McGill Libraries
McLennan Library Building3459 rue McTavish
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 0C9
Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Russell, George Horne, 1861-1933
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
1861-1933
History
George Horne Russell was born on April 18, 1861, in Banff, Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
He was a Scottish-Canadian painter who studied at the Aberdeen School of Art and the South Kensington School of Art. In 1889, he moved to Canada settling in Montreal, Quebec. While he came to be celebrated for his portraits (Sir Alexander Lacoste, Dr. Barbour, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and Lord Strathcona), Russell’s profound love for natural beauty, and particularly the sea motivated him to paint pastoral scenes and seascapes. Painting portraits gave him the financial freedom to indulge his fondness for painting nature without concern for a future buyer. He enjoyed spending summers at his country house at St. Andrews by the Sea in New Brunswick. In 1909, the Grand Trunk Railway made him an offer to paint the Rockies and the Skeena River district of British Columbia, resulting in some large and impressive canvases of these mountains. From 1922 to 1926, he was the president of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
In 1889, he married Elizabeth Morrison, in Boston, Massachusetts. He died on June 25, 1933, in St. Stephen, New Brunswick.