GALERIE ERIC KLINKHOFF

"He belongs to that fine group of Canadian painters: Morrice, Cullen, Gagnon and Jackson who so beautifully interpreted the French Canadian country side". So wrote Robert W. Pilot (1898-1967) about Frederick W. Hutchison in 1949.  Fred Hutchison was greatly admired by his peers and was considered a very good artist by the general public.

Frederick William Hutchison was born in Montreal in 1871. His father, John Henry Hutchison, was a well-respected builder of many fine residences, churches, and commercial structures in that city, and would become one of the founders of Westmount, Quebec.
 

Hutchison studied at the Art Association School of Montreal under William Brymner; at the Chase School in New York City under William Chase, and in Paris at the Académie Julian under Jean-Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant.  He was quite successful while studying in Paris and won several prestigious prizes.

 

Back in Montreal in 1901, he did try to establish himself as an artist for a time, but eventually returned to study art in New York. In 1906 he began teaching at the College of the City of New York, first as a tutor for the art department, then as an instructor of art in 1908.  By 1920 he was Art Supervisor of the Townsend Harris Hall School where he remained until his retirement, in 1939.

 

In 1906, he became a drawing tutor with the College of the City of New York. There followed over thirty years of teaching art with this college all while receiving a number of promotions.

Every summer Frederick Hutchison returned to the family residence in Hudson Heights, where he would spend the first part of the summer painting in and around this small town, and he would then head for Baie St Paul for the remainder of each summer and the early fall.  His interpretation of the scenes and the life in Charlevoix would become his most important legacy.

Frederick W. Hutchison is not a well known artist in the history of Canadian art as he spent most of his time in New York City (from 1903 to 1939), but he did gain some recognition during his lifetime.  He was represented in Montreal by three important commercial art galleries: W. Scott & Sons, the Stevens Art Gallery and Watson Art Galleries.   He had several one-man exhibitions with each of them as well as at The Arts Club and the Art Association of Montreal.  Hutchison received further public recognition with his election to the prestigious National Academy of Design in New York in 1935 and to the Royal Canadian Academy in 1937.  He is represented in the following collections: National Academy of Design (Diploma work - "Mill on the Remy"), NYC; New York Athletic Club, NYC; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; The Art Gallery of Ontario; the Provincial Museum of Quebec; The Engineer's Club, Montreal; the National Gallery of Canada (R.C.A. Diploma Collection); the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, N.B.; the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba; the Mount Royal Club, Montreal; and the  McGill University, Montreal. 

 

Frederick W. Hutchison died in Hudson Heights, Quebec, at the age of 82.