John Lyman

Collections
Selected works from 1900 to 2000

John Lyman
Biddeford (United States), 1886 – Kingsley (Barbados), 1967
Training

First studied in Montréal.
Attended Hotchkiss School in Connecticut for four years. Was assistant to the editor of the school newspaper.
Registered at McGill University in Montréal in 1905.
Went to France in 1907, where he worked in the studio of a landscape painter-portraitist.
Enrolled at the Royal College of Art in London in fall 1907.
Repudiated the English college’s teaching methods and registered at the Académie Julian in Paris.
Enrolled at the Académie Henri Matisse in Paris in 1909

Artistic production

Alongside his artistic career

In 1913, in Montréal, he exhibited canvases that met with hostile criticism. The public was indignant at his avant-garde art and deemed his colours to clash. Discouraged, Lyman left Québec and went to France.
His life was marked by travels around the world.
He settled definitively in Canada in 1931.
In 1939, he founded the Contemporary Art Society (CAS), which played a fundamental role in the history of modern art in Québec.
Became an art professor at McGill University in Montréal in 1948 and, three years later, was appointed director of the Fine Arts Department.

Features

Health reasons prevented him from being accepted into the army during World War I. Lyman went to France, where he and his wife signed up as Red Cross workers. Received the Médaille de la Reconnaissance française.
A friend of Henri Matisse.
A friend of James Wilson Morrice, he published a book on the latter in 1944.
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) made a film about him in 1959.