Frederick Henry (Fred) Brigden

Born in London, England, Brigden came to Canada with his parents in 1872 and with them, settled in Toronto.[1] In 1877, his father Frederick Brigden Senior founded the Toronto Engraving Company with Henry Beale.[2]

In 1898, Fred Brigden became the art director of the Toronto Engraving Company which in 1910 changed its name to Brigdens Limited.[2] In 1914, he opened a branch of Brigden's in Winnipeg and gave employment to such artists as Charles Comfort and many others such as Caven Atkins, Fritz Brandtner, and Nicholas Raphael de Grandmaison.[2][3]

Since he was talented in art, F. H. Brigden attended the Toronto Art Student’s League as a youth, studying with William Cruikshank and George Agnew Reid. He also attended meetings of the Mahlstick Club which included J. E. H. MacDonald among other artists.

Brigden painted in a traditional English watercolour style until about 1906 when he made his first trip to the north country of Canada when his work became brightened and became more decisive.[1] He visited galleries in London, Manchester and Brussels in 1910, and during the summer, Brigden studied with John F. Carlson in Woodstock, New York.[1][4] In 1912 he visited the Albright Art Gallery, today's Albright-Knox Gallery, in Buffalo, New York, where he saw the Exhibition of Contemporary Scandinavian Art and post-Impressionist and expressionist landscape paintings.[5] It was the same exhibition which J. E. H. MacDonald and Lawren Harris saw and were inspired by in 1913.[1] Bridgen, however, remained more of a traditionalist and retained his long-term interest in the English watercolourists. In 1924 on a business trip to England he examined with interest a portfolio of original watercolours of John Sell Cotman.[1] In 1925, he was one of the founders[6] and the first elected President of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour (CSPWC/SCPA).[7]

Brigden joined the Ontario Society of Artists in 1898 and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1939 and is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada[8] and the Art Gallery of Ontario.[4] He died on a sketching trip at Bolton, Ontario in 1956.[1]

• Middleton, J. E. (1945). Canadian landscape: as pictured by F.H. Brigden / Biographical notes by J.E. Middleton. Toronto: The Ryerson Press. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
• Davis, Angela E. (1986). Business, art and labour : Brigden's and the growth of the Canadian graphic arts industry 1870-1950. Winnipeg: A. E. Davis. Retrieved 7 December 2022.
• Hughes, Mary Jo (2001). Brigdens of Winnipeg. Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery. Retrieved 24 June 2023.