William Blair Bruce

One of the very first North American painters to settle in Giverny, from the 1887 season.

Dates1859 — 1906
NationalityCanadian
DisciplinePainter
Place of birthHamilton, Ontario, Canada

Biography

Born in Hamilton in 1859, he trained in the Parisian academic milieu before abandoning that manner through contact with plein-air landscape painters. “The Phantom Hunter”, painted in 1888, was an immediate success at the Salon and remains his best-known work. In December 1888 he married the Swedish sculptor Carolina Benedicks, and thereafter divided his life between France and Sweden, where he died in 1906. His widow gave twenty-nine of his paintings to the city of Hamilton: that bequest founded the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

Giverny

Back in Paris at the end of 1886, he settled in Giverny with several American artists. He belongs to the small founding group of the 1887 season — with John Leslie Breck, Willard Metcalf, Louis Ritter, Theodore Robinson, Henry Fitch Taylor and Theodore Wendel — the very group with which the colony began. It was through Theodore Robinson that his painting moved towards Impressionism.

Relation with the Hôtel Baudy

The Baudys opened their hotel in June 1887, the very year Bruce settled in the village. No known document, however, lists him among the lodgers.

Principal works