the living beauty, the natural magnificence" of the great, untravelled North of Canada."
Stuart MacCuaig
"Climbing the Cold White Peaks :
A survey of artists in and from Hamilton 1910-1950"
About the Painting:
'In Canada's Fairyland", one of four Heming paintings owned by the Art Gallery of Hamilton, is an excellent example of his treatment of snow shapes. The use that Heming made of the image of snow - "soft falling snow, wet clinging snow, frozen glistening snow in sub-zero weather, snow eroded by the sun and converted into fantastic while mushrooms, snow bridges..." was thought by London critics to be a "revelation and a new feature in art".
Stuart MacCuaig
"Climbing the Cold White Peaks :
A survey of artists in and from Hamilton 1910-1950"
