Cornelius Krieghoff

Cornelius Krieghoff (1815-1872), Canadian painter known for his landscapes and portrayals of the everyday life of French Canadians. Among Canada’s best-known artists, Krieghoff was as popular during his lifetime as he is today.

Born in Amsterdam, Holland, Krieghoff immigrated to North America in about 1836. During the late 1830s, he served in the United States Army, fighting in battles against Native Americans. Krieghoff then moved to Canada to pursue a career as a painter. He lived in Montréal, Canada East (now Québec), in the mid-1840s but was not successful until after he moved to Québec City in 1853.

Krieghoff employed precise detail and brilliant color in a European style influenced by 17th-century Dutch art. He never painted in the open air, but he closely observed life in rural Canada, then captured it in paintings that told stories. Krieghoff’s paintings document people performing daily tasks, such as loading a sled, sawing wood, feeding farm animals, or preparing for a family visit to town. He also painted aboriginal hunters and camps, loggers’ shanties, and picturesque landscapes, such as The Owl’s Head, Memphremagog (1859?-1871?, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto). Some of his works are humorous, such as the “bilking the toll” paintings, in which travelers on a horse-drawn sled gleefully race past the toll collector without paying. A spirited dog often appears in Krieghoff’s paintings.

Krieghoff painted approximately 2,000 canvases. Many officers going home to Britain from garrisons in Canada East took Krieghoff paintings with them to show the wonders of the country to their families or to keep as souvenirs. Among his masterpieces is Merrymaking (1860, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick), a scene of Québec social life showing revelers drinking, dancing, and singing. As with many of his canvases, Krieghoff emphasized the details, from the variety of figures to the color. In 1999 the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, mounted a large retrospective of his work called Images of Canada.