Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook (1913 - 2009)
About the Artist:
Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook was born and educated in Hamilton. Her aptitude and interest in art developed early but it was not until 1929 that she began her formal training at Central Collegiate and Hamilton Technical School Art Department that her talents developed. She had taken her first art lessons with Hamilton artist, Marion Mattice, and then later with John and Hortense Gordon at the Technical School. During her early years of instruction she was primarily interested in painting but her long career as a sculptress began once she attended the Ontario College of Art. Here, from 1932-1935 she specialized in sculpture under Emanuel Hahn and graduated winning the Lieutenant Governor's Medal for Sculpture. This training was followed by a year at the Royal College of Art in London England. One of Holbrook's first commissioned works, was the stone statue of a kneeling girl holding a dove in the Royal Botanical Gardens in 1937.
Other works found locally include: the plaque of former mayor Lloyd D. Jackson on the facade of Jackson Square; a bust of Sir Allan MacNab at Dundurn Castle; the stone panels above the doors at the old federal building on Main Street; a bust in Stoney Creek of historian George Stanley, who designed the Canadian flag; and one of Rabbi Bernard Baskin in Temple Anshe Sholom.For short time she was an Art Lecturer in Sculpture at Dundas Valley School of Art 1964, 1968. She was a lecturer of sculpture at the Burlington Cultural Centre 1990-1993 and at McMaster University, Faculty of Arts in Hamilton, Ontario 1995-1999. Her celebrated statue of George Bernard Shaw, 1997 located at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario attests to this contribution. Holbrookâs portrait sculptures are represented in over 50 important public collections worldwide and her sculptures are among some of the very best that Canada has known.
Today, Elizabeth Holbrook is recognized as a gifted sculptor whose art has been commissioned and displayed by admirers around the world, she was inducted into the Hamilton Gallery of Distinction in 1994, received the Order of Canada in 1995 and an honary doctorate from McMaster University in 1996. Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook, passed away at the age of 96 on February 23, 2009.
About the Sculpture:
stone panel
Holbrook was commissioned to do two, ten foot stone panels for the outside of the Federal Revenue Building on Main and Caroline Streets in Hamilton. The panels depict Canadian wildlife and industry.
