SPRING 2025: FINE ART
PIONEERING WOMEN ARTISTS IN ALBERTA
Annora Brown
ALBERTA WILD ROSES
gouache and watercolour on paper
10 x 14 in.
Alberta’s rich artistic heritage dates back over a century. Shortly after the province’s foundation in 1905, early art groups began to form, evidence of a vibrant and dynamic community of artists, a flourishing art scene and, what would become a distinctly Albertan art movement. The Calgary Sketch Club was founded in 1909; the Edmonton Art Club in 1921. The Provincial Institute of Technology established an art department in 1926 (now Alberta University of the Arts); and by 1930, the Alberta Society of Artists had been established.
In these early years, female artists were often limited by gender roles, and their work was overshadowed by their male counterparts. Over time, however, these pioneering women have come to be recognized for their vital contributions to the province’s artistic development.
Annora Brown
FERN AND SAXIFRAGE
gouache and watercolour on paper
20.25 x 13.5 in.
Annora Brown
[1899-1987]
Annora Brown was born on a homestead near Red Deer, Alberta, and raised in Fort MacLeod. She spent time as a teacher before she attended the Ontario College of Art. Brown’s work was influenced by her surroundings in Fort MacLeod, and she was particularly interested in local wildflowers and plants. Unlike many other female landscape painters of this time, Brown’s work was not influenced by that of the Group of Seven, but rather reflected an earlier English style that was gentler in its approach.
Her 1954 book “Old’ Man’s Garden”, combines her love of nature with her recollections of stories and legends from the Old Man River region. Brown travelled and hiked extensively in Alberta to capture wildflowers during the different seasons. Her knowledge of the subject was so extensive, that in the 1950s she was commissioned by the Glenbow Foundation to create 200 paintings of various species of Alberta wildflowers – she produced 500 sketches over three years. A true regionalist, her work captures the natural history of Alberta’s flora and fauna.
Marion Nicoll
[1909-1985]
Calgary born Marion Nicoll was one of the first abstract painters in Alberta. After completing her fine arts degree in 1932, she began to teach in the School of Crafts at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art, and she would teach there until 1966.
Nicoll was introduced to automatic painting in the 1940s by Jock MacDonald, and her style began to shift away from the traditional techniques she had learned in school. In 1957, she attended the Emma Lake Artist Workshop, where she learned hard-edge abstraction techniques. Her studies took her to New York and Europe, and she brought back to Calgary a distinct style of hard-edged abstraction. Today, she is best known for these works, and is cemented as a pioneer in Alberta modernism.
Margaret Dorothy Shelton
BANFF SPRINGS GOLF CLUBHOUSE; 1938
hand-coloured linocut on paper
4.25 x 5.5 in.
Margaret Shelton
[1915-1984]
Margaret Shelton was born on a farm near Bruce, Alberta and grew up in the Drumheller Valley. In 1933, while attending teacher’s college in Calgary, she also attended evening drawing classes with A.C. Leighton at the Provincial Institute of Technology. She attended “the Tech” from 1934-1943 on scholarships, during which time she learned printing techniques from W.J. Phillips.
After a short period of working as a commercial artist, Shelton decided to commit herself to a full time artistic career. Her passion for nature and the landscape, honed in her early years, continued, and she produced hundreds of well-executed scenes of the diverse Alberta landscape. Shelton’s interpretations are distinctively vital and energetic, showcasing the many facets of Alberta life.
Janet Mitchell
AN ARRAY OF FIGURES AND BIRDS; 1964
mixed media on paper
15 x 22 in. (38.1 x 55.9 cm)
Janet Mitchell
[1912-1998]
Janet Mitchell received her very first set of oil paints when she was 21 years old. It was this gift that sparked the very beginnings of a career that would go on to solidify her as one of Calgary’s most notable modernist painters. Born in Medicine Hat, Mitchell was adopted at a young age by John and Janet Mitchell of Calgary. As a young adult in the 1940s, while also working full-time to support herself and her family, she immersed herself in Calgary’s arts community.
Janet Mitchell’s career spanned six decades, and she remains one of the most important female artists in Alberta’s history. She is beloved for her lively, joyful, and often playful scenes of Calgary streets and Alberta towns. She is most recognized for her full and colourful scenes in which she spontaneously combines figures, animals, buildings, and her distinct calligraphic imagery to create dynamic compositions that test the limits of fantasy and abstraction, without abandoning the real world.
Isabel Stadelbauer
CANMORE ROOFS
watercolour on paper
13.75 x 15.5 in.
Isabel Stadelbauer
[1909-2004]
Isabel Stadelbauer, along with her sister Helen, is remembered for her contributions to the development of art education in Alberta. After high school, Isabel attended Teachers’ College and began teaching art circa 1930, with many of those years at Viscount Bennett High School. Isabel was involved with the local artistic community and the Alberta Society of Artists. She joined the ASA in 1943, then was made an associate and awarded a lifetime membership in 1945. Isabel never married, consciously choosing single, independent life, and the pursuit of her career. Best known for her scenes of Calgary and the Mountain Parks, she recorded the sights and experiences in sketches, paintings and photographs, capturing the years during the Second World War, and post-war Calgary for posterity.
Barbara Harvey Leighton
EMERALD LAKE
colour woodcut on paper; 2nd ed.; ed. #4/100
11.5 x 14.5 in.
Barbara Leighton
[1909-1986]
Barbara Leighton was born Barbara Mary Harvey in Plymouth, England. Her family immigrated to Alberta in 1912 and she began attending the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art in Calgary in 1930. There, she met Alfred (A.C.) Leighton, her instructor and the school’s director, whom she married in 1931.
After their marriage, Barbara continued to create woodblock prints and also managed her husband’s career. In 1965, after her husband passed away, Barbara enrolled at the Alberta College of Art and Design. In her mid-fifties, she earned a diploma in fiber and metal crafts and won Visual Arts scholarships for two years. Barbara composed woodcuts based on her late husband’s work, tracing his paintings and creating woodblocks for colors.
In 1970, Barbara transformed the Leighton home in the Calgary Foothills into a workshop space and gallery, where she showcased works by her late husband and other prominent Alberta artists. Over the years, the complex grew and is now known as the Leighton Art Centre, operated by a foundation established by Barbara in 1974, and still operates as an art, nature and history center today.
