Additional Images

Provenance:

Collection of William Edward Cotton, Charlottetown, PEI;
By descent to the present Private Collection, Halifax, NS

Note:

Renowned portraitist and founding member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Robert Harris was determined to be an artist from a young age. After studying independently in Liverpool in 1867, he set out from his family home in Charlottetown, PEI for Boston to pursue formal instruction at the Lowell Institute in 1873. Work as a cartographer and surveyor supplemented his income from painting portraits, which allowed him to finance his studies. After Boston, Harris departed for Europe, studying first with Alphonse Legros at the Slade School of Art in London, and then with Léon Bonnat at his atelier in Paris, where he would be influenced by the Impressionist style. It was during this period that this self portrait was painted, at the age of 29.

The painting's impeccable provenance has associations with early Canada, and Charlottetown in particular. Harris's brother-in-law, William Lawson Cotton (1848-1928) ran PEI's first daily newspaper, The Examiner, a political voice in the years immediately after confederation. Harris painted portraits of Margaret Ellin Harris and William Lawson Cotton which are now in the permanent collection of the Confederation Centre Art Gallery and Museum in Charlottetown. The self-portrait offered here was acquired by the couple’s son William Edward Cotton and has been passed on by descent to the consignor. We are pleased to offer this work by one of early Canada's premier portrait painters for the first time.

References:
Robert Critchlow Tuck, “COTTON, WILLIAM LAWSON,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, March 27, 2023.