Canada is a British Dominion and its borders bordering the United States of America extend for over three thousand miles: it is therefore not possible to think of its art as completely independent of English tradition and American influence.
According to Harvardshoes, the first churches founded by the French missionaries gave birth to an indigenous art of very varied color with the wood carvings of the altars and their interior decorations. But the sculpture as a whole was not remarkable in Canada before the end of the century. XVIII. The first really interesting sculptor was the French-Canadian Philippe Hébert, author of the bronze statue of Champlain on the Dufferin Terrace of the city of Quebec and of the statue of Maisonneuve in the fountain of the parade ground in Montreal. Another historical monument, the largest and most important that has been carried out so far by a Canadian, is the one erected by WS Allward, a member of the Royal Canadian Academy, in Vimy (France) in memory of the Canadian soldiers who fell in the great battle that was fought in that locality. By the same sculptor is the monument to Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, in Brantford in Canada, and the one in memory of the Canadian soldiers who died in the South African war, in the city of Toronto. Other Canadian sculptors are: A. Laliberté, R. Tait Mackenzie, George W. Hill, Hamilton P. McCarthy, A. Phimister Proctor, Katherine E. Wallis, A. Suzor-Coté, Emmanuel Hahn, Frances Loring, Florence Wyle, Elizabet Wyn Wood, Alfred Howell, Lionel Fosbery. A. Phimister Proctor is one of Canada’s most distinguished sculptors, and some of his works can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Art Gallery of Toronto, the National Gallery of Canada and several public parks in New York. He also modeled the two large lions in front of the Fifth Avenue public library in the latter city, and the colossal sleeping lions of the McKinley Memorial in the city of Buffalo. GW Hill bronze statues, mostly historical, are found in Montreal and at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh; and also of McCarthy there are bronze statues in Ottawa, in St. John in New Brunswick and in Annapolis in Nova Scotia. After the Great War, many patriotic monuments were erected in cities and even villages in Canada, but most are of little value.
Among the large public art galleries, the only noteworthy ones are: the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Art Gallery in Toronto and that of Montreal. The former possesses the works of all the oldest painters in Canada, most contemporary Canadians, all the award-winning paintings of members of the Royal Canadian Academy, and a fine collection of old masters and modern painters. The Montreal Art Gallery features a number of beautiful works by old masters and later school sages, but those by Canadian artists are scarce. Instead, these artists are best represented in the Art Gallery in Toronto, where there is a small exhibition of art from the 18th and 19th centuries. For some time Montreal was regarded as the second largest city on the American continent for private collections of paintings. There were those of Lord Strathcona, Lord Mountstephen, Sir George Drummond, Sir William Van Horne, and Greenshields; but most of these collections have gone missing. In the city of Toronto, beautiful works of famous painters such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Romney, Raeburn, Gainsborough and Reynolds can be seen in private homes, as well as renowned French and Dutch modern painters. The capital Ottawa, which in this respect is much less important than the two cities mentioned, has some private collections, especially contemporary art.
