Winnipeg: Main Street and Portage Avenue.

A prolific artist until his death at the age of 95, Thomas Mower Martin would be heralded as the ‘Dean of Canadian Painters’ and ”The Father of Canadian Art’. Born in England, Mower Martin was destined for a military career. However after attending several Royal Academy exhibitions he began studying at a number of artistic institutions. In 1862, he bought a farm from a newspaper advertisement and emigrated to Canada with his wife. The farmland was of poor quality and the lifestyle meagre but eventually Mower Martin began painting full time having acquired commissions in Canada and the United States. In 1887 under the sponsorship of the Canadian Pacific Railway he made his first trip to Western Canada, returning every year for a decade and becoming one of the group of artists known as The Railway Painters.

Mower Martin was a founding member of the Ontario Society of Artists, The Royal Canadian Academy and a director of the Ontario Government Art school. He travelled extensively throughout the country and published his major compilation Canada in 1907 with text by Wilfred Campbell. His work was a mixture of realism and naturalism, capturing the extraordinary diversity and vastness of the Canadian landscape as it entered the 20th century.