ABSTRACT
William H. Eagar: "Sensibilities of No Common
Order"
Alexandra E. Carter
1979
William H. Eagar's versatile career parallels the
experience of other colonial artists involved with cultural pursuit in British North
America. He worked as artist, teacher and entrepreneur in St. John's, Newfoundland and
Halifax, Nova Scotia during the early nineteenth century. Born in Ireland 1796, with
landed ancestry, Eagar may have immigrated to Newfoundland to work as fishery agent rather
than artist. He married Maria Saunders, daughter of an establishment family, in St. John's
1819. The economic depression of the 1820's terminated many Newfoundland businesses and
possibly obliged Eagar to labour as painter and glazier. He experienced a short term
financial bankruptcy 1821, while engaged in these endeavors. When he opened a studio in
St. John's 1829, offering profile silhouettes and landscape lessons to young ladies and
gentlemen, he was owner of a sizable plantation, Spring Field. Impressed by the work of
water-colour painters he had seen during a London journey in 1831, he intended teaching
landscape exclusively on his return to St. John's, but found little interest for this
"new" branch of art. After he was refused the position of Surveyor General of
Newfoundland in 1832, he vacated his schoolroom and advertised his specialty as
"portrait painter in oil and water-colour." Eagar established a drawing academy
in Halifax 1834 where he served as drawing master to daughters of leading families who
believed art was a necessary accomplishment of a first class education. Few patrons
purchased water-colour scenery, so to supplement his teaching income, Eagar managed the
Halifax Bazaar. His most ambitious plan, announced in 1836, was to publish at least two
volumes of engraved views of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Competition from a similar
work, Sketches of Nova Scotia by Robert Petley, lithographed and less expensive,
discouraged sales of Eagar's first number issued in 1837 as Landscape Illustrations of
Nova Scotia. Without recourse to government assistance to subsidize subsequent
engravings, Eagar learned lithography and drew his twelve remaining Nova Scotian scenes on
stone. The last two numbers of Nova Scotia Scenery appeared after Eagar's death at
Halifax, November 1839.
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