Listening to Art

Download (MP3).

---

Listening to Art, by William Denton.

Volume eleven, number twelve: The Tiff by Florence Carlyle.

Hello, and welcome to Listening to Art. I’m William Denton.

We first heard a work by Florence Carlyle in volume eleven number five: The Studio, from 1903. This painting was made in late 1901 and first shown in early 1902 at the annual exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists. It was an immediate hit. I quote from The Practice of Her Profession: Florence Carlyle, Canadian Painter in the Age of Impressionism by Susan Butlin (p. 118).

In March at the annual meeting the OSA executive council voted to honour Carlyle for The Tiff with the OSA prize of the year. The critic known by the pseudonym “T. Square” observed that the painting attracted “the most attention … [and was] given the place of honor–and deservedly so.” The prize carried with it the sum of $200, undoubtedly a welcome bonus to the perpetually cash-starved artist. Then, the Ontario government bought The Tiff for its collection for the enormous sum of $1,000. The public prestige of the award and sale of this one painting elevated Florence Carlyle to a new level in the Canadian art world. No longer simply a talented and promising newcomer, she now unequivocally enjoyed the stamp of official approval, attaining a legitimacy enjoyed by few Canadian women artists of the time.

In 1904 the painting was loaned to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts show in Montreal, where it was chosen to be one of the works representing Canadian art at the St. Louis World’s Fair that year. At the fair (properly called the Louisiana Purchase Exposition) it was awarded one of the five silver medals won by Canadian artists.

This is a painting, oil on canvas, 134.6 cm wide by 183.8 cm high.

Now let’s listen to The Tiff by Florence Carlyle, recorded at the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, 28 October 2022.

That was The Tiff by Florence Carlyle. I hope you enjoyed listening to it as much as I did.

For more information and links to things I’ve mentioned, please visit listeningtoart.org.

Listening to Art is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Bibliography

All web sites accessed as of date of publication.