Comfort, Charles Fraser, 1900-1994 : Charles Comfort, artist, was born in Edinburgh and came to Canada with his parents in 1912. They settled in Winnipeg, where Comfort apprenticed with the commercial art firm of Brigden's Ltd. in 1914. He began studying at the Winnipeg School of Art in 1916 and then went to New York to study at the Art Students' League 1922-1923. His first exhibition was at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1922. After marrying Louise Chase in Winnipeg in 1924, Comfort moved with his wife to Toronto in 1925, where he joined Brigden's Toronto office. In 1930 he became art director of Rapid Grip and Batten, but left in 1931 to open his own commercial art studio with fellow artists Will Ogilvie and Harold Ayres. In 1932 he was commissioned to do a mural for the North American Life Building in Toronto, followed in 1937 by the mural for the Canadian pavilion at the Paris Exposition in 1937 and another for Vancouver's Hotel Vancouver in 1938. He was responsible for the stone decorations for the Montreal train station, 1941-1942.
During this time Comfort was also painting and went on sketching trips to Northern Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes, exhibiting his work in Toronto with the Ontario Society of Artists to which he was elected in 1928. He was active in many artists organizations, including the Canadian Society of Graphic Art, which he joined in 1925 (and for which he acted as secretary), and the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour, which he joined in 1926 (and of which he was vice-president 1930-1931). He was a founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters in 1933 (and its secretary 1937-1939 and president 1950). He was elected an associate member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1936, an academician in 1942, and served as its president 1957-1960. He was a member of the Federation of Canadian Artists (1942). In 1943 he designed the reverse of the Canadian Volunteer Services Medal; he also designed the medal of the Art Directors' Club.
Comfort began his teaching career in 1935 at the Ontario College of Art, where he directed the department of mural painting until 1938 when he joined the faculty of the University of Toronto's Fine Art Department as a lecturer. He continued to teach at the Ontario College of Art and also taught at the Banff School of Fine Art. He became an associate professor in the University of Toronto's Department of Art and Archaeology in 1940 and taught there for twenty years, until 1960. Among his students were Jean Sutherland Boggs, Doris Shadbolt, William Withrow, Roloff Beny and Russell Harper.
During the Second World War, Comfort served with the Canadian Army as a senior war artist, 1943-1946. He published an account of his experiences, Artist at War, in 1956. He returned to Europe in 1955 on a Royal Society Fellowship to study Netherlandish painting. In 1960, Comfort was appointed Director of the National Gallery of Canada (the first artist to hold that position) and he moved to Hull, Quebec. He retired from the Gallery in 1965 and resumed his painting career. He died July 5 at Ottawa.
Comfort is known as a muralist, photographer, and portraitist. Later murals included ones for the Veterans Affairs Building, Ottawa (1955) and the National Library and Archives Building, Ottawa (1967), as well as the Academy of Medicine, Toronto (1968). His portraits include many of such prominent subjects as governor-generals (Athlone, Vanier and Michener), provincial premiers (Manitoba's Roblin and Weir), lieutenant-governors (B.C.'s Hamber, Ontario's Macdonald), and Dr. Charles Best and George Ignatieff. He is also well-known for his landscapes in both oil and watercolour, as well as for his war art. Comfort's work is held in major museums across Canada, including the National Gallery, the War Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Comfort has received honorary degrees from Mount Allison and the Royal Military College of Canada. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London, England, 1957. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1972.
