Jack Humphrey

Humphrey was born in Saint John, New Brunswick. He studied at the school of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, under Philip Hale and painting at the National Academy of Design, the Art Students League of New York, and Charles Hawthorn's Cape Cod School.[1] He was a Tiffany Foundation student at Oyster Bay, Long Island, 1927. He studied in Europe from 1929 to 1930, studying in Paris with André Lhote, and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and in Munich at the Hans Hofmann school. He also travelled in Italy, Holland, Belgium, and England. He visited Vancouver in 1933 and Mexico in 1938.

Humphrey was a founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters (C.G.P.) in 1933. In 1951 he taught at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. From 1952 to 1954 he painted in Paris on a government fellowship. Returning from France in 1954, he developed abstract and nonobjective tendencies in gouache and oil landscapes, while his watercolours focused on the intimate details of nature.

Humphrey's paintings of the harbour, streets and workers of Saint John in Canada established his reputation as a regional artist and his work extended to numerous portraits of friends and the city's children. Making no concessions to fashion, Humphrey's approach made him a respected member of Montreal's Contemporary Art Society and the Canadian Group of Painters.

He died on 23 March 1967 in hospital at Saint John, New Brunswick. He had been recovering from a recent surgery.[2]

• Biography in The Canadian Encyclopedia