Robert Ford Gagen

Robert Ford Gagen RCA (May 10, 1847 – March 02, 1926),[1] also known as R. F. Gagen and as Robert F. Gagen, was a Canadian painter of seascapes and landscapes. He was also known as a teacher.

Robert F. Gagen
Born
Robert Ford Gagen

(1847-05-10)May 10, 1847
London, England
DiedMarch 2, 1926(1926-03-02) (aged 78)
Toronto, Ontario
NationalityCanadian
Spouse(s)Jane Palmer (married 1873)

Biography

Robert Ford Gagen, was born in London, England. He came to Canada with his parents in 1862, and settled at Harpurhey, now Seaforth, in Huron County, Ontario.[2] William Nicoll Cresswell, an artist who lived near Seaforth, began to teach him drawing and painting in 1863.[3] Afterwards, Gagen went to Toronto and entered a painting class with George Gilbert.[4] In 1872, John Arthur Fraser hired Gagen to work at Notman and Fraser as a painter of water color portraits and miniatures on a photographic base: he remained there till 1878.[2][4][5]

Gagen painted sea and river studies and travelled widely to do so, favoring the Maritime Provinces and the shore of St. Lawrence in Quebec as well as Maine and Massachusetts in the United States. In 1890, he painted the Rockies and the Selkirks and in 1906, Scotland and Switzerland.[2] In 1910, he returned to painting the St. Lawrence.[2] In 1918, the Canadian War Memorials Fund asked him to record the shipbuilding underway in Toronto, Ontario.[6] He exhibited his work in the many societies of which he was a member almost every year from the time he joined them. In 1927, a year after he died, there was an exhibition and sale of his work at Eaton's.[7] His work is included today in exhibitions of Canadian art, such as Stone and Sky: Canada’s Mountain Landscape, at the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, B.C. in 2018[8] and is in many collections such as the National Gallery of Canada[1] and Art Gallery of Ontario.[9]

Honours and distinctions

Gagen was one of the founders of the Ontario Society of Artists in 1872.[2] He became the Society`s long-term secretary (1889-1926).[10] In 1880, he was elected an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy; he became a full member in 1915.[11] In 1893, he was appointed one of the Canadian Fine Arts Commissioners to the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago. He acted in the same capacity at the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901, where he was awarded honorable mention and at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904.[2] He was also Director of the Fine Arts Exhibitions for the Canadian National Exhibition, appointed from 1904 on, and Secretary of the Commission in 1912. He occupied both these posts till his death in 1926. [12] He was a member of the Board of the Central Ontario School of Art and Design, and later a member of the council of the Ontario College of Art.[2] He helped found the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour in 1926 and served as President (1925-1926) as well as being a charter member of the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto (1908-1909) and President (1918-1920).[9]

Gagen was the author of Ontario Art Chronicle, ca. 1919, a typed manuscript in the collection of The Edward P. Taylor Library & Archives of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. He died in Toronto in 1926.

References
  1. "R.F. Gagen". National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  2. Staley, John E. "Gagen, The Painter of the Sea". archive.macleans.ca. Maclean`s, January 1, 1913. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  3. Varley 1986, p. 16.
  4. MacDonald 1977, p. 242.
  5. "Canadian Art Chronology". ccca.concordia.ca. Concordia University, Montreal. Retrieved January 13, 2021.
  6. Gagen, Robert Ford. "Collection". www.warmuseum.com. Canadian War Museum, Ottawa. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  7. "An exhibition and sale of pictures by the late R.F. Gagen". www.worldcat.org. World Catalogue. Retrieved January 13, 2021.
  8. "Stone and Sky". www.gallerieswest.ca. Galleries West Magazine. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  9. Bradfield, Helen. "Art Gallery of Ontario: the Canadian Collection". ago.ca. Art Gallery of Ontario. p. 126. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  10. Wallace, W. Stewart (ed.). "Encyclopedia of Canada, vol III". faculty.marianopolis.edu. Toronto, University Associates of Canada. Retrieved January 12, 2021.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  11. "Members since 1880". Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Archived from the original on May 26, 2011. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  12. Pantazzi, Sybille. "Foreign Art at the Canadian National Exhibition 1905-1938". www.gallery.ca. National Gallery of Canada Bulletin 22, 1973. Retrieved January 12, 2021.

Bibliography
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