Helen McNicoll

Born in Toronto and raised in Montreal, Helen McNicoll (1879–1915) achieved a great deal of international success in a brief career that lasted just over a decade. Although deaf from the age of two, McNicoll did not let personal hardship deter her from a career in art.

After training at the Art Association of Montreal, McNicoll moved to London, England, to pursue her passion as she travelled extensively through Europe. McNicoll relied on lip-reading to navigate through her life, and her art took on the unique perspective of an observer who understood isolation. She quickly became renowned overseas and in Canada for her luminous canvases that engage with issues such as femininity and domesticity, rural labour, fashion, and tourism. Elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1913 and the Royal Canadian Academy in 1914, McNicoll died in England in 1915 at the young age of 35.

Helen McNicoll: Life & Work explores the impressive and pioneering career of an artist who, until recently, has been relatively little known. Revered in her own day as technically advanced and "profoundly original," at the time of her death McNicoll had exhibited over seventy works in exhibitions in Canada and England, some of which are published here for the first time.