Mary Riter Hamilton

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Mary Riter Hamilton, “Trenches on the Somme,” 1919

oil on commercial board (Library and Archives Canada, Mary Riter Hamilton collection, e011202180)

A century ago, artist Mary Riter Hamilton landed in France amid the desolation and ghosts of Vimy Ridge, the First World War battlefield where more than 3,500 Canadian soldiers were killed and some 7,000 injured.

“It is fortunate that I arrived before it was too late to get a real impression,” Riter said in an interview at the time with the McClure Newspaper Syndicate. “The first day I went over Vimy, snow and sleet were falling, and I was able to realize what the soldiers had suffered.

“If as you and others tell me, there is something of the suffering and heroism of the war in my pictures it is because at that moment the spirit of those who fought and died seemed to linger in the air. Every splintered tree and scarred clod spoke of their sacrifice.”

Hamilton, a Winnipeg artist who had recently moved to Vancouver, arrived in Vimy in 1919, one year after the First World War had ended and two years after the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

Living in unheated tents and military huts, she spent three years sketching scenes at famous battlefields in France and Belgium – “places watered with the best blood of Canada.”

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Mary Riter Hamilton, “Interior of a Pillbox, Flanders,” 1920

oil on cardboard laid down onto cardboard (Library and Archives Canada, Mary Riter Hamilton collection, e011202181)

Hamilton had wanted to paint combat scenes during the war – a far cry from her most celebrated practice at the time, painting china. But women artists were not allowed at the front during the war. So she convinced the Amputation Club of British Columbia, a forerunner of the War Amps, to commission her to paint scenes of battlefields immediately after the Armistice.

Fifteen of those paintings are in Resilience – The Battlefield Art of Mary Riter Hamilton, 1919-1922, on view at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa from Sept. 20 to March 31. The paintings depict military graveyards and the devastation of French and Belgian towns. 

But the show, timed to mark the 100th anniversary of the War Amps, also includes signs of resilience and reconstruction, like the soldiers who continued with their lives despite the loss of limbs. The museum chose Trenches on the Somme as the signature work. It shows scarlet poppies blooming in a scarred landscape.

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Mary Riter Hamilton, “First Boat to Arrive at Arras After the Armistice,” 1920

oil over charcoal on paper (Library and Archives Canada, Mary Riter Hamilton collection, e011201069)

Throughout Hamilton’s three years in the battlefields, she faced extreme hardship and poverty. She financed her own living expenses and artist materials, often going without food. In some places, her only companions were the Chinese workers brought to France to clear debris and bury the rotting corpses. She then lived in Paris for another three years, her physical and mental health deteriorating.

Hamilton returned to Canada in 1925 and struggled with ill health and poverty for the rest of her life. She died in 1954 at age 85 at a psychiatric hospital in British Columbia.

“She was a real pioneer,” says Mélanie Morin-Pelletier, the war museum historian who organized the exhibition. “I think she deserves more attention.”

Hamilton’s paintings were not always praised in Canada. The National Gallery of Canada declined to purchase her work and, to this day, owns not one. In the end, Hamilton donated 227 paintings, charcoals and pastels to what is now Library and Archives Canada.

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Mary Riter Hamilton, “Among the Ruins, Arras,” 1919

oil on plywood (Library and Archives Canada, Mary Riter Hamilton collection, e011201066)

Hamilton is remembered as a brave and daring woman who tackled an ambitious project at a time when women were supposed to be content keeping house. But was she a great artist?

Laura Brandon, a former art curator at the war museum, says Hamilton's paintings are not as good as those of a notable war artist of the same era.

“Although her life is compelling and tragic, I have always found her war work falls short of that of an artist like David Milne, painting the same subject at around about the same time,” says Brandon.

“At the end of the day, I have always wondered how much our knowledge of the challenging circumstances of her life, particularly in wartime, and the powerful subject matter she was painting post-war, have allowed us to avoid a perhaps necessary assessment of her artworks' quality.” ■

Resilience – The Battlefield Art of Mary Riter Hamilton, 1919-1922, is on view at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa from Sept. 20, 2018 to March 31, 2019.