Artist Roland Gissing
Title Storm Over Minnewanka
Media oil on canvas
Dated
1953
Size 27 x 35 in. / 68.6 x 88.9 cm.
Frame Size 36.25 x 44.5 x 2 in.
Notes
signed lower right; signed, titled and dated on artist's label verso; framed
Provenance
private collection, British Columbia
Biographical Information
Roland Gissing ~ [1895-1967] Canadian ASA
Gissing was born in Worcester, England in 1895. Due to his father’s career as a writer, the family consistently moved around England and Scotland. Gissing’s only formal art training was art lessons at George Watson’s College for Boys in Edinburgh. In 1913, at the age of eighteen, Gissing moved to Alberta to work as a ranch hand. Searching for a traditional cowboy lifestyle that he didn’t find in Calgary, he rode a horse down into the desert of Nevada. He would commonly sketch action scenes and live figures for those he met while traveling. By 1923, he had returned to Alberta and decided to try painting for a living. Without any formal training he learned and continually improved by observing the nature around him, taking notes, and reading books on technical skills. His earliest works were watercolours and pastels, but by the 1930s he was producing mostly oil paintings. His most popular subjects were of the Albertan foothills and the mountain landscape. A devastating fire in 1944 resulted in the loss of fifty of his paintings, his model trains, and his book collection. While the loss of his home was very difficult for Gissing, the demand for his paintings only grew. In Calgary in the 1950’s he was outselling painters like A.Y. Jackson and Maxwell Bates. In 1957, Gissing met Ester Glockzin, a widowed schoolteacher. This close relationship improved his spirits and he began painting with a ‘renewed zest and buoyancy of spirit’. Gissing passed away in 1967 and is widely remembered as Alberta’s best known landscape painter.
for biographical information and examples of work see artist's website at www.rolandgissing.com
see Roland Gissing, The People's Painter, by M.Foran, UofC Press, 1988
biography and other examples in
Dict. Of Canadian Artists, by C.MacDonald, Vol.2 pg.278
Collector's Dictionary of Canadian Artists at Auction, by A.Westbridge, Vol.2, pg.12, Westbridge Pub., 2000;
The Alberta Society of Artists: Sixty Years, by M.Joslin, E.A.G., 1992
Jubilee Exhibition of Alberta Paintings, by J.Nicoll, Calgary Allied Art Centre, 1955
Allgemeines Kunstler-Lexikon, Band 55, pg. 369, K.G. Saur Verlag Munchen-Leipzig, 1983-2009
exhibition lists in
R.C.A.A., by E.McMann, pg.149
M.M.F.A., by E.McMann, pg.145
listed on Artists in Canada, a Union List of Artists' Files, by National Gallery of Canada Library et al, see website at Canadian Heritage Information Network [CHIN]