Robert Newton Hurley

Robert Newton Hurley (1894, London, England - 1980, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada), who was also known as R.N. Hurley, was an English-born painter who, after immigrating to Canada in 1923, became widely known for his watercolor paintings of the Saskatchewan landscape and sky.[1]

Hurley had little formal training as a painter. As a teenager, he worked multiple jobs in England, including as a form-laborer and an apprentice printer-compositor.[2] He later served during World War I in the Suffolk Regiment before moving to Canada. In Canada, he worked on the Canadian Pacific Railway[3] and as an itinerant laborer before settling down in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

During the Great Depression, Hurley began to use his extra time to paint, focusing on the prairie landscapes, skies, and grain elevators near Saskatoon. Hurley came to the attention of Ernest Lindner when he took several night classes from Lindner at the Saskatoon Technical Collegiate Institute.[4] From 1942-1958, Hurley worked for the University of Saskatchewan and continued painting.[5]

In 1958, Hurley's work had garned such attention that he was given an artist's grant from the Government of Saskatchewan that allowed him to paint full time. In his later life, he and his wife moved to British Columbia, where he died in 1980.[6]

Hurley has often been called Saskatchewan's "Sky Painter"[7] for his "effective use of watercolour to illuminate the prairie sky."[8]