WYLE, Florence
Born: 27 November 1881, Trenton, Illinois, USA
Died: 14 January 1968, Newmarket, Ontario, Canada
Living in Toronto, sculptor Florence Wyle was known for portrait busts, small figurative
sculptures, and commissioned public monuments. Her art espoused the principles of classical
Greek sculpture which viewed the nude figure as an embodiment of human ideals. In 1938, she
became the first female sculptor to be elected as a full member of the Royal Canadian Academy
of Arts. While much of her work was cast in bronze, she also carved in marble, stone and wood,
including mahogany, sumac, walnut and butternut. Wyle was also a poet and her poems, which
reflect her love of nature, were published in Poems, 1959, and The Shadow of the Year, 1976.
Born in the USA, in 1881, Wyle grew up in Waverley, Illinois, the daughter of a chemist and the
sister of a twin brother. From 1900 to 1903, she undertook medical studies at the University of
Illinois in Chicago, which included anatomical courses in drawing, painting and sculpture. Due
to the active encouragement of her sculpture instructor, she quit medical studies and transferred
to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. There she studied sculpture including stone and
marble carving with Laredo Taft. From 1906 to 1909 she taught clay modelling as an assistant in
Charles Mulligan's sculpture classes. In 1905 she met Frances Loring (1887-1968), a new
sculpture student, and from this time onward the two became lifelong companions and
professional associates.
In 1909, Wyle left Chicago to share a studio with Loring who had recently moved to Greenwich
Village, New York. There they completed sculptures, studied sporadically at the Art Student's
League, and were exposed to new artistic ideas through the Stieglitz circle and their acquaintance
with avant-garde artist Georgia O'Keefe, who they had met in Chicago. Around 1912, Wyle and
Loring were obliged to leave New York and move to Toronto, as Loring's father had taken
actions to oust them from Greenwich Village and its bohemian influences. (An American, Mr
Loring had previously established his family and business in Canada).
Wyle was 33 when she and Loring settled in Toronto, where they remained for the rest of their
lives. In 1918, during WWI, Wyle received a commission from the Canadian War Memorials
board for small bronze statues depicting workers on the home front, including her lyrical bronze
figure, Furnace Girl and the youthful strength of The Rimmer. Her bronze statuette Sun
Worshipper, c.1916, a poetic nude study depicting a willowy young woman gesturing towards
the sun and her heart was purchased by the National Gallery of Canada in 1918.
In 1920, Wyle and Loring moved into an abandoned church in Toronto. It became their home,
studio, gathering place for Toronto's artistic community, and the headquarters of the Sculptors'
Society of Canada. Wyle and Loring had long been involved as activists promoting sculpture as a
fine art in Canada, and in 1928, Wyle became a founding member of the Sculptors Society of
Canada (SSC), along with Frances Loring, Emmanuel Hahn and Elizabeth Wyn Wood from
Toronto, and Henri Hébert and Alfred Howell from Montreal. Its aims were to encourage and
improve sculpture in Canada and to promote co-operation among Canadian sculptors.
Wyle executed a number of major public commissions during her career, including her refined,
symmetrical bronze relief Memorial to Nurse Edith Cavell, 1921, located in the grounds of the
Toronto General Hospital. This work was praised for its "serenity, strength and dignity".
Amongst Wyle's earliest sculptural portraits is the bust Frances Loring, 1911, made in painted
plaster, it was one of a pair that she and Loring made of each other during their New York
sojourn. The bronze versions were cast posthumously in 1984 and were installed in the
Loring/Wyle Parkette, Toronto, along with casts of Wyle's bronze figurative studies Young
Girl, 1938, and Harvester, 1940. Wyle's other portraits include a bronze bust, Head of FH
Varley, 1922, and Bust of AY Jackson, 1943, both depicting artists who belonged to the
prominent Group of Seven, and a bust of artist Elizabeth Wyn Wood, 1935.
Wyle received numerous accolades throughout her career. Art historian Graham McInnes'
appreciation - "Miss Wyle exhibits a flair for vigorous formal relationships and has produced
torsos and heads of a sinewy and satisfying strength" - aptly describes Wyle's Torso (Mother of
the Race), 1930, a robust nude in white marble, whose limbless but upraised shoulders echo
idealized figures from ancient Greek sculpture.
