Arthur Heming

Arthur Henry Howard Heming (January 17, 1870 – October 30, 1940) was a Canadian painter and novelist known as the "chronicler of the North" for his paintings, sketches, essays and books about Canada's North.

Career as an artist

Born in Paris, Ontario and raised in Hamilton, he studied at the Hamilton Art School, then in New York City at the Art Students League with Frank DuMond, and the Old Lyme Art Colony, and in London with the Welsh master Frank Brangwyn.

Heming painted paintings depicting the fur trade, many for the book The Drama of the Forests. He asked the Hudson's Bay Company to include his work in their collection as a contributor to the history of Canadian wilderness exploration. Instead, in 1921, the Royal Ontario Museum purchased a selection of these paintings. Maclean's Magazine then reproduced them for their covers throughout the early 1920's.

A 124-page exhibition catalogue was produced by Museum London in 2013, with five essays, Arthur Heming: Chronicler of the North. It followed a 2012 gallery retrospective of his work, shown at Museum London.

Heming was an associate member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

Difficulties as an artist

Heming was diagnosed as colour blind and as a result worked mostly in black and white for almost all of his life, with the addition of yellow. However, near the end of his career, he started to paint using the full range of colours, having been told by a fellow artist he was no longer colour blind.

Novels

His novels were only three in number, but they enjoyed success in serial form and then in book editions from major publishers. His novels were not armchair concoctions, as Heming had travelled extensively in the wilderness.