Laura Muntz Lyall

Laura Adeline Muntz was born at Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England in 1860, but her family emigrated to Canada when she was a child.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=133}}{{cite book|last1=Farr|first1=Dorothy|last2=Luckyj|first2=Natalie|title=From Women's Eyes: Women Painters in Canada|date=1975|publisher=Agnes Etherington Art Centre|location=Kingston|pages=28}} She grew up on a farm in the Muskoka District of Ontario. As a young woman, Muntz's interest in art led to her take lessons in painting from William Charles Forster of Hamilton and to live and work at his school.{{cite book | title=Independent Spirit: Early Canadian Women Artists | publisher=Firefly Books | author=Prakash, A.K. | year=2008 | location=Buffalo, New York | pages=265–268 | isbn=978-1554074174}}

Starting in 1882, she began to take classes at the Ontario School of Art in Toronto where she studied with Lucius Richard O'Brien, and later with George Agnew Reid. She studied briefly at the South Kensington School of Art in 1887, then returned to Canada to continue her studies with Reid. In 1891, she embarked on a seven-year period of study in Paris, attending the renowned Académie Colarossi. Her preferred subject was children.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=19}} From 1893 on, her handling of paint was Impressionist.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=19}}

To stretch her limited financial resources, she gave private English lessons, and shared various apartments in Paris from 1893 to 1897 with another student-teacher at the Académie, the American painter, Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley (1860-1958).{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=19-21}} Hawley likely taught Muntz her watercolour and pastel technique,{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=22}} and they travelled together in 1893 to Rijsoord in the southern Netherlands where they painted.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=22}}

Muntz's work, exhibited at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois{{cite web |last1=Nichols |first1=K. L. |title=Women's Art at the World's Columbian Fair & Exposition, Chicago 1893| url=http://arcadiasystems.org/academia/cassatt9e.html#lyall|access-date=July 24, 2018}} as well as at various French exhibitions such as the Société des Artistes Français,{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=137-140}} resulted in her paintings being reproduced in periodicals such as L'Illustration,{{cite web |title=Christmas issue |url=https://revue.lillustration.com/index.php?subpage=search&q_type=simp&q_search=laura%20muntz&x=8&y=19&q_except=&q_periods=&q_periode=&pid=&np=1 |website=revue.lillustration.com |publisher=L`Illustration |access-date=2021-04-29}} and reviewed in Toronto`s Saturday Night, and in England`s the Studio, and in many other magazines and newspapers which gave her increased prestige and successful sales.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=19 and Chronology}} But, in 1895, while she was still in Paris, the unmarried Muntz was called home from a triumphant year abroad to look after an ailing relative. Upon her return, in 1896, the Académie Colarossi, in recognition of her diligence and talent, made her "massière" or studio head.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=24}}

Muntz decided to return to Canada in 1898 and set up a studio in Toronto to teach and paint. In the decade at the beginning of the new century, she was said to be the artist with the greatest versatility among women painters because she painted such a wide variety of subjects.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=35}} When, in 1906, she moved to Montreal to continue her career at 6 Beaver Hall Square, she reached a sizable new audience that regarded her as the premier Canadian portraitist of children.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=39}}

Her work received recognition both in Canada and beyond. She received a silver medal at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition{{Cite book|title = The Woman as Artist and as Subject in Canadian Painting|last = Gualtieri|first = Julia|publisher = Queen's University|year = 1989|location = Kingston, Ontario|pages = 145–146, 155–161}} and was awarded a bronze medal at the 1904 Canadian exhibition at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. She showed 27 paintings with the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts between 1893 and 1929, and exhibited in yearly exhibitions at many other societies and associations. Her earlier submissions to shows were frequently compared and contrasted with that of her contemporary and friend Florence Carlyle,{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=37-8}} but in time, her work was applauded in its own right, especially for her sympathetic, lucid manner.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=144}} Critics recognized that her work looked created by chance, but was the result of years of observation and work, as Le Canada wrote in 1903.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=148}}

She was elected as an associate member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts{{cite web|title=Members since 1880|url=http://rca-arc.ca/who-we-are/members/members-since-1880/|publisher=Royal Canadian Academy of Arts|access-date=March 8, 2015|archive-date=May 4, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190504000403/https://rca-arc.ca/who-we-are/members/members-since-1880/|url-status=dead}} in 1896, only the eighth woman to receive this honour. Muntz was a member of the Ontario Society of Artists starting in 1891; she was the first woman appointed to its Executive Council in 1899, serving until 1903. In 1909, she was invited to exhibit with the Canadian Art Club: she was the only woman so honoured by this group.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=39}}

Following the death of her sister in 1915, she returned to Toronto and married her brother-in-law Charles W.B. Lyall to care for the children of her sister's marriage (there were 11 of them but only a few remained at home). She then set a studio up in the attic of their home, and started signing her works with her married name. In 1921, she travelled with her husband to Devon, England and there painted what was new scenery for her. Critics praise her handling of light and restrained though rich colour, proof that she could have been a major landscape painter if she chose.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=46}}

In 1930, Muntz was ill and dying of Exophthalmic Goitre brought on partly by overwork and worry about the family responsibilities she had assumed fifteen years earlier.{{sfn|Murray|2012|p=48}} Despite these trying personal circumstances, she continued to paint until her death in 1930.

