McGill Libraries
McLennan Library Building3459 rue McTavish
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 0C9
Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Cantlie, Hortense Pauline Douglas, 1901-1979
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1901-1979
History
Hortense Douglas Cantlie was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1901. From 1909 to 1918 she attended Miss Edgar and Miss Cramp’s School in Montreal. In 1921 she studied charcoal drawing from casts at the Montreal Art Association and in 1922 took art classes in New York. From 1925 to 1926 she studied at John Hopkins University under Max Brödel, where she obtained a certificate in Art as Applied to Medicine in 1926. From 1924 to 1935 Hortense Cantlie worked as a medical illustrator, principally at the Montreal General Hospital. Copies of her illustrations were used in medical articles and books, including material published by Dr. Wilder Penfield. The most famous illustrations are somatic and motor homunculi. She designed and made a brain model with convolutions represented as babies - the Brain Children - for the dedication plaque of the McConnell Wing at the Montreal Neurological Hospital (1953). After her marriage to Stephen Cantlie in 1935, she did few medical illustrations. Hortense Cantlie died in 1979.