Marmaduke Matthews

Matthews studied watercolour painting at Oxford, England before moving to Toronto, Canada in 1860 to embark on a career as an painter of landscape. He was hired by the Canadian Pacific Railway to paint the Canadian prairies and rocky mountains. He worked for William van Horne, then-president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and made several cross-country trips to Canada's west, including in 1887, 1889 and 1892.[3] He reportedly drew his sketches from the cowcatcher of a locomotive.[4]

He is also notable for playing a founding role in the Ontario Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts as a watercolour painter. In Toronto, he is affectionately remembered as the creator of Wychwood Park in 1874 - a plot of land that he once lived on, that became an artists' community and is now one of the higher-income neighbourhoods located northwest of downtown Toronto.[3]

Matthews died in Toronto on 24 September 1913.[5] His works are included in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada,[1] the Art Gallery of Ontario,[6] and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery.[7]

• MacDonald, Colin (1967). A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, vol. 4 (Third ed.). Ottawa: Paperbacks. Retrieved 5 August 2020.