Marmaduke Matthews

Place: Barcheston

Born: 1837

Death: 1913

Biography:

Marmaduke Matthews RCA (29 August 1837 – 24 September 1913) was an English-Canadian painter, born in Barcheston, Warwickshire, England. He studied watercolour painting at Oxford, England before moving to Toronto, Canada in 1860 to embark on a career as a painter of landscapes. He was hired by the Canadian Pacific Railway to paint the Canadian prairies and rocky mountains. He worked for William van Horne, then-president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and made several cross-country trips to Canada's west, including in 1887, 1889 and 1892. He reportedly drew his sketches from the cowcatcher of a locomotive. He is also notable for playing a founding role in the Ontario Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts as a watercolour painter. In Toronto, he is affectionately remembered as the creator of Wychwood Park in 1874 - a plot of land that he once lived on, that became an artists' community and is now one of the higher-income neighbourhoods located northwest of downtown Toronto.