Yvonne McKague Housser, 1897 – 1996
An award-winning student and lifelong learner, Canadian artist Yvonne McKague Housser attended the Ontario College of Art during World War I, studying under William Cruikshank, J. W. Beatty and Robert Holmes. Over the years, she took further studies abroad: in Paris at the Académie Colarossi and at the Académie Ranson; at the University of Vienna, briefly under Franz Cižek, an expert in art education; in Taos, New Mexico; and in Provincetown, Massachusetts with famous abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann.
Housser made numerous landscape sketching trips throughout her career, traveling to the Rockies, Quebec, Northern Ontario, Mexico and the Caribbean. Her early works show an affinity for the Group of Seven, richly-coloured and slightly skewed or bent, as if the world is bending to her focus. ‘Evening, Nipigon River’ is a high point in her career. Its mature composition demonstrates the artist’s increasingly personal approach to form and colour.