Robert Ford Gagen

Places of work recorded in the authority are Canada. Employment is recorded with OCAD University. Work by Robert Ford Gagen is recorded in the collections of Canadian War Museum. Distinctions recorded are Member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and Associate Member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

• Name — Robert F. Gagen • Birth Name — Robert Ford Gagen • Born — 10 May 1847 • Birthplace — London, England • Died — 2 March 1926 • Place of death — Toronto, Ontario • Spouse — Jane Palmer (married 1873)

• Illustration — Late Afternoon (1923), National Gallery of Canada Robert Ford Gagen, was born in London, England. He came to Canada with his parents in 1862, and settled at Harpurhey, now Seaforth, in Huron County, Ontario. William Nicoll Cresswell, an artist who lived near Seaforth, began to teach him drawing and painting in 1863. Afterwards, Gagen went to Toronto and entered a painting class with George Gilbert. In 1872, John Arthur Fraser hired Gagen to work at Notman and Fraser as a painter of water color portraits and miniatures on a photographic base: he remained there till 1878. Gagen painted sea and river studies and travelled widely to do so, favoring the Maritime Provinces and the shore of St. Lawrence in Quebec as well as Maine and Massachusetts in the United States. In 1890, he painted the Rockies and the Selkirks and in 1906, Scotland and Switzerland. In 1910, he returned to painting the St. Lawrence. In 1918, the Canadian War Memorials Fund asked him to record the shipbuilding underway in Toronto, Ontario. He exhibited his work in the many societies of which he was a member almost every year from the time he joined them. In 1927, a year after he died, there was an exhibition and sale of his work at Eaton's. His work is included today in exhibitions of Canadian art, such as Stone and Sky: Canada's Mountain Landscape, at the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, British Columbia in 2018 and is in many collections such as the National Gallery of Canada and Art Gallery of Ontario.