Both the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario include her work in their holdings.{{cite web |title=Search the Collection |url=http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artist.php?iartistid=3399 |website=gallery.ca |language=en}}

Laura Muntz Lyall is regarded today as an "example of achievement in a male-dominated field and as a champion of womanhood within the confines of an era".{{cite web |last1=Atanassova |first1=Katerina |title=Laura Muntz: A Woman Artist Navigating the Art Scene at the Turn of the Century |url=https://www.gallery.ca/magazine/your-collection/laura-muntz-a-woman-artist-navigating-the-art-scene-at-the-turn-of-the |website=www.gallery.ca |access-date=2021-04-29}} Her work The Watcher was included in 150 years 150 works, an on-line exhibition by Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) as representative of her era.{{cite web |title=150 years 150 works |url=https://150ans150oeuvres.uqam.ca/en/artwork/1894-the-watcher-by-laura-muntz-lyall/#description |website=150ans150oeuvres.uqam.ca |publisher=UQAM |access-date=2021-10-01}} Her painting A Daffodil was featured at the National Gallery of Canada in 2021. Her work was on view in the Gallery's exhibition Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons, which was shown in Ottawa from January to June 2022. In 2025, her Interesting Story was included in Reality & Reverie: Canadian and European Painting Beyond Impressionism, an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, which concerned the ways artists gave form to interior thoughts on the part of their subjects.{{cite web |title=Exhibitions |url=https://ago.ca/exhibitions/reality-reverie-canadian-and-european-painting-beyond-impressionism |website=ago.ca |publisher=Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto |access-date=1 May 2025}}

File:Laura Muntz Lyall - Oriental Poppies.jpg|Oriental Poppies

File:Laura Muntz Lyall - Portrait of a Young Woman.jpg|Portrait of a young woman

File:Laura Muntz-Lyall – Young Girl Holding Daffodils.jpg|Young girl holding daffodils

File:Laura-Muntz-Lyall-The-Little-Red-Hair.jpg|The Little Red Head

File:Trees by the River, 1900, by Laura Muntz-Lyall.jpg|Trees by the river (1900)

File:Laura Muntz Lyall - Interesting Story - Google Art Project.jpg|Interesting Story (1898)

{{reflist}}

• {{cite book |last1=Bruce |first1=Tobi |last2=Cable|first2=Patrick Shaw|title=The French Connection: Canadian Painters at the Paris Salons 1880-1900 |date=2011 |publisher=Art Gallery of Hamilton |location=Hamilton, Ontario|url=https://librarysearch.library.utoronto.ca/discovery/search?query=any,contains,Bruce,%20Tobi;%20Cable,%20Patrick%20Shaw%20(2011).%20The%20French%20Connection.&tab=LibraryCatalog&search_scope=UTL&vid=01UTORONTO_INST:UTORONTO&offset=0 |access-date=2021-04-15}}
• {{Cite book

|title=Laura Muntz Lyall: Impressions of Women and Childhood

|last=Murray

|first=Joan

|author-link=Joan Murray (art historian)

|publisher=Boardwalk Ventures Inc. by McGill Queen's University Press

|year=2012

|isbn=978-0-7735-4098-9

|location=Montreal, Quebec

|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RE_uugAACAAJ

}}

• Prakash, A.K. Impressionism in Canada: A Journey of Rediscovery. Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2015, pp. 418–437. {{ISBN |978-3-89790-427-9}}

{{commons category}}

• [https://archive.today/20130115185131/http://www.myhamilton.ca/articles/laura-muntz-lyall-1860-1930 Laura Muntz Lyall (1860 - 1930)] at [http://www.myhamilton.ca/ myHamilton.ca]

{{Impressionists}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lyall, Laura Muntz}}

Category:1860 births

Category:1930 deaths

Category:20th-century Canadian painters

Category:19th-century Canadian painters

Category:Canadian Impressionist painters

Category:Académie Colarossi alumni

Category:People from Leamington Spa

Category:English emigrants to Canada

Category:People from the District Municipality of Muskoka

Category:Artists from Ontario

Category:Burials at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto

Category:Members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts

Category:Canadian watercolourists

Category:British emigrants to pre-Confederation Ontario

Category:20th-century Canadian women painters

Category:19th-century Canadian women painters