Arthur Crisp

Canadian painter, 1881–1974, active in United States

BiographyArthur Crisp was a painter, muralist and designer; born in Hamilton, Ontario, on April 26, 1881. He studied at the Hamilton Art School under John S. Gordon in 1898 and 1899 and at the Art Students League in New York City, from 1900 until 1903. Crisp designed murals for hotels, private homes, and office buildings in New York City as well as in Trenton, New Jersey, and other sites.

Commissioned to paint British and Canadian recruiting works on the Boston Common in 1918 for the Canadian War Memorials Society, and painted decorations for the Reading Room of the new House of Commons building in Ottawa in the early 1920s.

Crisp also designed embroidered silk and velvet hangings which were made by his wife, Mary Ellen Crisp. Crisp was a member of numerous art organizations including the Architectural League of New York and the National Society of Mural Painters (New York) He was a founding member of the Allied Artists of America, the American Water Color Society and the New York Water Color Club.

He retired to Biddeford Pool, Maine, USA, in 1956 and gave a large collection of his work to the Art Gallery of Hamilton in 1963. Arthur Crisp died on June 28, 1974. He was 93.

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