This series includes early art produced by E. Philip Weiss. He was developing his interest in drawing and painting, through participation in the art classes available to him in Toronto. This activity allowed him to move in the unique milieu of Toronto artists in the 1930s and early 1940s, when Toronto was a major centre of activity in Ontario where budding artists were abundant and teachers and art schools were thriving in an era of relative stability.
During these early days he attended Saturday morning classes at the Art Gallery of Toronto under the direction of Arthur Lismer. After school he went to art sessions at the Grange taught by Gordon Webber. On Saturday mornings he attended classes at the Ontario College of Art where he worked under Yvonne McCaig Housser. As an art student at the Central Technical High School he was taught by the likes of Peter Howarth, Carl Schaefer, Charles Goldhammer, Bob Ross, Doris McCarthy and Elizabeth Wyn Wood. Fellow students were Aba Bayefsky, Joe Rosenthal, Bruno Bobak and others. At sixteen he participated in a Studio Group at Hayden Street under the direction of Barker Fairley where he met John Hall, Warren Luckock and Jack Nichols. He graduated from Central Tech in 1940 from the program of Commercial and Fine Art.
Several incidents at this time encouraged his artistic pursuits. He met Stanley Grumbacher who asked him to come and work for him at Simpson's Retail Store, where Weiss bacame a manager of the Art Brush Making Department. A drawing he made when just seventeen titled: "Home Work" was purchased by the Art Gallery of Toronto and the gallery would later give him an honorary life membership. At the age of nineteen just before he left Canada for service overseas in the Canadian Army, he won a prize for his sculpture exhibited at the "Tribute to the People of Leningrad" exhibition sponsored by the Art Gallery of Toronto.
The art in this series includes figure studies, portraits, domestic scenes, self-portraits, abstract studies, commercial design studies, cityscapes, landscapes and outdoor scenes. This was a period when he nurtured his art and had the opportunities to work under talented teachers at famous Toronto schools with fellow students who would become well-known figures in Canadian art. This group of artworks includes identified portraits of people special to the artist, such as his parents, and also includes portraits of fellow artists like: John Hall, Barker Fairley, and Aba Bayefsky.
Photographs are believed to be related to the "Tribute ....." exhibition sculpture, Weiss submitted to the show.
Textual material includes early documents from the Art Gallery of Toronto, the Ontario Society of Artists, Ontario College of Art, Central Technical Hish School, and a newspaper clipping, 1936-1943.