The 1930s and 1940s were the pinnacle of Wyle's (and Loring's) artistic career. In 1939, Wyle
collaborated with Loring on The Queen Elizabeth Monument, Toronto, also called The Lion
Monument. Wyle's portrait reliefs of King George and Queen Elizabeth were integrated with
Loring's monumental column.
Wyle was elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1938. Her RCA diploma
work, The Cellist, 1937-39, carved in mahogany using stylized simplified forms and lines,
demonstrated the influence of modernism on her classical approach. Wyle's stated aesthetic
principle, "Sculpture is harmony of mass as music is harmony of sound…Both must be vitalized
by emotion, controlled by reason," quoted in 1950 from an introduction to an SSC exhibition, is
witnessed in this work.
Wyle's Rivers of America series, 1949-50, consisted of ten small torsos rendered in simplified
forms and shapes carved in sumac. Art historian Christine Boyanoski described Wyle's new
direction, "Wyle had carved torsos in wood earlier, but the Rivers series …went beyond … [and]
exploited the wood to its fullest by using the strong grain of the sumac to define individual
forms, the concentric rings around the breasts and belly …and by allowing an element of 'non
finito' to enter the work…with some of the outer bark [left] untouched, as in The
Illinois". The Rivers series became the model for Wyle's subsequent Calvert Drama Trophies,
1953, which were designed with Loring and Sylvia Daoust (1902-2004), a well-known Canadian
sculptress and wood carver.
In 1962, Wyle was honoured with Loring in a travelling retrospective exhibition, Fifty Years of
Sculpture: Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, organised by the London Regional Art and
Historical Museums, London, Ontario.
In the last year of her life, at age eighty-seven, Wyle moved to a nursing home in Newmarket,
near Toronto, where she died in 1968. Her life-long companion Frances Loring, also in ill health
died three weeks later.
In the mid 1980s renewed recognition and reappraisal of Wyle's (and Loring's) sculpture, and
their contribution and importance in the history of Canadian art was witnessed by two
exhibitions; Visions and Victories: 10 Canadian Women Artists 1914-1945, a touring exhibition
curated by Natalie Luckyj, and Loring and Wyle: Sculptors' Legacy, curated Christine Boyanoski
at the Art Gallery of Ontario. In 2007, Elspeth Cameron's biography And Beauty Answers, The
Life of Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, included an extensively researched inventory of
Wyle's sculpture.
Selected Public Collections
Chicago, IL, USA, Art Institute of Chicago
Guelph, ON, MacDonald Stewart Art Gallery
Hamilton, ON, Art Gallery of Hamilton
Kleinberg, ON, McMichael Canadian Art Collection
Ottawa, ON, Canadian War Museum
Ottawa, ON, National Gallery of Canada
Owen Sound, ON, Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery
Sarnia, ON, Gallery Lambton (formerly Sarnia Public Library and Art Gallery)
Toronto, ON, Art Gallery of Ontario
Toronto, ON, Loring/Wyle Parkette
Toronto, ON, University of Toronto, Massey College
Winnipeg, MB, Winnipeg Art Gallery
Selected Public Commissions
1907-08, Boy and Grapes, Fountain, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
1918, War Work, bronze statuettes, Canadian War Memorials, Ottawa, ON
1920, WD Young Memorial Fountain, (with Maurice Klein), Kew Gardens, Toronto, ON
1922, Memorial to Nurse Edith Cavell, Toronto General Hospital, Toronto, ON
1937, Panels, Henry Oakes Pavilion, & Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls, ON
1939, The Queen Elizabeth Monument, (with W L Somerville), portrait reliefs of King George
and Queen Elizabeth, eastern entrance to the Queen Elizabeth Highway, Toronto, ON, (now
located in Sir Casimir Gzowski Park, Toronto).
