The Artist
Legh Mulhall Kilpin’s career as an artist and teacher spanned four decades at the turn of the 19th century, a period marked by revolutionary changes in art theory and practices. Like other professionally-trained British artists who worked outside academic and avant-garde art circles, Kilpin is not well known today. However, both his art and his role as a teacher warrant attention.
Kilpin was an accomplished artist whose work ranges from prints to oil paintings, watercolour landscapes, Symbolist pieces and Art Nouveau designs. This eclecticism is entirely representative of mainstream fashions and popular tastes of his time. In England, he had been one of countless graduates of a rigid system of art training that emphasized a particular Victorian mode of cultivated taste and associated moral values. Because British models were admired and emulated in Canada, Kilpin moved seamlessly into the Canadian art world after moving to Montreal in 1906. His career in both countries exemplifies the life of the majority of working artists of his time.
Biography
Painting in Canada between 1906 and 1919, Legh Mulhall Kilpin was a prolific and accomplished artist and art instructor.
Born in 1853 on the Isle of Wight, Legh Kilpin worked as an artist and an art educator in Britain. In 1906, he and his family emigrated to Canada with the help of his prosperous brother George who lived in Montreal. Kilpin was 52 when he arrived in Montreal in 1906 with his wife Blanche and their three children: Noel, Marie and Eric.
Legh Kilpin had been a member of arts organizations in England, and became especially active in Canada as a member of both the Art Association of Montreal and the Montreal Arts Club. Although Kilpin lived only twelve years in Canada, it was perhaps the period of his greatest development and experimentation as an artist. He was also a teacher in Canada, teaching at the Montreal Technical Institute and then in public schools in the Westmount School District.
Kilpin was afflicted with cardiac problems during the last years of his life. On November 4, 1919, after returning from a day of teaching, he died of a heart attack at home in an easy chair, one day before his 66th birthday.
Art education
Legh Kilpin was one of many English artists who came to Canada around the turn of the 19th century in search of new opportunities.
In England, he was among a generation of British artists educated within a newly established system of art education developed on the model of the European trades schools. The British National Arts Training schools, where Kilpin received his teaching certification in the late 1880s, were concerned with training artists who could help industry. At school, they learned the fundamentals of “good” design: practical geometry, linear perspective, and the elementary principles of ornament. These were skills that Kilpin passed on to his students.
As an art teacher with basic industrial arts training, Kilpin likely found it difficult to gain recognition within the crowded British ‘fine arts’ world. His well connected brother George, who was Vice-President and General Manager of Imperial Oil in Montreal, encouraged him to move and offered help to get him established.
Kilpin’s English background would carry substantial cachet in English Canada of this period, where the main arts organizations and educational programs were based on British models. He was soon teaching at the Montreal Technical Institute and then in public schools in the Westmount School District. In 1907, he became a member of the Art Association of Montreal (AAM), the country’s largest, most distinguished private arts organization and the domain of prominent art collectors and patrons.
For artists, AAM membership had obvious benefits, not least of which was contact with affluent collectors. The AAM spring exhibition was an important showcase for Canadian art, and Kilpin submitted works annually.
In 1912, Kiplin was nominated for membership in the newly founded Montreal Arts Club. Much smaller and more intimate than the AAM, the Arts Club was an invitation-only men’s enclave of prominent Francophone and Anglophone artists, architects, writers and art lovers who were interested in promoting Canadian culture. Kilpin took an active part in club events, showing his work in the exhibitions and serving on the House Committee.
Artist legacy
The Legh Mulhall Kilpin collection at salishan Place by the River is the result of a long collaboration between the Museum and the descendants of the artist. In the mid-1980s, Legh Kilpin’s grand-daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Illsey, approached the Langley Centennial Museum with a proposal to make the museum the home of her collection of her grandfather’s work. Mrs. Illsey and her uncle, Noel Kilpin, had worked with the Richmond Art Gallery to organize an exhibit in 1976. Noel Kilpin worked with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV) to organize another exhibition in 1979.
Mrs. Illsey was committed to continuing the work her uncle had started: she became the caretaker not only for many of Kilpin’s paintings, but also photographs and documents that preserved the history of the artist and his family.
In 1989, Mrs. Illsey and her husband, the Reverend Hartwell Illsey, donated 69 works to the Langley Centennial Museum in Fort Langley. National recognition of the works followed, with 59 pieces designated Canadian Cultural Property in 1990 by the Canadian Cultural Review Board. Since that time, additional works have been donated.
While Reverend Hartwell Illsey passed away in May 2002, Mrs. Illsey continues to be a great supporter of the collection. Other Kilpin descendants have also been generous contributors to this research, as well as being supporters of the museum, and responsible stewards of the works of Kilpin that remain in family care.