Christopher Pratt (1935 – 2022) is one of Canada’s best known painters and printmakers, renowned for his smoothly rendered realist paintings. Many of his works reflected ordinary life in his beloved home base of Newfoundland & Labrador. Above: Still Shore, watercolour and graphite on paper, 1956, 14 x 18″
Working primarily in a restrained palette of blues, greens, and neutrals, Pratt explored a wide range of themes: landscapes, roadscapes, architecture, waterscapes, boats, interior spaces and the human figure.
The subdued starkness of Pratt’s work has been compared to the realist paintings of Alex Colville, another Canadian master who taught at New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University at a time when Pratt was a student there. College was also where Pratt met his wife, Mary Pratt, also a noteworthy Canadian painter – they divorced in 2004 after a 12-year separation.
It was Lawren Phillips Harris, son of Group of Seven artist Lawren Harris, who originally spotted Pratt’s talent. Harris, then director of the School of Fine and Applied Arts at Mount Allison, mentored Pratt for a time at the school. Pratt also attended the Glasgow School of Art in 1957, where he was exposed to concepts that emphasized concept over emotion, the ideal over the real, and the linear over the painterly, providing the foundation for his work.Â
See also this CBC video broadcast at the time of Pratt’s death in 2022.
An expanded biography at the Canadian auction house Heffel, here
More of Pratt’s works at the Mira Goddard Gallery, which represents his estate, here.
At the National Gallery of Canada, here.
About his artist wife, Mary Pratt, here and here.
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This is No. 56 in the series 150 Artists, an ongoing series on Canadian artists you should know.
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Thank you — I knew the various names & something of their various works, but not the complexity of the interrelationships. It all adds resonance. (And I very much like your phrase “restrained realism.” Beautifully put.)
Thank you. I know what you mean about the complexity of interrelationships. I have been fascinated by the links between people and generations in the Canadian art world since I began blogging. Who was married to whom, when, which artist taught where, etc. I’m basically a gossip so it all stays in my head.
Such fantastic work! I like how I can feel like I am in the photo right next to the canoe ready to touch it. Same with the water in the first photo. Amazing, really.
I thought you might be a fan!!
Thank you for this update. However, it was not the Group of Seven Lawren Harris who was director of fine art at Mount Allison U, but his son Lawren Phillip Harris, who held the position from 1945-1975.
Thank you so much Kay Langmuir. I have amended the text. Your correction is much appreciated since I’m very particular about fact-checking – although clearly this one was a miss. Mea culpa.