Philip Surrey

Early Life and Education

Philip Henry Eugene de Warenne de Guerin Surrey was born on October 8, 1910, in Calgary, Alberta, the son of adventurer Harry Philip Surrey and Kate de Guerin, a relative of portraitist Richard Crosse. As a young child Surrey was taught to read, write and sketch by his mother and moved frequently. He lived at Raffles Hotel in Singapore and the Grand Hotel in Calcutta, and attended St Paul's School in Darjeeling. By 1919 when he was sent to a preparatory school in England, he had lived in Australia, France, Switzerland, British Columbia, and California. According to biographer T.F. Rigelhof, "at school he was known as the Surrey boy, the stranger, the outsider and lonely without friends his age, but exotic – he had ridden camels and elephants, walked about with a pet orangutang, and conversed with snake-charmers." After his father requested a divorce, his mother took Surrey to Canada in April 1921. His mother found work as a teacher north of Winnipeg and Surrey attended school there until age 14 when he moved to Winnipeg to complete high school. He graduated from Kelvin High School and was hired at age 16 as an apprentice at the commercial art firm Brigdens Limited. On his free time he joined co-workers Bill Winter and Henry Simpkins on sketch outings and discovered the work of Robert Henri and the Ashcan School. At this time, he also attended evening classes given by Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald and George Overton at the Winnipeg School of Art.

In May 1927, Surrey began to paint urban scenes in earnest, completing 300 mixed-media sketches within a year. He continued to work at Brigdens, illustrating women’s wear for the 1928 and 1929 Eaton's Western Catalogue. In the autumn of 1929, Surrey was hired as a commercial artist by Cleland-Kent Engraving and moved to Vancouver. In the evening he studied under Group of Seven painter Frederick Varley and Painters Eleven artist Jock Macdonald at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (now Emily Carr University of Art and Design). During 1932 and 1933 Surrey's work was exhibited in the Canadian Show held at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. In 1936, inspired by the work of John Sloan and the Socialist Party of America, Surrey left Vancouver for Greenwich Village. He attended the Art Students League of New York where he studied for three months under Alexander Abels and Frank DuMond. In March 1937 Surrey moved to Montreal and, in June, was joined by Varley, by then a close friend.

Career

In Montreal Surrey freelanced as a commercial artist and re-established his friendship with Brigden co-worker Fritz Brandtner. Before long he had established relationships with John Goodwin Lyman, Stanley Cosgrove, Goodridge Roberts, Jean Paul Lemieux, Jean Palardy, Jori Smith, and Jeanne Rhéaume, and in 1938 became a founding member of the Eastern Group of Painters. In March 1939 he was hired to assist art director Hazen Sise of the Montreal Standard newspaper and became photo editor shortly thereafter when Sise left to join Dr. Norman Bethune in Spain. Introduced to Margaret Day, Bethune's former lover, Surrey married Day in June 1939. He also exhibited at the New York World's Fair and, with André Biéler, Henri Masson and Louis Muhlstock at the Art Gallery of Toronto (now Art Gallery of Ontario) in 1939. Later that year, Surrey, along with Lyman, Brandtner, Roberts, Muhlstock, Paul-Émile Borduas, Prudence Heward, and Marian Scott, became a founding member of the Contemporary Arts Society and participated in their annual group exhibitions. His work was also included in the international exhibitions Contemporary Painting in Canada at Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover MA) in 1942, and Canadian Art 1760 - 1943 at the Yale University Art Gallery in 1944. During the war, Surrey was turned down as a war artist due to the important nature of his work at the Montreal Standard. In 1944 Surrey and reporter Mavis Gallant selected and captioned some of the first Holocaust photographs published in North America.

In 1945 Surrey's first solo exhibition was held at L'Art Français (now Valentin Gallery). He also exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts with John Lyman, Eric Goldberg and Goodridge Roberts in 1949, with Louise Gadbois in 1949, and with York Wilson in 1955. A solo exhibition of his work was held at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in 1960. Surrey continued as a photo and features editor at the Montreal Standard and then its successor Weekend magazine until June 23, 1964, when publisher John McConnell appointed him associate editor so that he could paint full-time. In 1965 and 1967 Surrey's solo shows at Galerie Martin sold out and, by 1970, he was represented by Galerie Gilles Corbeil. Solo exhibitions of his work were also held at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal in 1971 and at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris in 1972. His work was included in the group exhibitions Canadian Painting of the Thirties at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1967, Panorama of Painting in Quebec: 1940 - 1955 in 1967 and The Arts of Quebec in 1974 at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, as well as Canadian Painting in the Thirties at the National Gallery of Canada in 1975. From 1965 to 1975 Surrey also taught drawing at Concordia University (Montreal QC). After his retirement from Weekendin 1975, he continued to paint full-time and exhibited in the important group shows Three Generations of Quebec Painting at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal in 1976, Major Movements in Twentieth Century Canadian Art at the Edmonton Art Gallery (now Art Gallery of Alberta] in 1978, The Contemporary Arts Society: 1939 - 1948 at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal in 1981, Modern Art in Quebec 1916 - 1946 at the National Gallery of Canada in 1982, as well as Vancouver Art and Artists: 1931 - 1983 at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1983.

In 1989 Surrey's vision declined and he stopped painting. He died in Montreal on April 24, 1990. After his death, his work continued to be exhibited in the group shows Brigdens of Winnipeg at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 2001, Defining the Portrait in 2001 and This is Montreal! in 2008 at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery in Montreal. In 2004 the Philip Surrey Retrospective Exhibition was held at Galerie Walter Klinkhoff in Montreal. In 2015 biographer T.F. Rigelhof initiated the online newsletter The Artist in the City Project and the Philip Surrey website.

Recognition and Contribution

Recognized as the "leading exponent of urban landscape painting in Canada", Surrey's Order of Canada citation read: "His Montreal street scenes convey an emotive vision of the modern city, with its anonymous crowds and individual solitudes. His expressive style and a poetic humanitarianism constitute a unique contribution to Canadian art." In his anthology of Canadian painters from 1930-1970, Paul Duval wrote: "No other Canadian artist has painted life in the city with such constancy and authority... with candidness and a highly original outlook." Surrey's early work is compared to Frederick Varley's. Art reviewer Henry Lehmann described his work in the 1950s as: "paradoxical, mystifying mix of extreme calm and chilling menace", and compared Surrey to "Giorgio de Chirico, the supreme poet of the long evening shadow", and to Edward Hopper. Biographer T.F. Rigelhof also compared Surrey to Hopper but noted that: "Surrey is rarely as bleak and never as nostalgic nor as repressed." Rigelhof likened Surrey's subjects to dancers and noted: "a mysterious forcefulness that releases the dancers and their viewers into belonging to something greater than our individuated selves." Reviewer Guy Viau compared Surrey to a theatre director: "He studies their goings and comings... as they pass and meet. But not with a judging eye. An eye that feels at one with them. A fraternal eye." Surrey himself wrote: "The only effective outlet for all deeper feelings and thoughts is art."

Collections

Surrey's work has been collected extensively by the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa ON), Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Ottawa Art Gallery (Firestone Art Collection), and Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery (Concordia University, Montreal]]. His work is also found in the collections of the Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton AL), Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto ON), Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax NS), Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Fredericton NB), Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Museum London (London ON), Winnipeg Art Gallery (Manitoba), Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Vancouver Art Gallery, Musée d'art de Joliette, Sherbrooke Museum of Fine Arts, Owens Art Gallery (Mount Allison University, Sackville NB), and at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Queen's University, Kingston ON). Many of his papers are stored at Library and Archives Canada (Ottawa ON).