Walter J. Phillips: Manitoba as Muse

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Walter J. Phillips, "Our Street," 1933

colour woodcut on paper, 10.2 x 16.6cm. Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Gift from the Estate of Arnold O. Brigden

Walter J. Phillips lived and worked in Winnipeg, Manitoba from 1913 – 1940. This exhibition celebrates Phillips’ depiction of the province during this period by featuring a selection of his paintings, prints, and drawings referencing Manitoban related subject matter – particularly landscape imagery, and botanical foliage.

Phillips found it easy to transfer his ability to study and render the geographic variation, seasonal diversity, mood, and form of the English landscape to the Canadian prairies. The best sketching ground he wrote, was “wherever I happen to be.” Locale did not matter: “It is light I paint: the sun, and its corollary, colour.” His earliest sketching ground in Manitoba was the Lake of the Woods where he gloried in the “grotesque but graceful curves” of the jack pine, the wide open sky, and the granite shield.

LOCATION: WAG @The Park - Ivan Eyre Gallery • The Pavilion, 3rd floor