Hamilton, Ont. - Newspaper publisher Harry Stevenson Southam (1875-1954) was recognized as one of Canada’s foremost collectors of art in the 1930s and 1940s. His home in Ottawa was filled with modern European and Canadian paintings that were often requested for major exhibitions. As Chairman of the National Gallery of Canada Board of Trustees for almost twenty years, he helped shape the national collection and foster an appreciation of new Canadian art. Southam Collection on view 17 January through 3 May, 2009. Curated by Alicia Boutilier

Southam’s generosity extended across the country during this critical collection-building period, but he gave more to Hamilton, where he grew up, than to any other city. As AGH director at the time T.R. MacDonald stated, Southam’s gifts made clear “not only the extent and importance of his support (given partly, as he said, in order to encourage others), but also what a perceptive and knowledgeable collector he was, for these pictures had been gathered for his own pleasure.”

For the first time in decades, Inspirational  reassembles major works from Southam’s collection, at the core of which were the Canadian paintings, his true passion. The exhibition moves from impressive canvases of the Group of Seven, to the highly charged period of the 1930s, including works by many women artists, such as Emily Carr, Prudence Heward, Pegi Nicol MacLeod, Sarah Robertson, Anne Savage, and Lilias Torrance Newton. It ends with Southam’s later taste for such rising Quebec artists as Louis Muhlstock, Jacques de Tonnancour, and Paul-Émile Borduas. A sample of Southam’s European collection reveals not only how his early aesthetic interests shaped his later Canadian choices, but also how international movements inspired Canadian art.

Founded in 1914, the Art Gallery of Hamilton is Ontario’s third largest public art gallery and owns one of the finest collections of art in Canada, featuring over 9,000 works of art including historical European, historical Canadian and contemporary art. Its recently-renovated and award-winning premises present exhibitions that change three times a year

The Art Gallery of Hamilton is located at 123 King Street West, Hamilton, Ontario.

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