Beach with Indians and Fallen Buck by Thomas Mower Martin

(1838-1934). Watercolor; 13 1/2" x 23 1/2". Born in London, Martin studied at the South Kensington Art Galleries. He immigrated to Canada in 1862, failed as a homesteader, and in 1863 became the first full-time professional artist in Toronto. He was the founder of the Ontario Society of Artists, director of the Ontario School of Art, and original member and founder of the Toronto Society of Artists. Thirty years after the explorer-painter Paul Kane, Martin led a new flow of painters into the Canadian West. In the late 1860s, he crossed Canada painting watercolors, later reproduced as book illustrations. He had traveled along the proposed right-of-way of Canadian Pacific, so that his large studio paintings were used as railway publicity. Ten additional sketching trips took him through the Pacific Coast, Vancouver Island, and Washington state. An important early Canadian Railway survey artist, landscape painter and illustrator. Well framed.