The Little Shop
12 x 14 in (30.5 x 35.6 cm) including frame
Provenance:
Gift from the artist to Private Collection;
By descent to Private Collection, Winnipeg
Exhibited
Possibly, Small Pictures, Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, 25 August-8 September 1923, no. 284, as A Little Shop.
Literature
Possibly, Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture by British, Swedish and Canadian Artists and International Graphic Art (exh. cat.) (Toronto: Canadian National Exhibition, 1923): no. 284, p. 41, as A Little Shop.
Born in Toronto in 1882, Marion Long’s professional career was based there and spanned the first half of the twentieth century. During that period, she exhibited regularly with the Ontario Society of Artists, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and at the Canadian National Exhibition as she established her reputation with portraits and still lifes on canvas, and smaller urban scenes in oil on board.
She first exhibited at the RCAA in 1905, the OSA the next year and was a mainstay of those exhibitions for the next four decades. In 1916 she occupied studio number 1 in the Studio Building that opened in 1914 and was financed by Lawren S. Harris and Dr. James MacCallum. Originally occupied by A.Y. Jackson and Tom Thomson until Jackson relocated to Montreal and Thomson moved into a nearby construction shack, Long kept studio 1 until 1926. By 1928 she had a studio closer to the downtown core at 18 Grenville Street that she held until 1937.
Building on her two years of training with Robert Henri and William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League in New York early in the century, her proximity to Harris in studio 2 (then 3) of the Studio Building, and the proximity from her Grenville Street studio to the part of Toronto’s St. John’s ward known popularly as “The Ward”, Long presented the gritty neighbourhood sympathetically. Where Harris’s views of the Ward painted in the 1910s and 1920s often perceived it coolly, Long’s views are disarming, By the 1930s her paintings of the neighbourhood greatly appealed to contemporary viewers as it was understood the Ward would soon disappear as old gave way to new. The Little Shop beautifully captures Torontonians living amongst each other, connected every day in every way, carrying on.
We thank Gregory Humeniuk, art historian, writer and curator, for contributing the above essay and research
Marion Long
1882 - 1970 RCA, OSA
Marion Long was born in Toronto in 1882. She attended Model School and St. Margaret's College before studying at the Ontario College of Art under George Agnew Reid and privately with Laura Muntz Lyall. From 1907 to 1909, she studied in New York City at the Art Students League with Robert Henri, William Merritt Chase, and Kenneth Hayes Miller. In 1913, she studied at Provincetown, Massachusetts under Charles Hawthorne and opened her own studio in Toronto that same year.
Long eventually occupied Studio One in the Studio Building, which had previously been used by A.Y. Jackson and Tom Thomson. She moved into this space after Jackson returned to Montreal before enlisting in the army and Thomson moved to the shack behind the main building. She later moved to her own studio on Grenville Street while living at her home on Poplar Plains Road. In 1915, Long contributed three drawings to The Canadian Magazine depicting the First World War from a woman's perspective, including "Home on Furlough," "Looking at the War Pictures," and "Killed in Action."
Long was elected an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1922 and became a full Academician in 1933, making her only the second woman elected to full membership in the Academy, following Charlotte Schreiber fifty years earlier. She was a member of the Ontario Society of Artists from 1916, the Ontario Institute of Painters, and served as President of the Heliconian Club in 1919.
Long was commissioned to paint numerous portraits of prominent Canadians, including a series of seven portraits of men and women of the Canadian armed forces during World War II, now held at the John Deutsch University Centre at Queen's University, Kingston. She was also commissioned to paint portraits of members of the Royal Norwegian Air Force and received the King Haakon VII medal of liberation for her services to Norway during World War II. In July 1942, she exhibited twenty-five of these portraits at Eaton's Fine Art Galleries in Toronto and Montreal, where they were well received. In 1943, Imperial Tobacco commissioned her to paint eleven portraits of sailors and servicemen for a Players Navy Cut campaign.
Long exhibited with the Ontario Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy beginning in 1905, as well as at the Canadian National Exhibition and the Art Association of Montreal. Her work is represented in collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, University of Toronto, Queen's University, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. She is known for her portraits, urban scenes, landscapes, and flower paintings. Long died in Toronto in 1970 at the age of 87.
