biographie de Carl Henry AHRENS (1863-1936)

Birth place: Winfield, Ontario, Canada

Death place: near Galt, Toronto, Ont., Canada

Addresses: Primarily in Canada, but in Rockport, MA, 1900; NYC and CA, 1906-7; Woodstock, NY,1920

Profession: Landscape painter, illustrator, printmaker, ceramicist, teacher

Studied: Took up painting in Toronto, c. 1886, studied drawing with Edwin Elwell; while studying with Chase, NYC, 1892, he befriended George Inness, who advised him to return to Canada and develop on his own.

Exhibited: Ontario Soc. of Artists, 1890s; Royal Acad., Ontario, frequently; Toronto, 1911; 1917 (solo); Memorial Exhibition of Selected Works" Mellors Galleries, c. 1937"

Member: Ontario Soc of Artists; Royal Canadian Acad. of Arts

Work: National Gallery of Canada.

Comments: One of Canada's most distinguished painters of the Canadian woodlands. Although he spent most of his career in Canada, he periodically visited and worked in the U.S . As a young man, he was a cowboy in Montana (early 1880s). He was living in Canada in 1899 but in 1900 was listed in the American Art Annual with an address at Rockport, Mass, suggesting he may have spent a summer at that artist's colony. While in NYC in 1906, he received a commission from George Wharton James to travel through California, painting the old Spanish Missions for book illustrations (due to financial losses in an earthquake, James was unable to publish the book). Painted and taught at the artist colony at Woodstock, NY, in 1920. His later years were spent near Galt, Toronto.

Sources: WW00; Jennifer Watson, Carl Ahrens as Printmaker: a Catalogue RaisonnÈ, Kitchner-Waterloo Art Gallery, 1984; Hector Charlesworth, The Art of Carl Ahrens," in Memoral Exhibition of Selected Works of Carl Ahrens, exh. brochure, Mellors Galleries, Ontario, undated (c. 1937)."