Nobody has systematically collected data on the women who historically contributed to Canadian art, architecture and craft. Until now.

Self-Portrait, by Lilias Torrance Newton, 1929. Newton was the first Canadian painter to paint the portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. Image: collectionscanada.gc.ca

Several weeks ago in Montreal, Concordia’s Canadian Women Artists History Initiative (CWAHI) held a symposium called Connections, to launch the first ever online database of Canadian women artists born before 1925.

The idea was the brainchild of Janice Anderson, Visual Arts curator at the Fine Arts slide library at Concordia, with visual arts librarian Melinda Reinhart.

Karen Herland, of the Concordia University Journal, writes: “So far, 200 bio-bibliographic entries on artists, architects, designers, photographers and craftspeople, representing some 4 000 hours of research work, can be accessed in the database. Each entry includes a short biography of the subject, as well as a list of texts relating to their work. Several hundred more files exist in CWAHI’s documentation centre to be meticulously researched and translated into the online database.”

Click HERE to access the database.

Stay tuned for my upcoming review of Independent Spirit for Quill and Quire. it’s an important book on women artists in Canada from the eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.