Philip John Bainbrigge

Philip John Bainbrigge (1817 1881) was a British military officer and painter who served in what was then called Upper and Lower Canada from 1836 to 1843.

Biography

Bainbrigge was born at Lichfield, Staffordshire into a military family. He was trained as a military man and in art at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich (1830–1833) and posted to Canada in 1836. He served in the Rebellions of 1837-1838.

He travelled widely in Canada as it was then, drawing and painting watercolours of which 137 along with his drawing pencil, pen and ink are in Library and Archives Canada. His subjects ranged widely from the First Nations people to scenic views, especially of fortifications and occupations such as maple sugaring, which provide a valuable record of early Canada. In 1841–1842, he was promoted to Acting Adjutant. In 1843, he returned to England where he died in 1881.

Albumen prints of Bainbrigge in 1862 by Camille Silvy are preserved in the Photography section of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Selected public collections

Library and Archives Canada

National Gallery of Canada

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec

McCord Museum

Bibliothèque nationale de France

References

1817 births

1881 deaths

19th-century British artists

19th-century British painters

British watercolourists

British male painters

19th-century Canadian painters

Canadian watercolourists

19th-century male artists

Canadian male painters

People from Staffordshire

19th-century Canadian male artists