Walter J. Phillips, born in England in 1884, would go on to become one of Canada’s most prolific and accomplished printmakers and painters as well as a beloved writer and teacher of art. He originally trained in watercolour—a highly venerated artistic medium in late-Victorian England. Phillips cites as a key role model Birmingham’s David Cox (1783 – 1859), who compelled him to pare back his landscapes to the most essential elements. He noted that Cox “held that the truth of effect is greater than the truth in detail and that a selective attitude toward nature should be adopted.”

Phillips would apply this restrained approach towards his ardent plein air exploration of Canada’s most majestic landscapes. In Rainbow Falls, an exceptionally crisp watercolour on paper, a noble beaver dam is framed by a ridge of jagged mountains and whipped clouds reflected in the breeze-generated ripples across the surface of the water below. According to Phillips, “Water is the most expressive element in nature.… The artist who paints moving water successfully arranges his lines and masses rhythmically so that ripples and waves seem wet, limpid and lively … representing an epitome of the whole movement.”

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