Wilkinson, Caroline Helena

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Marilyn Baker, “WILKINSON, CAROLINE HELENA (Helena) (Armington),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/wilkinson_caroline_helena_16E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Artist and nurse; b. 12 Sept. 1875 in Brampton, Ont., daughter of William Wilkinson, a farmer and agricultural-implement dealer, and Mary Crawford; m. 6 and 8 Sept. 1900 Frank Milton Armington (d. 1941) in Paris; they had no children; d. 25 Oct. 1939 in New York City.
    • Following their marriage in a civil ceremony at the British consulate on 6 September and a religious ceremony two days later at the American Church in Paris, the couple returned to Canada. After a brief sojourn in Sault Ste Marie, Ont., in 1901, they settled in Manitoba, where Frank had briefly lived in the 1890s. In Winnipeg the couple made friends within the small community of artists and newspaper people who, like themselves, had been drawn by the prospects of an emerging metropolis and, in particular, the burgeoning commercial-art industry.
    • In 1905 the Armingtons returned to Europe for further instruction. They briefly enrolled at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris and later they attended the Académie Julian, in classes separated according to gender. Both began to take an interest in printmaking, primarily etching. A fellow student taught Frank to etch and soon he and Caroline were equally proficient. For Caroline, etching would eventually take precedence over painting. From the outset her prints were meticulously detailed and also picturesque portrayals of European scenery in which architectural panoramas rather than human figures were the focus.
    • Caroline won a silver medal at the Salon of 1911 for her painting of a peasant absorbed in thought, Vieille Brugeoise. Her Portrait de ma mère (1912) reveals her continued attachment to accurate and solid representation and her adoption of a more high-keyed palette than that which she had previously used. Frank’s work as a painter was also moving in the same direction
    • In 1910 the National Gallery in Ottawa had purchased a print by Caroline, Le quai vert, Bruges (1908), and in 1911 it acquired two additional items, The Seine and Notre-Dame, Paris (1909) and The Thames and St. Paul’s, London (1911). Caroline’s growing success was evidenced by the inclusion of her art in juried exhibitions, and her achievements caused one journalist to ask in 1913 whether she and her husband were in competition. “Never,” she replied. “We accomplished about the same amount of work each year, and when one of us carries off an honor at an exhibition the other is as proud as if he or she had done so himself or herself.”
    • During the 1920s and 1930s Caroline went on painting and etching, and she received favourable notices in France, the United States, and Canada. Art critic Eugène Hoffmann, writing in Le Journal des Arts in 1923, congratulated her on an enriching and substantial show, her first solo exhibition of paintings, held at the Galeries Simonson in Paris, while the European edition of the New York Herald, which kept up with the activities of Americans in the city, praised her illustrations of solid architectural masses, “faithfully rendered.… In Paris Mrs. Armington has been particularly interested in the river, its bridges and the barges which lie at anchor in their shadow.” The following year she sold numerous etchings to the T. Eaton Company Limited. In 1925 and 1926 works by the Armingtons were sent on tour across the United States and were seen in private galleries and art spaces in New York City, Detroit, Toledo, Ohio, and Des Moines, Iowa. The Toledo Times observed that “the etchings of Mrs. Armington, in the main studies of Paris, are of very high quality, sure in expression and of true feeling.”
  • Third Great Granddaughter of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=9000
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/255107886/caroline-helena-armington