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FORBES, Elizabeth Armstrong

Born
Kingston, Ontario, 1859
Died
Newlyn, Cornwall, 1912
Biography synopsis
As a young girl Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes (née Armstrong) studied at the South Kensington Art Schools. She returned to Canada then studied at the Art Students League (1877-80) with William Chase, who encouraged her to study in Munich with Frank Duveneck and J. Frank Currier, and she went from there to Pont-Aven, Brittany, in 1882. She began to use local people as models, and she sent work to the Royal Institute in London, where it all sold on the opening day. In 1883 she returned to London and in 1884 traveled to Holland. Following the summer of 1884, she returned to London where she learned drypoint etching from Walter Sickert and James Whistler. She became a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, and she also exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery and the Royal Institute. In late 1885 she and her mother moved to Newlyn and then to St. Ives, where she met her future husband, Stanhope Forbes. They married in 1889. Forbes worked in watercolour, oils and pastels, although after her marriage she no longer produced etchings. In 1891 she won a medal at the Paris International Exhibition and she became a member of the Grosvenor Gallery Pastel Society. She and her husband opened the Newlyn School of Painting in 1899. In 1900 she was elected an associate of the Royal Watercolor Society.
Media used
Painting
Printmaking
Watercolour
Education
South Kensington Art Schools
Art Students' League, New York, 1877 - 1880 (under William Chase)
Private study (under Frank Duveneck (Munich); J. Frank Currier (Munich); Walter Sickert (London); James Whistler (London))
Memberships
Royal Society of Painter-Etchers
Grosvenor Gallery Pastel Society
Royal Watercolour Society
File & Archive locations
Art Gallery of Ontario - Edward P. Taylor Research Library and Archives
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts / Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, QC
Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, ON
National Gallery of Canada, ON - Library and Archives
University of British Columbia - Fine Arts Library
Canadian Women Artists History Initiative Documentation Centre, QC
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Writings about
Victorian Romantics: Autumn Exhibition of Fine Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian Paintings, Watercolours and Drawings c. 1850-1920. 1985
"Art and Artists." Toronto Saturday Night 4.19 (4 Apr. 1891): 11
"Generous Gift to Patriotic Works." Ottawa Citizen 29 Jan. 1917
"Group of Pictures to National Art Gallery." Ottawa Citizen 13 Jan. 1917
"The Arts in Brief." Globe and Mail (Toronto) 3 Dec. 1992
"The Royal Academy." Art Journal (Jun. 1896): 172-3
Baker, Denys Val. "A Cornish Art Colony." Antiques Magazine (Jun. 1990): 159-67
Baker, Denys Val. "A Cornish Art Colony." Connoisseur 202 (1979): 161-9
Barbican Art Gallery. Painting in Newlyn, 1880-1930. London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1985
Barbican Art Gallery. The Last Romantics: The Romantic Tradition in British Art: Burne-Jones to Stanley Spencer. London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1989
Belgrave Gallery. British Post-Impressionists and Moderns. London: Belgrave Gallery, 1987
Birch, Lionel. Stanhope A. Forbes, A.R.A. and Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes, A.R.W.S. London: Cassell and Company, 1906
Burton, Samantha. A Canadian Artist in King Arthur's Court: Elizabeth Armstrong Forbes and the Colonial Invention of British Tradition. Journal of Canadian Art History 34.2 (2013): 140-177
Cherry, Deborah. Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists. London, New York: Routledge, 1993
Cooper, A. B. "The Fairy Tale in Art." Canadian Magazine 38 (Dec. 1911): 181-3
Cross, Tom. The Shining Sands: Artists in Newlyn and St. Ives 1880-1930. ?: West County Books, 1995
Crozier, Gladys. "Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes." Art Journal 66 (1904): 382-5
Dignam, Mary E. "Distinguished Professional Women." Women of Canada: Their Life and Work Toronto: National Council of Women of Canada, 1900
E.B.S. "The Paintings and Etchings of Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes." Studio 4 (1894): 186-92
Fox, Caroline. Stanhope Forbes and the Newlyn School. Newton Abbott: David and Charles, 1993
Gaze, Delia. Dictionary of Women Artists London, England: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997
Getty Centre Education for the Arts. Women Artists of the Americas. Glenview, Illinois: Distributed by Crystal Productions, 1994
Graves, Algernon. The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and Their Works from its Foundations in 1769 to 1904 London: Henry Graves & Co. and George Bell & Sons, 1905
Helland, Janice. "Forbes, Elizabeth." Dictionary of Women Artists, ed. Delia Gaze London, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997: 539-41
Heller, Jules and Nancy. North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century New York: Garland, 1995
Jacobs, Michael. The Good and Simple Life: Artist Colonies in Europe and America. Oxford: Phaidon, 1985
Johnson, Jane. Works Exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists 1824-1893 and the New English Art Club 1888-1917 Suffolk, England: Antique Collectors' Club, 1975, reprint 1987
Johnston, E. F. B. "Painting and Sculpture in Canada." Canada and Its Provinces Toronto: Glasgow, Brook and Co, 1914
MacDonald, Colin S. The Dictionary of Canadian Artists. (Volumes 1-8 by Colin S. MacDonald, and volume 9 by Anne Newlands and Judith Parker) Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2009
Meynell, Alice. "Newlyn." Art Journal (Apr. 1889): 97-102
Morgan, H. J., ed. Types of Canadian Women and of women who have been connected with Canada Toronto: W. Briggs, 1903
Phillips. "Hide and Seek." Phillips. London: Phillips, 1989
Rezelman, Betsy Cogger. The Newlyn Artists and Their Place in Late-Victorian Art. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University, 1984
Robson, Albert Henry. Canadian Landscape Painters Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1932
Sabin, Arthur K. "The Dry-points of Elizabeth Adela Forbes, Formerly E.A. Armstrong (1859-1912)." Print Collector's Quarterly 9 (1922): 75-100
Skipwith, P. "Artists of the Newlyn School (1880-1900)." Burlington Magazine 121 (Aug. 1979): 543
Waters, Clara Erskine Clement. Women in the Fine Arts. New York: Hacker Art Books, 1974
Waters, Grant M. Dictionary of British Artists Working 1900-1950. Eastbourne: Eastbourne Fine Arts Publications, 1975

Writings by
Forbes, Elizabeth. "An April Holiday." Studio 43.181( Apr. 1908): 191-9
Stanhope Forbes, Elizabeth. "On the Slope of a Southern Hill." Studio 18.79 (Oct. 1899): 25-34

Full text pdfs of exhibition reviews
Ontario Society of Artists Annual Exhibition: (Toronto, March 05, 1910) "Art Exhibition."  Globe and Mail (Toronto).  March 02, 1910.  p.14.   Full-text pdf

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