The Orillia Museum of Art and History (OMAH) has acquired two works from a well-respected local artist.
During a virtual event Thursday evening, OMAH announced it was adding two sketches from Elizabeth Wyn Wood to its collection.
Wyn Wood, who was born in Orillia in 1903 and died in 1966, was best known as a sculptor, but she was also prolific with sketches, some of which inspired her sculptures.
OMAH executive director Ninette Gyorody and art programming co-ordinator Tanya Cunnington had the opportunity to check out the Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment exhibition at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection last year, where some of Wyn Wood’s sketches and sculptures were on display.
They were also looking to enhance OMAH’s collection with work from “a local artist that was underrepresented” there.
After consulting with the museum membership, staff connected with Wyn Wood’s grandchildren with the offer to purchase a sketch. It is an untitled landscape piece completed with litho-crayon on wove paper.
The family then offered to donate a second landscape sketch, titled First Trip, Honey Harbour, also litho-crayon on wove paper.
“I’m not a very emotional person, but I felt very verklempt when I read that email,” Gyorody said.
The late Qennefer Browne, daughter of Wyn Wood and fellow sculptor Emanuel Hahn, was a strong supporter of OMAH, along with husband Robert. Her daughter, Sylvie Browne, was on hand for Thursday’s event to provide a history of her grandmother.
She said she relished the stories her mom shared with her about her grandmother for 56 years.
“To me, Elizabeth Wyn Wood was my granny who I knew as a little girl,” she said.
Wyn Wood was in art school when she met Hahn, who taught modelling and casting.
Hahn was “impressed that she was the first woman he had ever met who always carried a sharp knife.”
After graduating, Wyn Wood attempted to establish herself as a professional artist in Toronto. She wanted to create monuments, but Orillia had already commissioned one of Samuel de Champlain, by Vernon March.
She did go on to secure several commissions, including the Welland-Crowland War Memorial and a monument of John Graves Simcoe.
She was also known for landscape sculptures and would often sketch scenes while camping and canoeing.
Sylvie Browne hopes her grandmother’s sketches will become better known and said her family looks forward to working with OMAH to raise that awareness.
Qennefer Browne had donated some of her mother’s dresses to the museum, but the two sketches are the first of Wyn Wood’s artwork to be included in OMAH’s collection.
Qennefer and Robert Browne’s daughters “are seeing how we see their parents — and now, in turn, their grandparents — and they’re happy to support a small museum with Elizabeth Wyn Wood’s work,” Gyorody said.
“It’s significant,” she said of acquiring the sketches created by “a female that was recognized in the world of not only modern art but modern sculpture. We can have that art and history recognized at the same time.”
The goal is to eventually host an exhibition of Wyn Wood’s work at OMAH. The family has offered to loan more pieces.
“We would definitely take advantage of that. I would love to have an exhibition. I was awestruck by her drawings,” Cunnington said.