1946-48, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, panels, Bank of Montreal, Toronto, ON
1950, two reliefs, Alberta Red Cross Crippled Children's Hospital, Calgary, AB
1953, Calvert Trophies, Dominion Drama Festival
1954, Farm Animals, relief, McNabb Memorial Library, Ontario Veterinary Hospital, Guelph,
ON
Selected Two-person Exhibitions
1917, Exhibition of Sculpture by Florence Wyle and Frances Loring, Old Grange, Art Museum
of Toronto, Toronto, ON
1926, Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, Hart House, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON
1952, Sculpture by Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, Willistead Art Gallery, Windsor, ON
1962, Fifty Years of Sculpture: Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, London Regional Art and
Historical Museums, London, ON; travelling
1966, Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, Pollock Gallery, Toronto, ON
1969, Frances Loring and Florence Wyle Memorial Exhibition, Pollock Gallery, Toronto, ON
1976, Shadow of the Year, Sisler Gallery, Toronto, ON
1977, Frances Loring and Florence Wyle: A Retrospective, The MacDonald Gallery, Queen's
Park, Toronto, ON
1978, Sculptures by Florence Wyle and Frances Loring, MacDonald Stewart Art Gallery,
University of Guelph, Guelph, ON
1987, Loring and Wyle: Sculptors' Legacy, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON
Selected Group Exhibitions
1914-1956, Royal Canadian Academy
1922, Art Association of Montreal, Montreal, QC
1915, Sculpture Exhibition, Art Museum of Toronto, Toronto, ON
1922, Women's Art Association of Toronto Exhibition, Toronto, ON
1924, British Empire Exhibition, Canadian Section of Fine Arts, Wembley, UK
1927, Exposition d'art canadien, Musée du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France
1928, 1st Exhibition, Sculptors Society of Canada, Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto, ON
1931, 53rd Exhibition, Robinson, Newton, Wyle, Watson Galleries, Montreal, QC
1937, Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Sculptures by Artists of the British Empire
Overseas, Royal Institute Galleries, London, UK
1939, New York, NY, USA
1942, In the Print Room: Jacobine Jones, Frances Loring, Dora Wechsler, Florence Wyle, Art
Gallery of Toronto, Toronto, ON
1950, Sculptors' Society of Canada, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON
1953, Robertson Gallery, Ottawa, ON
1953, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON
1983-84, Visions and Victories: 10 Canadian Women Artists 1914-1945, London Regional Art
Gallery, London, ON; touring, Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON, Kitchener-Waterloo Art
Gallery, ON, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, NS, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON
Selected Memberships and Awards
1920, Member, Ontario Society of Artists; 1933, resigned; 1948, reinstated
1928, Founding Member, Sculptors' Society of Canada; 1944, President; 1947, Vice President
1938, Member, Royal Canadian Academy of Arts
1941, Federation of Canadian Artists
1953, Coronation Medal
References
Artist's Documentation File, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives.
Boyanoski, Christine. Loring and Wyle: Sculptors' Legacy. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario,
1987.
Cameron, Elspeth. And Beauty Answers, The Life of Frances Loring and Florence Wyle,
Toronto: Cormorant Books Inc, 2007.
Canadian Women Artists History Initiative: A Bio-bibliographic Database, Biographic
Information, Florence Wyle, web site, http://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/biography.php
(accessed 13 June, 2008).
Celebrating Women's Achievements, Women Artists in Canada, Biographies, France Loring and
Florence Wyle Sculptors, Library and Archives Canada, website,
www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/women/002026-514-e.html (accessed 13 June, 2008).
Luckyj, Natalie. Visions and Victories: 10 Canadian Women Artists 1914-1945, London, ON:
London Regional Art Gallery, 1983.
McInnes, Graham. Canadian Art, Toronto: McMillan Co. of Canada, 1950.
Sisler, Rebecca. The Girls: A Biography of Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, Toronto: Clarke,
Irwin, 1972.
Wyle, Florence. Poems/Florence Wyle, Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1959.
Wyle, Florence. The Shadow of the Year: Poems, Toronto: Aliquando Press, 1976.
Judith Parker
Compiled June 2008
A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, volumes 1-8 by Colin S. MacDonald, and volume 9 (online
only), by Anne Newlands and Judith Parker
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada / Musée des beaux-arts du Canada