Mary Pratt, 2012 (Collection of The Rooms provincial art gallery, photo by Ned Pratt)
Canada mourns the loss of one of its most beloved artists, Mary Pratt (1935-2018).
She died at her home in St. John’s, Nfld., on Aug. 14, age 83. She had been receiving palliative care. Her illness, as well as debilitating arthritis, effectively deprived her, later in life, of one of her greatest joys, the ability to paint.
Many will remember her as the creator of exquisitely crafted hyper-realist paintings of domesticity, civility and grace. Others will commend her as a champion and inspirational role model for women and expressly for fellow women artists.
Pratt was a fierce advocate for the arts and an instrumental force garnering political support for the creation of The Rooms, the provincial art gallery in St. John’s. She was an engaged activist, serving on many significant public boards, from a government task force on education in Newfoundland and the Fishery Industry Advisory Board to the Cultural Policy Review Committee, the Canada Council and the board of regents of Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.S. She also chaired a committee that led to the formation of the School of Fine Arts at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook, Nfld.
Pratt was justly the recipient of countless honours and distinctions, such as Companion of the Order of Canada, nine honorary degrees, and election to the Royal Canadian Academy. Her work is the subject of many books and her art has been collected by Canada’s most distinguished public museum collections and recognized by many important art museum exhibitions across Canada, notably a retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. I had the pleasure of knowing her, and will remember her as a genuinely lovely human being: caring, gracious and inclusive.
Pratt was born and grew up in Fredericton, N.B., in a stately home on the banks of the Saint John River. Throughout her life, she became accustomed to being in the public eye. Her father, William J. West, was a member of provincial cabinet, serving as Minister of Justice. The West daughters learned to exercise appropriate social decorum.
Art gallery educators everywhere will relish the notion that the emergence of Mary Pratt, the artist, could be linked to the proximity of the West family home, a mere few blocks from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. While elsewhere the art world was enthralled by radical shifts towards abstraction and stylistic innovation, the Beaverbrook was an idiosyncratic, yet stalwart bastion of traditional representational art. On its face, it might appear that the Beaverbrook aesthetic posture fits nicely into the scenario spurring the evolution of Maritime realism and specifically Pratt's career. Yet her move toward art evolved somewhat later.
Her storied artistic life commenced at Mount Allison University. She initially studied toward a medical career. At Mount Allison, she met and married Newfoundland realist painter Christopher Pratt (they separated in 2004) and began the move towards art making. Yet she only completed her Bachelor in Fine Arts in 1961 following the Pratts' return to Newfoundland after a period of residency in Glasgow.
The Pratts raised four children in their rural home at Salmonier and subsequently near St. Mary's Bay, on the southern Avalon Peninsula. This power couple, together with the talents of their children and the extended Pratt clan, form a uniquely powerful artistic dynasty that continues to loom large in the cultural life and history of Newfoundland and Canada.
Mary Pratt's art celebrated images of domestic life. In this respect, her artistic accomplishments speak warmly of her admiration and appreciation of the sensibilities and dedication of her mother, who created a nurturing, embracing family home.
Some may think her art conveys thoughts and experiences commonly shared by all. Perhaps this is true enough. Yet, in fact, her inspiration was drawn explicitly as scenes from her life. She fashioned tableaux chronicling things that delighted, captivated and fascinated her. Yet she also placed in agonizingly searing plain public sight, her struggles to comprehend the pains inflicted by vexing domestic strife.
So, no, at heart, Mary Pratt was not the painter of ordinary, everyday still-life objects (nature morte). Her art pictured a life lived: her own.
A CBC News profile includes images of her work and video interviews.