Article

Aaron Allan Edson

Published Online May 22, 2008

Last Edited March 4, 2015

   Aaron Allan Edson, landscape painter (b at Standbridge, Qué 18 Dec 1846; d at Glen-Sutton, Qué 1 May 1888). His first teacher (around 1863) was likely Robert Duncanson, an American artist living in Montréal. He later studied in London, England.
Autumn on the Yamaska River
Allan Edson, 1872, oil on canvas (courtesy Musée du Québec).
Autumn Forest I
Allan Edson, circa 1874, watercolour (courtesy McCord Museum).
Autumn, Mount Orford
Allan Edson, 1872, oil on canvas (courtesy private collection).
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Aaron Allan Edson

Aaron Allan Edson, landscape painter (b at Standbridge, Qué 18 Dec 1846; d at Glen-Sutton, Qué 1 May 1888). His first teacher (around 1863) was likely Robert Duncanson, an American artist living in Montréal. He later studied in London, England. A founding member of the Society of Canadian Artists, he exhibited in their first exhibition (1868). By the 1870s he was considered one of Canada's foremost landscape painters. He lived in Cernay-la-Ville, France, in the early 1880s, becoming a student of Barbizon painter Léon Pelouse, and in London in 1886-87. In 1887 he settled in the Eastern Townships in Québec. His early paintings (eg, Sheep in Landscape, 1869) show a quietude of mood, a strong interest in the effect of light and observation of detail, and warm, rich colour. His later work (The Coming Storm, Lake Memphremagog, 1880) is more dramatic. His best Canadian work synthesizes the influence of current American, British and French painting in a distinctive personal style.