Forgotten Canadian War Artist: Mary Riter Hamilton

Gun Emplacements, Farbus Wood, Vimy Ridge

Mary Riter Hamilton was a Canadian painter, etcher, drawing artist, textile artist, and ceramics artist who spent much of her career painting abroad. She produced the largest known collection of First World War art—over 300 works.  

Mary Riter Hamilton (1867–1954) About 1912

"I came out because I felt I must come, and if I did not come at once it would be too late."

So wrote Mary Riter Hamilton in 1922. The Canadian artist had just completed a two-and-a-half-year solo expedition to Europe's postwar battlefields. In that time, she created more than 300 paintings and drawings, the largest known collection of First World War art.

She embarked on this artistic and historic mission in order to bear witness, to ensure that future generations would remember the devastation and the overwhelming loss caused by the Great War.

Memorial for the Second Canadian Division in
a Mine Crater near Neuville St. Vaast

The Artist Working at Ypres in 1919

When the First World War ended, the Amputation Club of British Columbia—the predecessor to the War Amps of Canada—commissioned Hamilton to portray the postwar battlefields for its magazine, The Gold Stripe. She set sail for France and Belgium at the very moment when most were leaving the former battlefields for home.

In late April 1919, Riter Hamilton stepped foot on Vimy Ridge for the first time. 

Trenches on the Somme

The Sadness of the Somme 

By 1921, more than two years after she arrived on the battlefields, Riter Hamilton had reached a breaking point. She was physically and emotionally depleted. She suffered from rheumatism and mental anguish and was poor. She had also become silent—her letters to friends and family back home had come to a full stop.  

"I fear I must give up for a time," Riter Hamilton wrote that year, "my heart has given out of air." 

In 1923, Hamilton suffered a nervous breakdown. She struggled with deep fear and paranoia and was consumed with worry about the fate of her paintings. She was determined to bring them home to Canada, yet didn't have the funds to do so. With money earned making hand-painted women's scarves, Hamilton at last managed to return to Canada in 1925 and began the search for an institutional home for her battlefield works. The next year, she donated the collection to the Public Archives of Canada in Ottawa, now Library and Archives Canada, where they remain to this day. 

 Lens-Arras Road

Sources: The Conversation, 8 November 2020; CBC Website, 11 November 2021; Library and Archives Canada