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soft cover, 6″ x 9″
Published by
Sold in Haliburton-area bookstores, galleries, and at Haliburton Highlands Health Services Centre.
Above: Ethel Curry (right) with Doris McCarthy (left) and Noreen Masters,1930s (courtesy Sheila Popple) Front cover: Ethel Curry’s Sundown Autumn, Day’s End (oil on canvas), on display in the lobby of the Haliburton Highlands Health Services Centre (courtesy of Don and Sheila Popple). Return to
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NORTHERN BELLE
by Robert Popple
Inspired by the beautiful lakes and rolling hills of the Haliburton Highlands, where she was born and raised, Ethel Curry (1902-2000) became an accomplished landscape artist. Her style was reminiscent of the Group of Seven — not surprising, considering that when she attended the Ontario College of Art in the 1920s, the faculty included several members of the Group. Rather than try to break into a male-dominated Canadian art scene, after graduation Curry instead focused on a career as an art teacher at Northern Vocational in Toronto. She had exceptional natural talent as a teacher. However, paintings from her numerous trips to the Gaspé with her close friend Doris McCarthy, and from her excursions in Haliburton, demonstate that her artistic abilities were of the highest calibre too. Ethel Curry put Haliburton on the art map, not only through her own work, but by playing host to dozens of Toronto artist colleagues and friends whom she invited on painting trips to the Highlands. Based primarily on information from colleagues, friends, family and former students, this biography of Ethel traces the history of her pioneer family in Haliburton, her art school days, teaching career, painting expeditions, and the heart-wrenching relationship with her fiancé, Wishart Campbell, one of the stars of Canadian radio from the 1930s to the 1950s. Below: Winter Sunlight, Algonquin Park, 1927, by Ethel Curry (courtesy of Don and Sheila Popple).
Northern Belle was designed and produced by Fox Meadow for RTP Publications. |
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