ABSTRACT
Lucius R. O'Brien: A Victorian in North America
American Influence on His Early Work, 1873-1880
Elizabeth Mulley
1990
Lucius R. O'Brien was a well-known Canadian landscape
painter in the second half of the nineteenth century. Active in the promotion of art in
Ontario, he served as vice-president of the Ontario Society of Artists from 1874 until
1880, at which time, in recognition of his leading role in Canadian art, he was appointed
as first president of the Royal Canadian Academy.
O'Brien produced poetic, reserved scenes of nature that
attest to his own upper-class Victorian background and the consequent firm belief in the
rightness of Canada's position within the Commonwealth. Dependent on the British cultural
presence, O'Brien nevertheless was substantially affected by contemporary American art.
The Hudson River and luminist paintings provided the stylistic models, and the American
vision of the land as a metaphor for new world strength and purity suited his own
patriotic concerns.
Victorian culture shaped O'Brien's response to the world,
and American art provided a meaningful stylistic source. This thesis will examine the ways
in which these major influences affected O'Brien's interpretation of the Canadian
landscape.
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