Still Life with Flowers

Provenance:
Private Collection, Montreal

Exhibitions:
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal, Ethel Seath Retrospective Exhibition, September 14 - 26, 1987, catalogue #28
Notes:
Most of the Beaver Hall Group women were trained at the Art Association of Montreal; however, Ethel Seath was a self-taught artist. Although she attended occasional classes at the Association and went on sketching trips organised by William Brymner and Maurice Cullen, her skills were largely acquired while working as an illustrator at the Witness and Montreal Star newspapers. Unhappy with illustration work, Seath would spend her lunch hours sketching in local churchyards and docklands, and these accomplished studies laid a solid foundation for the expert landscapes and still lifes she would complete later in life. The formation of the Beaver Hall Group in 1920 provided Seath with a platform to exhibit her work and to collaborate with like-minded artists. Works such as Still Life with Flowers are indebted to the freedom of expression and abstract qualities encouraged in her canvases by the group's mentor, A.Y. Jackson. Seath's works are ever truthful and painterly, and this charming canvas is a tribute to both the inspiration and technique she acquired during her time with the Beaver Hall painters.