Collection consists of paintings, prints, and drawings which have as their major subjects the lives of French Canadian habitants, of Indians, and of sleighing scenes and other winter activities in and around Quebec and Montréal in the mid-nineteenth century. Cornelius Krieghoff (1815-1872) was the best-known artist in Montréal in the late 1840s, and Quebec in the 1850s and 1860s.
Krieghoff, Cornelius, 1815-1872 : Cornelius David Krieghoff was born in Amsterdam, Holland, in June 1815. His family moved to Dusseldorf while he was still young, where he may have studied art at the academy there. Little is known of his early life, but he emigrated to the United States in 1837 with his younger brother. That same year he joined the American Army. In 1840, he moved to Montréal, where he settled in Boucherville, along with his French-Canadian wife. In 1842-3, he moved briefly to Rochester, New York, and in 1844, he went to Paris to continue his artistic studies. Upon his return to Canada in 1845, he worked for a period in Toronto, before returning to Longeuil in 1846. He was one of the founders of an artist's society in Montréal in 1847, where he remained until 1853, when he moved to Québec City. Here he built himself a career primarily as a genre painter. In 1863, he returned to Europe, where he remained several years; in 1867, he returned to North America, and settled in Chicago with his daughter. In 1871, he returned briefly to Quebec but he died in Chicago the following year. He was a highly successful painter, and also published a number of prints after his paintings, which were produced in Germany, the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. La Peinture au Quebec 1820-1850 (Musee du Quebec, 1991)
