Caroline Helena ARMINGTON (née WILKINSON) (Attributed to) - Portrait of a young Algerian woman

Caroline Helena ARMINGTON (née WILKINSON) (Attributed to)
Brompton, Ontario, 1875 – New York, 1939
Portrait of a Young Algerian Woman
Oil on cardboard
Signed, located, and dated lower right "Armington / Algiers / 19.."
37 x 31.5 cm (42.5 x 36.5 cm framed)
Fine wooden frame with a gilt twist

Frank and Caroline Armington were a Canadian artist couple who studied in Toronto under John Wycliffe Lowes Forster, a portrait painter and Caroline Wilkinson's uncle. Franck then left for Paris in 1899, and Caroline joined him in 1900. They married there, and after returning to Canada for a time, they came back to Paris in 1905 to continue their studies at the Académie Julian (along with fellow Canadian artists William Brymner, James Wilson Morrice, and Alex Jackson). They settled there and pursued their artistic careers.

"A classmate taught Frank Milton the techniques of etching, and the Armingtons quickly both reached a high level. For Mrs. Armington, etching would become more important than painting."
"Mrs. Armington won a silver medal at the 1911 Salon for her painting of a peasant woman lost in thought, entitled Old Woman of Bruges." Her Portrait of My Mother (1912) reveals her continued commitment to precise and solid representation, as well as the adoption of a lighter palette than she had used previously. Her husband's painting was following the same direction. Meanwhile, they traveled to France, Italy, and Algeria.

Caroline painted portraits in Algeria, including this beautiful portrait of an Algerian woman painted by Caroline Armington in a style similar to our painting—very effective, very concise, even simplified—bearing the same signature as our painting, and which sold for 6,000 euros on April 25, 2006, at Bukowskis in Stockholm.

"Mrs. Armington's growing success was manifested by the inclusion of her works in juried exhibitions and led a journalist to ask her, in 1913, if there was any rivalry between her and her husband. 'Never,' she replied." We accomplished roughly the same amount of work each year, and when one of us won an award at an exhibition, the other was as proud as if they had earned it themselves.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Mrs. Armington continued to paint and etch, and received favorable reviews in France, the United States, and Canada. In 1923, on the occasion of her first solo painting exhibition at the Simonson Galleries in Paris, art critic Eugène Hoffmann congratulated her in the Journal des Arts on an enriching and substantial display.

(...) Late 20th-century research and publications revived interest in the Armingtons, particularly Caroline Helena, and successfully integrated them into a broader and more nuanced ongoing construction of Canadian art history. »
(Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16, Editions de l'Université Laval/University of Toronto, 2016, Article WILKINSON, Caroline Helena (Armington))

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