Richard Jack
1910 - 1996
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Richard Jack is best known for his work as Canada’s first official war artist in the First World War. Although British and living in England, the Canadian government hired him in 1916 based on his then considerable reputation. At the time, he was a well-known draftsman and portrait painter and a member of the Royal Society of British Artists and the Royal Institute of Painters. King Edward VII and, later, King George V were among his subjects.
His war art concentrated on the collective triumph rather than the individual agony of war. His grand and romantic style can be seen in the large, 12-foot-by-20-foot canvases of The Second Battle of Ypres and The Taking of Vimy Ridge in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.
Jack moved to Canada in 1927 and settled in Montréal in 1931. He used his Montréal studio as a base for field trips across Canada and became well known for his wilderness landscapes.
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Mount Eisenhower, whose name has been restored to its original Castle Mountain, is one of the most magnificent peaks in the Canadian Rockies, part of Banff National Park in Alberta. Frequently a subject for painters, Castle Mountain became Mount Eisenhower in 1946, a day before Second World War hero Gen. Eisenhower visited Ottawa. The sudden renaming by then Prime Minister Mackenzie King angered many Albertans who finally succeeded in restoring the original name in 1979.
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