Lucius O'Brien
(1832-1899)

painter and civil engineer

Died aged c. 67

Lucius Richard O'Brien (or L. R. O'Brien as he was known) RCA (15 August 1832 – 13 December 1899) was an influential 19th-century Canadian oil and watercolour landscape artist.

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Commemorated on 1 plaque

Lucius O'Brien (1832-1899) Here, from 1881 to 1887, stood the home of Lucius O'Brien, one of our foremost painters and a leader in the development of Canada'a artistic life. Born in Shanty Bay, Ontario, O'Brien practised as a civil engineer before becoming a full-time painter in 1872. His expansive light-filled water-colours and oils depicting an heroic Canadian landscape won him wide acclaim here and abroad. His most famous work, and a key painting of the era, remains the majestic "Sunrise on the Saguenay", of 1880, in that year O'Brien began a ten-year presidency of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts which he helped to found. Later he was instrumental in the publication of "Picturesque Canada" whose 500 engravings revealed to many the variety and vastness of the young nation.

30 College Street, Toronto, ON, Canada where they lived