Nationality Canadian Occupation Painter | Known for Chickens Name Elizabeth Knowles | |
Full Name Elizabeth Annie Beach Born 1866 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Died October 4, 1928, Lancaster, New Hampshire, United States | ||
Elizabeth Annie McGillivray Knowles (1866 – 4 October 1928) was a Canadian landscape painter of the romantic school, known for her paintings of chickens.
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Canada
Elizabeth Annie Beach was born in Ottawa in 1866. She was a niece of the well-known Canadian painter Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith. She was a student of Farquhar McGillivray Knowles, whom she married in 1895 after his first wife had died. Her husband had been born in Syracuse, New York, in 1859 of English parents who moved to Canada when he was an infant. After the marriage the couple made an extended study trip to Europe, then returned to Canada where they found a studio. Their studio in Toronto became a meeting place for artists. In 1908 Elizabeth Knowles was elected an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. She became an executive member of the Heliconian Club.
United States
Elizabeth and her husband moved to New York in 1915. They spent 1916 living on their yacht in New York Harbor, then moved to an apartment in Washington Heights, Manhattan. In 1919 Elizabeth was elected a member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors based in New York. She and her husband continued to exhibit in Canada. She often exhibited at the Royal Canadian Academy shows, at the Spring Exhibitions of the Art Association of Montreal, and in galleries across the USA. She often held exhibitions in the Johnson Art Galleries on St. Catherine Street W. in Montreal, sometimes with her husband.
Elizabeth Knowles became a member of the Pennsylvania Society of Miniature Painters, the Brooklyn Society of Miniature Painters, the Washington Watercolor Club, the American Watercolor Society and the League of American Pen Women. After 1927 Farquhar had a studio in Riverton, New Hampshire. Elizabeth Beach McGillivray Knowles died on 4 October 1928 in Lancaster, New Hampshire.
Work
Elizabeth McGillivray Knowles received much acclaim during her lifetime for her miniatures and garden scenes. Her landscapes marked her as belonging to the romantic school. She favored rural scenes, and was known for her studies of chickens. The National Gallery of Canada holds her Nocturne. The Agnes Etherington Gallery in Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario also holds her work.