Jean Wylie Wishart (1902- 1991)

"Boat"
Watercolour
10.5" x 14.5" Image
17.5" x 22" Framed
Provenance: Private Hamilton Collection

About
Jean Wylie Wishart, a contemporary of the Seavey Sisters, was another woman who chose art over marriage... Miss Wishart had too much vim and vigor to be constrained by the will of another. She also firmly believed that her talent was a gift from God, as such she was obliged to hank God for that gift by developing it....Born in Toronto in 1902, Miss Wishart studied art at the Central Technical School in Toronto, and attended the Ontario College of Art. "I worked at Eaton's as a commercial artist for a while," said Miss Wishart in 1985, "but they put me in a little six by six box of an office and I said, 'If this is going to be my future, I'm out of commercial art.' It was then that I started to paint." Hortense Gordon is responsible for badgering Jean Wishart until the Latter gave in and accepted a teaching job at the Hamilton Technical Institute. Miss Wishart taught there from 1934 until her retirement in 1967. As early as 1945, Jean Wishart was recognized as a professional artist.... Jean Wishart was a representational painter working primarily in watercolours. She described her work in that catalogue of her 1971 retrospective show at the Art Gallery of Hamilton as being a "semi-abstract approach which is neither pictorial nor completely realistic. "Her subject matter could be anything from city scenes to old buildings to the circus. Miss Wishart demonstrated her painting techniques on many occasions to the WWA Membership. Jean Wishart, a woman who loved to run, even in her 60's--not jogging--just running for the heck of it down the block to the store; a Christian who believed in honesty so much she would tell you that your hat was dreadful if she thought it was and you had asked; an art teacher who influenced hundreds of students including Eugene Pawczuk, Paul Fournier, Gordon Perrier and Leslie B. Demille died in 1991.
Summary from the Women's Art Association of Hamilton "The first 100 years" by Stuart MacCuaig. pg. 60-61