Welcome to The Life and Art of a Country Painter: Anthony Flower (1792-1875), Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB Canada

Anthony Flower (1792-1875) lived and worked in the province of New Brunswick. He was a farmer who was interested in art and painted his whole life until he died. Flower recreated the life that he saw around him in New Brunswick but after his death few people remembered Flower or his art except for his descendents.

We hope this website and the exhibition at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, The Life and Art of a Country Painter: Anthony Flower (1792-1875) from March 19 to September 4, 2006 will help you understand more about the life of a forgotten man and his art, Anthony Flower.

Anthony Flower (1792-1875) lived and worked in the province of New Brunswick for most of his life. He was a farmer who had a lifelong passion for art and who painted until his death at the age of eighty-three. His paintings are about the life that he saw around him in Queens County, New Brunswick, and from the events and scenes described in newspapers of the day. His work opens a window on a time and place now gone and that we do not know a lot about.

Through the exhibition and this website we hope to re-introduce Flower to the public, to showcase his art and to place him in New Brunswick’s art history.

Flower’s work tells us something about the life he and his neighbours were living, as well as about the art being made at the time. For most people in the early nineteenth-century in North America, reading, writing and painting took a back seat to the day-to-day struggle to set up homesteads and provide for families. There were some immigrants from Britain and other parts of Europe who brought with them the ability to talk about and understand art.

And in some cases they had the time and money to practice art themselves.

Anthony Flower came from a family and a segment of London society where artistic accomplishment would have been expected and highly valued.

Anthony Flower did not seem to have great ambitions for his career as an artist. He was a farmer and painting was a pleasurable hobby that gave enjoyment to him, his family and friends. He was an amateur which means that he was never paid for his artwork. His technique and his taste in subject matter were formed as a child in England. As an amateur living far away from professional artists he would have reproduced the art of others. Flower was especially fond of the pictures he saw in the Illustrated London News, an early newspaper, as well as the prints of an artist named William Bartlett.

Anthony Flower's art reflected what he saw around him in New Brunswick and he was among the first artists in this province to do so. Through his images we catch a glimpse of rural Queens County, its landscapes and people. We learn about the inhabitants’ day-to-day lives, their religions, how they dressed, what their interests were, and what was important to them. Flower’s paintings give us important pieces to complete the puzzle that is New Brunswick’s history and artistic tradition.

Laurie Glenn Norris

Manager, Programming and Communications / Exhibition Curator

This project has been made possible in part through a contribution from the Museums Assistance Program, Department of Canadian Heritage, and the Province of New Brunswick.

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