She Is One of the Best: A Researcher's Notes on the Life and Times of Canadian Artist Florence McGil

Florence Helena McGillivray, 1864-1938, was an extremely talented and prolific Canadian artist, and an accomplished educator. She was one of the most well traveled female artists in Canada during the late 19th and early 20th century. Florence's skills as an artist were varied and effective. She worked confidently in many styles and media. The influence of Post Impressionism can be seen in her work, but she was a free spirit, incorporating many different techniques and never attaching herself to any one particular movement.

Florence's entrepreneurial and networking skills enabled her to engage many Canadian and international artists for education and mentorship. Well-respected artists including Lucius O'Brien, J.W.L. Forster and F.M. Bell-Smith were among her mentors. Women such as Mary E. Dignam, Laura Muntz-Lyall and Marion Long influenced her work. In Paris she studied with Simon and Menard and was affected by the works of Henri Matisse, Frederic Fiebig and expat Canadian J.W. Morrice.

Florence was raised in Whitby Ontario with her thirteen siblings, within a successful and prosperous pioneer family of Scottish decent. She taught art at Pickering College and Ontario Ladies College early in her career before she dedicated herself to her own artistic endeavours. Florence mentored many young artists and offered advice and encouragement to the great Canadian painter Tom Thomson. Her paintings would have an effect on members of the Group of Seven and the development of the Canadian Modernist Movement.

In her Time Florence was accepted as an important artist and her works were shown nationally and internationally. she was a member of numerous art associations including Ontario Society of Artists, Royal Canadian Academy, Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour, Women's Art Association of Canada, Heliconian Club, New York Society of Women Painters and Sculptors and the international Artists Union. She traveled Canada, United States, Europe and the Caribbean in search of her landscapes.

In this biography readers will discover the life and times and artistic accomplishments of this great Canadian artist to establish for themselves her place in Canadian art history.