Collection search - Lowrie Warrener fonds [textual record, graphic material]

Record information – Brief
1
Lowrie Warrener fonds [textual record, graphic material]

Hierarchical level:

Fonds

Date:

1883-1887, 1918-1989.

Reference:

R8638-0-8-E

Type of material:

Textual material, Art, Photographs

Found in:

Archives / Collections and Fonds

Item ID number:

189087

Context of this record:

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Lowrie Warrener fonds
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Record information – Details

Fonds includes:

74 lower level description(s)
View lower level description(s)

Date(s):

1883-1887, 1918-1989.

Place of creation:

No place, unknown, or undetermined

Extent:

16 cm of textual records.
13 drawings 3 pencil.
7 artifacts linoblocks.
63 prints 31 block prints, 16 reproductions.

Language of material:

English

Accession:

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Lowrie Warrener [textual record, graphic material]

Scope and content:

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The textual records in the fonds consist of the following: biographical material on Lowrie Warrener, including his curriculum vitae, two seaman's identity cards from the United States Department of Labor [1918]-1922, and manuscript autobiographical notes; clippings on Warrener and scrapbook pages relating to the Conference of Canadian Artists 1941; correspondence, including letters from Katherine and Carroll Aitkins, Marius Barbeau, Margaret Davis, Ted Drover, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, and the artist and "New Yorker" cartoonist Richard Taylor, among others; ephemera on English and Warrener, manufacturers of artists' paints; exhibition catalogues, including one for the Group of Seven 1928 and a list ca. 1925 of Warrener artworks, including references to sketches, plasters, lino cuts, Antwerp oils, small sketches from France and Belgium, and a mural; documentation on Shawnigan Lake School 1932; theatre scripts and programmes, including one of an Anglican Historical Pageant, Toronto 1928 with cover by Warrener; travel memorabilia and a diary recording an Atlantic passage on a cattle boat in 1924; and results of the Willingdon Arts Competition 1930.

The 1924 diary contains three small pencil sketches.

The textual records also include family papers, comprising a letter 1883 from former prime minister of Canada, Alexander Mackenzie, writing from Venice to G.W. Badgerow, a member of the Ontario legislature, describing his experiences travelling in Italy; and a letter 1887 from Alex Lucas writing from Calgary to his cousin [S.P. Henderson] in Sarnia, referring to the latter's marriage.

The fonds also includes the following graphic material: Christmas cards sent to Warrener and his family from such art colleagues as Bertram Brooker, Charles Comfort, Rody Kenny Courtice, A.Y. Jackson, Yvonne McKague Housser, George Douglas and Kathleen Daly Pepper, Carl Schaefer, and Elizabeth Wyn Wood; finished greeting cards and Christmas cards by Lowrie Warrener; rough sketches by Warrener, including some used for cards and for block prints; four linoblocks and samples of the prints the artist produced from them; and a poster, dating 1928, which the artist designed for the Anglican Church in Toronto.

Provenance:

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Warrener, Lowrie, 1900-1983

Biography/Administrative history:

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Warrener, Lowrie, 1900-1983 : Lowrie Warrener was born in Sarnia in 1900 and attended the Ontario College of Art, 1921-1924, at the same time as Carl Schaefer, studying under Arthur Lismer and Emanuel Hahn. He worked summers as a deck hand on lake boats around Sarnia and worked his way to Europe aboard a cattle boat with fellow art students George Pepper and Walter Baetz. He studied art briefly in Antwerp and in Paris, 1924-25. On his return to Canada, he painted on the French and Pickerel rivers with Schaefer and Pepper, 1926-1927.

Warrener held his first exhibition at the Sarnia Public Library and Art Gallery in 1926 and moved to Toronto that year, renting space in the Studio Building. He and Schaefer exhibited at the Arts and Letters Club in 1926, at Lismer's invitation. He exhibited with the Ontario Society of Artists, 1927, and with the Group of Seven,1928, and worked for a time at the commercial art firm of Sampson-Matthews. He helped Arthur Lismer prepare sets for the Quebec Music festival, 1928, and did others for the Women's Art Association of Canada, an Anglican pageant in Toronto, Hart House, and other Toronto theatre venues, 1929-1930 (including ones for two plays inspired Group of Seven paintings). He went to the U.S. to study puppetry and other theatre with Toronto drama teacher Herman Voaden in 1929, and on his return lectured on set design for the University of Toronto. He accompanied Voaden on another trip to British Columbia in 1930 and collaborated with him on an Expressionist play, "Symphony, a Painter's Play".

Warrener went back to B.C. in 1931 with help from Marius Barbeau and got a job teaching art at Shawnigan Lake School, a boys' school on Vancouver Island. He returned to Toronto in 1935 and went into business manufacturing and selling artists' paints. Throughout the 1930s, he continued to exhibit with the Ontario Society of Artists and at the Art Gallery of Ontario and in Sarnia. In 1939, he exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in Montreal and in 1942 at the National Gallery of Canada and with the Canadian Society of Graphic Art. In 1943, Lowrie Warrener married Rachel Buchan and for the next twenty five years worked for the Eagle Pencil Company, abandoning his career as an artist. Warrener retired in 1968 and died in 1983.

Finding aid:

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Textual records: (Paper) The finding aid provides a file list of the textual records. MSS2271

Textual records: (Electronic) Finding aid. MSS2271
http://data2.archives.ca/pdf/pdf001/p000000788.pdf

Art: (Electronic) Artwork has been catalogued in the Minisis-ICON database under the accession no. 2001-R8638.

Additional information:

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Custodial history:

The records were kept by the artist's widow, Rachel Warrener, and were received in 2001 from their son, John Warrener, and his wife, Elizabeth.

Source:

Private

Related control no.:

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2001-00993-3
Ordering and viewing options

Conditions of access:

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Textual records

[Consultation90 Open]

Volume [R8638] 72--73

[Consultation 90 Open]

Finding aid box [FA 2271] 511

[Consultation 10 Closed]

Graphic (art)

[Consultation90 Open]

Volume [R8638] 75--77

[Consultation 90 Open]

75 Item no. assigned by LAC 1--42; 44; 46; 48; 50; 52--58; 60--66

[Consultation 90 Open]

76 Item no. assigned by LAC 43; 45; 47; 49; 51; 67--71

[Consultation 90 Open]

77 Item no. assigned by LAC 59

[Consultation 90 Open]

Graphic (photo)

[Consultation90 Open]

Volume [R8638] 74

[Consultation 90 Open]

Terms of use:

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Art: Physical access is through an art archivist.

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