The activities and relationships of young girls were subjects Helen Galloway McNicoll revisited frequently during her short but prolific career. These included working girls in farmyards and fields, and middle-class girls sewing, picking flowers and snacking on cherries. Focused on their own matters, the children pay the viewer no mind. Happy Moments is in many ways characteristic of these works. The painting finds a central duo sitting in an intimate and casual pose in the grass next to a river, perhaps telling stories or confiding secrets. They seem unconcerned as a younger companion—a little sister who tagged along uninvited?—wanders off into the woods beyond.

McNicoll’s luminous approach to the subject reflects the artist’s commitment to plein air painting, which she would have first encountered in her education at the Art Association of Montreal and the Slade School of Fine Art, in London. This was a practice she shared with the British artist Dorothea Sharp (1874 – 1955), with whom she lived and worked after their 1905 meeting in the rural artists’ colony of St. Ives, Cornwall. The two artists traveled widely across England and Europe, settling in rural villages and painting the landscape and its inhabitants.

The theme of children playing beside a stream or river is found in several of the pair’s works; indeed, Happy Moments shares models and location with another McNicoll painting, Watching the Boat, as well as with Sharp’s Two Girls by a Lake. Happy Moments departs from these similar works, however, in the way its central figure makes eye contact with the viewer. This is a rare feature in McNicoll’s body of work, which has sometimes been described as possessing a sense of detachment between viewer and subject.

The candid feel of the scene is heightened by McNicoll’s Impressionist light, colour and brushwork. Contemporary reviewers celebrated the artist’s treatment of sunshine; what impressed them is here evident in the bright yellows and greens that compose the landscape. The dappled light on the river and quick brush-strokes give the impression of a single moment caught in time. The apparent spontaneity in subject and style is undercut by what we know of McNicoll’s working methods, however. Although she painted child subjects frequently, the artist was unmarried and did not have children. Letters written to her father describe attempts to hire models, while contemporary newspaper accounts describe how McNicoll’s painting partner Sharp convinced the children of fishermen to pose using a trunk of dressup clothing. Paintings such as Happy Moments should be understood as the products of McNicoll’s deliberate planning and agency as a professional artist.

The intimacy of the subject in Happy Moments disguises the expansiveness of McNicoll’s transnational life and career. With an exhibition record of more than 70 paintings on both sides of the Atlantic, the artist was integral in connecting the Canadian and European art worlds, transmitting and translating trends such as Impressionism to Canadian audiences. McNicoll’s accomplishments were widely recognized during her lifetime and in a significant memorial exhibition at the Art Association of Montreal in 1925. This major show displayed 150 of the artist’s works, including Happy Moments. The painting was also exhibited posthumously at the 1926 inaugural exhibition of the Art Gallery of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario), one of three works by McNicoll to receive such an honour.[1] A century later, McNicoll’s reputation continues to grow worldwide.

We thank Samantha Burton, Assistant Professor (Teaching) of Art History at the University of Southern California, for contributing the above essay. In 2017, Burton authored the Art Canada Institute publication Helen McNicoll: Life & Work.

1. The painting was exhibited under the title Children Playing in the Woods; this identification is confirmed in exhibition records held at the AGO, in which the artist’s mother informs the museum they erroneously titled the work.