Frances-Anne Johnston

Frances-Anne Johnston

  • Biography

    Frances-Anne Johnston (1910-1987)

    From Galleries West, written by Paul Gessell, https://www.gallerieswest.ca/magazine/stories/frances-anne-johnston/:

    "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.

    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.

    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.

    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."


    "Frances-Anne Johnston: Art and Life" by Rebecca Bastiano and Catherine Mastin, PhD

    "This publication is the first monograph on artist Frances-Anne Johnston and will serve to situate her career within 20th century Canadian art history and feminist theoretical contexts. It features beautiful colour illustrations and critical essays by curator Rebecca Basciano and scholar Catharine Mastin, PhD, and is a companion to the exhibition A Family Palette, which will be on view at the Ottawa Art Gallery in September 2022, followed by an Ontario tour through 2024. This project has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, and the Ontario Society of Artists.

    Through primary research, curator Rebecca Basciano interprets Johnston's mastery of technique and subject matter, while demonstrating the artist's unique aesthetic and skill through an exploration of several important artworks. Similarly, art historian and scholar Catharine Mastin, in her ongoing investigation of Canadian "artist couples," exposes the challenges faced by women artists - including Johnston - who often juggled their own artistic practices with the demands of child-rearing and supporting their husbands' careers.

    Finally, as a critical aspect of this reclamation work, Frances-Anne Johnston's own voice is revealed in a republished article that she wrote in 1955 for Mayfair . Together, these insightful essays constitute a feminist recovery project by not only situating Johnston among her male contemporaries, but also by creating new space for the appreciation and validation of a practice that was shaped by domestic realities, including motherhood."

  • Exhibitions

    September 10, 2022 – February 5, 2023, Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa.
    "A Family Palette: Frances-Anne Johnston, Franz Johnston and Franklin Arbuckle," Curator: Rebecca Basciano
    Touring: April 21 – August 19, 2023, RiverBrink Art Museum, Niagara-on-the-Lake; October 6, 2023 – March 17, 2024, Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery, Sarnia.

Showing the single artwork

Frances-Anne Johnston

Old House – New Dundee, 20th C.
34 x 43 cm Framed: 49 x 59 x 2 cm Oil on Board $1,350.00