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MARTIN, Élisabeth
- Born
- St. Jacques, Quebec, 1861
- Died
- Lachine?, Quebec, 1956
- Biography synopsis
- Martin was the daughter of Jean-Louis Martin, a member of the Legislative Assembly of Quebec. She attended a school in Lachine, run by the Sœurs de Sainte-Anne, which is where she first studied art under Sœur Marie-Arsène. She went on to study under the well-known Montreal artist William Raphael, and also studied drawing and painting under Edmond Dyonnet. In 1886 Martin joined the Sœurs de Sainte-Anne and took the name sœur Marie-Hélène de la Croix. Her role at the Mont-Sainte-Anne convent in Lachine was to paint and to teach painting, drawing and photography to the other nuns, who would in turn teach children and other members of the community. As a painter she concentrated mainly on religious scenes and still lifes. Martin often photographed the scenes she would paint first, then blew up the image and used it as a reference for her painting. The majority of her paintings are owned by the various religious houses of the Sœurs de Saint-Anne in Québec but some have made their way to Alaska, Haiti, and even the Vatican.
- Media used
- Drawing
- Painting
- Photography
- Education
- Private study (under William Raphael, Edmond Dyonnet)
- File & Archive locations
- Canadian Women Artists History Initiative Documentation Centre, QC
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
Writings about- Auclair, Élie-Joseph. Histoire des soeurs de Sainte-Anne :Les premiers cinquante ans : 1850-1900. Montreal: Imp. des Frères des Ecoles chrétiennes, 1922
- Karel, David. Dictionnaire des artistes de langue française en Amérique du Nord: peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs, graveurs, photographes et orfèvres. Quebec: Museé du Québec, 1992
- Landry, André. "Deux artistes-enseignants : Frère Martinus-Alfred et soeur Marie-Hélène-de-la-croix." Esse 21 (Winter 1992-1993): 52-59
- Raymond Amyot, Hélène. Soeur Marie-Hélène-de-la-Croix (Élisabeth Martin 1861-1956), peintre-photographe : Context de production, théorie d'une reception et etude iconographique des Saints Martyr canadiens. Montreal: Université du Québec à Montréal, 1992
- Sobral, Luis de Moura. "La nature morte au couvent : cinq tableaux de la fin du XIXe siècle chez les Sœurs de Saint-Anne à Lachine." Abstracts/Résumés (Nov. 1984)
