Toronto. The artist Owen Staples (1866 – 1949) was born in England and emigrated to Canada (Hamilton) with his family in 1872. He moved to the States where he began his arts studies. He moved again, this time to Toronto where he was hired by the Telegram’s Robertson. He returned briefly to the States to complete his artist training, returning to Toronto and Canada for the rest of his life.
An oil painting of Toronto’s skyline in 1908, four years after the devastating fire of 1904, resides today in the City Archives. A photograph “coloured with water colour and gouache, of [the] oil painting [resides in the Baldwin room of the Toronto Public Library]. [It is] laid down on canvas and mounted on [a] stretcher”.
My thanks to the ever prolific and curious PHSC member George Dunbar for discovering this panorama painting/photograph of the city’s 1908 skyline.