Lot 50
WILLIAM ARMSTRONG
Additional Images
Provenance:
Collection of Helen Hope Baynes Rudge, Toronto
Collection of Elizabeth Rudge Tucci, Toronto
Private Collection, U.S.A. (by descent)
Literature:
Henry C. Campbell, Early Days on the Great Lakes: The Art of William Armstrong, McClelland and Stewart Limited, Toronto, Montreal, 1971, page 78.
Note:
Armstrong, whose career was in railway engineering, arrived in Canada at the beginning of a railway building boom in his adopted country. Campbell writes: “Where the railways that William Armstrong helped build left off, the Great Lakes Steamships took over.” While there is no documentation to identify the locale of the scene depicted in this lot, it is interesting to imagine the artist aboard a steamer, such as the one shown here and to think of the ”often perilous voyages farther into the interior” which voyages Campbell asserts were every bit as important as the railway in the opening up of Canada West.