| In September 1935,
Henry George Glyde and his wife Hilda and daughter Helen
arrived in Calgary. Glyde had been invited by the
painter A.C. Leighton to join the faculty at the
Provincial Institute of Technology. Glyde and his family
had arranged a one year leave of absence from his
position in England at the High Wycombe School of Art,
intending to stay only one year.
In what turned out to be thirty
years of teaching and more than sixty years of painting,
H.G. Glyde was the most important individual in the
development of art teaching in Alberta. Within a year of
his arrival in Calgary, he was head of the art
department (at what would eventually become the Alberta
College of Art and Design). He was also head of the
division of the Banff School of Fine Arts (1936-66).
In 1937 he taught community art
classes with the Department of Extension at the
University of Alberta, traveling to to Vegreville,
Vermilion, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and Peace River.
Each community would establish a painting group,
compelling Glyde to travel and teach, revelling in his
exposure to the Alberta landscape. In 1946, Glyde
founded the Division of Fine Art at the U of A and
taught there between 1946 and 1966.
The subjects of Glyde's most
interesting and significant works are the oils and
murals that document urban and rural prairie life, a
style known as social realism. Glyde was painting
at a time of dynamic change in Alberta. The largely
agricultural province was becoming more mobile and
urbanized in the aftermath of World War II and the
discovery of oil at Leduc in 1948. Several of Glyde's
paintings reflect this transition. His murals, such as Alberta
History (situated in Rutherford Hall at the
University of Alberta), have sombre colours and figures
that are mythological and symbolic in mood and content,
reflecting Glyde's ability in classical techniques.
Grain elevators were common
figures in works such as The Exodus and Aftermath.
Glyde called them "Cathedrals of the Prairies"
and likened them to the church spires of England that
marked towns and villages from a distance. Glyde admired
the simple and functional architecture of these
structures, giving a point of defintion to Alberta's
small towns and hamlets.
Glyde was born in Luton,
England in 1906. He studied art, contrary to his
family's wishes, at schools such as the Royal College of
Art in London. While his art developed in accord with
artistic concepts of the 1920s in England, Glyde was
committed to birthing a truly Albertan and Canadian
style, based on the people and landscape of the region.
In 1982, he was awarded an
honourary Doctorate of Law by the University of Alberta
in recognizing his dedication and contribution to the
visual arts in Alberta. A major retrospective exhibition
was produced by the Glenbow Museum in 1987. Henry George
Glyde died in Victoria on March 31st, 1998.
Source: Ainslie,
Patricia. A Lifelong Journey: The Art and Teaching of
H.G. Glyde. Glenbow Museum, Calgary, 1987 |
