Mary Hiester Reid was a prominent figure in the Toronto art scene during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She exhibited widely throughout Canada, and her public and critical acclaim coalesced in her 1922 posthumous retrospective at the Art Gallery of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario)—the first one-woman show held at that institution since its founding in 1900. Her work was revisited by scholars in the late 1990s and featured in the 2000 retrospective exhibition entitled Quiet Harmony: The Art of Mary Hiester Reid, again at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Her artistic legacy continues, with her paintings included in recent exhibitions organized by feminist art historians and curators examining the integration of the arts in Canada in the context of the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic movements at the turn of the twentieth century.
Key Exhibitions
1922
October 6–30, 1922, Memorial Exhibition of Paintings by Mary Hiester Reid, A.R.C.A, O.S.A., Art Gallery of Toronto (now Art Gallery of Ontario).
1975–76
From Women’s Eyes: Women Painters in Canada, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston.
2000–1
Quiet Harmony: The Art of Mary Hiester Reid, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.
2013
Artists, Architects and Artisans: Canadian Art 1890–1918, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
2015–16
The Artist Herself: Self-Portraits by Canadian Historical Women Artists / L’artiste elle-même: autoportraits de femmes artistes au Canada, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, and Art Gallery of Hamilton.
Critical Interpretations
The most thorough and comprehensive study of Mary Hiester Reid’s life and work is the exhibition catalogue for Quiet Harmony: The Art of Mary Hiester Reid, mounted in 2000 at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, written by Brian Foss and Janice Anderson. Typically, and until the 1990s, Hiester Reid’s work was considered in relation to that of her husband, George Agnew Reid (1860–1947). Today her practice is included independently in studies of Canadian women artists, and particularly those who were considered trailblazers in the Canadian art world. An important study of women, art, and professionalism edited by Kristina Huneault and Janice Anderson considers the various ways artists such as Hiester Reid sought to distinguish themselves as professional artists.
Farr, Dorothy, and Natalie Luckyi. From Women’s Eyes: Women Painters in Canada. Exhibition catalogue. Kingston, ON: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 1975.
Foss, Brian, and Janice Anderson. Quiet Harmony: The Art of Mary Hiester Reid. Exhibition catalogue. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2000.
Hill, Charles C., ed. Artists, Architects and Artisans: Canadian Art 1890–1918. Exhibition catalogue. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2013.
Huneault, Kristina. I’m Not Myself at All: Women, Art, and Subjectivity in Canada. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018.
———, and Janice Anderson, eds. Rethinking Professionalism: Women and Art in Canada, 1850–1970. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008.
Miller, Muriel. George Reid: A Biography. Toronto: Summerhill, 1987.
Myzelev, Alla. Architecture, Design and Craft in Toronto, 1900–1940: Creating Modern Living. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2016.
Tippett, Maria. By a Lady: Celebrating Three Centuries of Art by Canadian Women. Toronto: Viking, 1992.
Archives and Other Resources
In the late 1930s Mary Hiester Reid’s husband, artist George Agnew Reid, collected materials such as photographs, notes, drawings, sketches, press clippings, and exhibition catalogues relating to the works of art by the couple and placed them in two scrapbooks. In 1957 Reid’s second wife, Mary Wrinch Reid, donated these scrapbooks to the library of the Art Gallery of Toronto, now the Art Gallery of Ontario. They are now located in the George Agnew Reid Fonds in the collection of the Edward P. Taylor Library & Archives at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
The Canadian Women Artists History Initiative, based in the Department of Art History at Montreal’s Concordia University, has since 2007 maintained an online documentation centre, containing digitized source materials relating to over 750 Canadian women artists born before 1925, including Hiester Reid. This website hosts a database of key artists, along with their biographies and bibliographies, and scanned periodical reviews from each artist’s lifetime and beyond.
Finally, Hiester Reid’s own published accounts of her 1896 travels provide valuable insights into the social mores of her day, her perceptions of art, European galleries, and the importance of travel to her art practice.
Reid, Mary A. [Reid, Mary H.] “From Gibraltar to the Pyrenees.” Massey’s Magazine, May 1896, 297–308.
Reid, Mary H. “From Gibraltar to the Pyrenees (Second paper).” Massey’s Magazine, June 1896, 373–84.
———. “In Northern Spain.” Massey’s Magazine, June 1897, 375–83.
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Acknowledgements