Ottawa Art Gallery’s A Family Palette at RiverBrink

RiverBrink Art Museum in Queenston is the perfect setting to showcase its newest exhibit, A Family Palette, on loan from the Ottawa Art Gallery until Aug. 19.

“I am so pleased with the era that is evoked in this house, which is very similar to a lot of the work on display,” said the show’s curator, Rebecca Basciano from the Ottawa Art Gallery.

RiverBrink is the former home of fine art collector Sam Weir and is currently housing the work of three artists: Frances-Anne Johnston, her father and founding member of the Group of Seven Franz Johnston, and Frances-Anne’s husband, Franklin Arbuckle.

However, working through a feminist lens, the focus is on Frances-Anne Johnston.

“As we know, women in history who worked in a patriarchal society get overlooked, and it takes someone to sort of recover their work,” said Basciano. “I call it a purposeful feminist recovery project.”

“Johnston is tied between two men in her life and was always known as the artist’s daughter or the artist’s wife, when she was an artist in her own right,” explained Basciano. “People would always say, ‘you’re Franz’ daughter, no wonder you can paint,’ and her response would be ‘as if painting could be inherited like blue eyes or dimples.’”

Johnston married artist Franklin Arbuckle, a Canadian illustrator who painted over 100 covers for Maclean’s magazine from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s.

“While he was busy building up this post-war Canadian consciousness,” said Basciano, “he was travelling across the country to see the prairies and meeting many people.” His art reflects the outside world of landscapes and cityscapes, including an untitled work of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation procession in 1953, on display at RiverBrink.

“Then you have Frances-Anne and she is working from inside the home,” said Basciano. “They have two children, she graduated art school and started painting right away, but she is working out of kitchens and bedrooms and looking after the house and the children.”

“She doesn’t ever depict people at all, however, just by draping a piece of fabric, or moving the position of the chairs, she evokes the idea of presence. You can tell it’s a lived space.”

On display are many of Johnston’s favourite artifacts, such as a jug painted with black cherries, a violin, a hippo statue and an armoire. “Johnston painted these into her interior landscapes,” said Basciano, “purposely showing you with her own objects, a self-portrait.” Many of the paintings in this collection include these items multiple times.

Another interesting piece in the exhibit is by Johnston’s husband, Arbuckle. He painted a window panel which was once installed on a Canadian Pacific Railway train in a luxury Park Car, which had domes and panoramic views of the landscape. The grey squares show where the windows once were. Here, Arbuckle shows the flowers around Mount Assiniboine. The diagonal lines break the scene into winter, spring/summer, and autumn, offering movement and bringing nature into the abstract.

“It’s a jewel,” said Lord Mayor Gary Zalepa, former board member at RiverBrink, referring to the museum. He, several board members, locals and out-of-towners were in attendance for the private curated tour by Basciano.

Brett Sherlock, international consultant for Christie’s Canada, is a local and a regular at RiverBrink. “The permanent collection is fantastic. They have all the great Canadian painters here and their sculptures. All the Group of Seven is represented.”

Allan Magnacca, RiverBrink president and acting-treasurer, said “we’ve waited several years to have it confirmed that we would be chosen to have this collection on display.”

RiverBrink director and curator Debra Antoncic explained, the exhibition was several years in the research and planning before the Ottawa Art Gallery sent out a call for expressions of interest in late 2020. “I submitted a letter of intent indicating our interest in hosting. The grant was approved in 2021 and then we began to plan to host the exhibition, including all the permissions for loans from other galleries and the logistics of shipping.”

The application process also included an examination of the building to determine that it had the right conditions, including temperature control, to house a collection of this magnitude. The exhibit is travelling only to one other site, Sarnia, near the end of the summer.

“We are a jewel in the community,” said Magnacca. “We are outside of the Old Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake and from the outside it looks like a home, and that’s what it was. It was Sam Weir’s home, and he’s buried out front. People don’t recognize us as a place to come and visit.”

Visiting RiverBrink for A Family Palette is an enriching experience, and an enjoyable illustration of Canadiana. The collection can be viewed at 116 Queenston Street in Queenston, Wednesdays through to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.