Baldwin, Betty

Technique : Oil, pastel, gouache

1889-1981

The renowned painter Betty Baldwin was born as Elizabeth Smiles in Leeds, England. After spending many years in Paris, New York and Portland, she settled in Quebec City in 1924 with her violinist husband, Percy Baldwin.

A talented artist, Baldwin was born and grew up in an artistic milieu. She drew her first sketches when she was just six years old. Baldwin got her first real job at the age of ten: she submitted well-liked cartoons to a newspaper. She already had an extremely delicate and complex style, recreating the luxuriant hair of dogs and horses which was all the rage at the time.

In 1924, she settled in Quebec, which she adopted as her country: " This is now my country and I shall never leave it. There is no better place for an artist than Quebec. I adore painting winter scenes and scenes of the Quebec countryside."

No other Quebec artist than Baldwin could have brought picturesque Quebec to the rest of the world with more enthusiasm and introduce the province to the world before the advent of television. Baldwin recounts the history of Old Quebec in hundreds of extraordinary oil paintings and pastels. A figurative painter, Baldwin painted what she saw, her chosen subject. Her vibrant, airy and radiant paintings depict houses, sites in Old Quebec and the surrounding area in the finest detail.

Exhibitions

• More than twenty, at the Foyer du Palais Montcalm de Québec
• She exhibited her works in several galleries in Canada, the United States and England.

Museums and Collections

• Several museums, art galleries and private collections around the world have paintings by Betty Baldwin