Frances-Anne Johnston

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Frances-Anne Johnston, “A Deux, Chez Moi [Two, At Home],” 1976

oil on canvas, 24” x 30” (collection of Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Owen Sound, Ont.; photo by Craig Boyko; reproduced courtesy the estate)

In the past, the men who controlled the gates to Canada’s art world thought of artist Frances-Anne Johnston in two ways – as the daughter of the Group of Seven’s Franz Johnston or as the wife of the capable but unadventurous artist Franklin Arbuckle.

Arbuckle was more celebrated than his wife in their lifetime, spent mainly in Toronto and Montreal, even though, as he once acknowledged: “She’s a better painter than I am.”

Early in their marriage, which began in 1934, breadwinner Arbuckle would leave home each morning for his studio, where he could paint undisturbed. Johnston would remain at home, minding their two young daughters, turning a kitchen chair into an easel while stealing a few moments to paint. She would have to remove her paints from the table a few times each day so the family could eat. In that era, secondary career status and juggling acts to find space and time to make art were the usual lot of female artists who married and had children. While Johnston did receive some recognition in her lifetime, she was a minor player in the art world and has slipped almost entirely from the public mind.

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“A Family Palette: Frances-Anne Johnston, Franz Johnston and Franklin Arbuckle,” 2022

installation view at the Ottawa Art Gallery showing a photograph of Frances-Anne Johnston (photo by Rémi Thériault)

Now, 35 years after her 1987 death at age 77, she has been given an impressive exhibition at an important public gallery. It comes with a new assessment of her contributions to Canadian art, especially her still-life paintings, which energized and modernized a conservative genre. Vitally, the exhibition posits Johnston as one of the country’s best-ever painters of flowers, interiors and still life.

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Frances-Anne Johnston, “Arrangement in Blue and Green,” no date

oil on canvas board 24” x 18” (collection of Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ont.; photo by Lesli Michaelis; reproduced courtesy the estate)

A Family Palette: Frances-Anne Johnston, Franz Johnston and Franklin Arbuckle is a sprawling exhibition of paintings and personal bric-a-brac lovingly spread across four rooms at the Ottawa Art Gallery until Feb. 5. The show will then travel to two other Ontario venues, the RiverBrink Art Museum in Niagara-on-the-Lake and the Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery in Sarnia.

The exhibition is the brainchild of Rebecca Basciano, a curator at the Ottawa Art Gallery. She first encountered Johnston in 2015 when four of the artist’s works were donated to the gallery. Basciano became intrigued by this woman, so long overshadowed by her father and husband, and started exhaustive research on Johnston’s life and oeuvre. The exhibition, along with a comprehensive catalogue, Frances-Anne Johnston: Art and Life, are the result.

The exhibition includes some paintings by Johnston’s father and husband, but she is clearly the focus of what is billed as “a feminist recovery project.” The evolution of Johnston’s work is dizzying. She progressed from conservative landscapes in the 1930s to later post-Impressionist and Fauvist-inspired flowers and interior scenes, and lastly to Cubist, Picasso-esque still lifes in the 1960s.

Consider Pewter Plate with Apples. Here, Johnston used the multi-point perspective developed by Cézanne and the Cubists. Each object on a table is seen from a different vantage point. In French Door in the Studio, she completely flattens the picture plane. This technique “expresses the movement of light and shadow throughout the day with contrasting bands of colour,” writes Basciano.

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“A Family Palette: Frances-Anne Johnston, Franz Johnston and Franklin Arbuckle,” 2022

installation view at the Ottawa Art Gallery (photo by Rémi Thériault)

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“A Family Palette: Frances-Anne Johnston, Franz Johnston and Franklin Arbuckle,” 2022i

installation view at the Ottawa Art Gallery (photo by Rémi Thériault)

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“A Family Palette: Frances-Anne Johnston, Franz Johnston and Franklin Arbuckle,” 2022i

installation view at the Ottawa Art Gallery (photo by Rémi Thériault)

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“A Family Palette: Frances-Anne Johnston, Franz Johnston and Franklin Arbuckle,” 2022

installation view at the Ottawa Art Gallery (photo by Rémi Thériault)

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A personal favourite is Garden Arabesque, from 1965. You might consider this magical, radiant display of flowers an updated version of The Tangled Garden by the Group of Seven’s J.E.H. MacDonald. Johnston and her father had spent time at MacDonald’s Thornhill, Ont., property, working in the famed garden.

A Family Palette coincides with an exhibition involving dozens of other overlooked women artists, Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment, which continues to circulate through venues across the country. That exhibition, organized by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection near Toronto, includes Bess Housser, the underappreciated artist married to the Group of Seven’s Lawren Harris, and artist Vera Weatherbie, love interest of the Group’s Frederick Varley. Surely, many more exhibitions will come to rescue other female artists from the obscurity imposed by Canada’s male-dominated art history. ■

A Family Palette: Frances-Anne Johnston, Franz Johnston and Franklin Arbuckle at the Ottawa Art Gallery from Sept. 10, 2022, to Feb. 5, 2023.

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