Florence Wyle. Sea and Shore, 1965. marble, Overall: 93.5 × 33 × 41 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario. Gift of the Estates of Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, 1983. Photo © AGO. 83/197
Located on Level 2, Mary & Harry Jackman Gallery, #238
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EXHIBITION OVERVIEW
Toronto artists Frances Loring (1887–1968) and Florence Wyle (1881–1968) dedicated much of their careers to raising public awareness for sculpture. In this exhibition, Renée van der Avoird, Associate Curator of Canadian Art, and Melissa Alexander, the W. David Hargraft Fellow in Canadian Art, present a selection of rarely seen sculptures from the AGO’s Collection, highlighting Loring and Wyles’s commitment to the artform and their conviction that sculpture is a lifelong process. The ten works on view are made of various materials and at various stages of completion; they will be displayed alongside archival materials and an interview with the artists, dating from 1965.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Born in Trenton, Illinois, in 1881, Florence Wyle studied medicine at the University of Illinois before shifting her focus and enrolling at the Art Institute of Chicago. It was there, while she served as an instructor for life modelling, that she met her lifelong companion, Frances Loring, in the fall of 1906.
Frances Loring, born in Wardner, Idaho, in 1887, had previously studied sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva and the Académie Colarossi in Paris. The pair moved to New York to begin their careers before permanently settling in Toronto in 1912.
Throughout their lives, Loring and Wyle were dedicated to the promotion of Canadian sculpture, and their numerous public art commissions can be seen throughout Canada. Because of this, when they passed away in 1968, their joint wills outlined the creation of the Sculpture Fund to encourage both Canadian sculpture and its artists. In 1983, their estate was gifted to the Art Gallery of Ontario.
