The Story Behind Sarnia's Art Movement

Photo Gallery: Sarnia Art Movement will appear here on the public site.

Sarnia first had an opportunity to be inspired by great art due to the efforts of a local women's group who fund-raised for Red Cross during WWI and the networking skills of a local lawyer.

Norman Gurd followed his father Robert Gurd into legal practice, pursuing his studies in Toronto and returning to Sarnia in 1896 to work with the firm Kittermaster & Gurd. A strong believer in the library system, Gurd is credited with creating and popularizing the slogan, "The library belongs to you, do you belong to the library?"

It was the Women's Art Conservation Committee (later the Women's Conservation Art Association) that purchased the first paintings to be hung in the Sarnia Public Library. The committee was an offshoot of the Women's Conservation Committee created during the First World War to raise funds for Red Cross. These ladies collected waste such as paper, cloth, fats and metals, which were in turn sold to local scrap dealers.

When WWI ended, Committee president Frances Flintoft wrote to lawyer Norman Gurd on July 25, 1919: "We have felt for some time past, that we should have displayed in the library, good pictures which would have an educating influence upon the public and would show them what good Art really is. There is no opportunity of this kind in Sarnia." She reflected on this process in a letter on March 2, 1929: "... [we wanted] to form the nucleus of a permanent collection to have in the Public Library until such time as Sarnia should have an art gallery."

After fulfilling the Red Cross's needs, the Women's Art Conservation Committee had $300.00 left and put this money towards the purchase of three paintings in March 1920. George L. Smith records in his book, Norman Gurd and the Group of 7, that the pieces purchased were A.Y. Jackson's "Spring Lower Canada," H.B. Palmer's "Sawing Logs" and J.W. Beatty's "Winter near Toronto." Other paintings purchased by the committee included Tom Thomson's "Chill November" (in December 1920) and Lawren S. Harris's "Mongoose Lake" (in February 1925).