Anthony Flower

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Anthony Flower (1792-1875) was a Canadian artist. He was born in London, England on March 4, 1792, the son of merchant mariner Cornelius Flower and Margaret Nicholson. He showed early promise as an artist (his earliest surviving work, a watercolour, was painted when he was twelve). As an artist he was self taught but he trained under his father as a seaman. He did not enjoy the life and in 1817 he immigrated to Canada, settling in MacDonalds Corner on Washademoak Lake, Queens County, New Brunswick. There he took up farming, was married and had four children.

He pursued his art as a personal passion. As such he was not recognized in his lifetime and was barely known outside his family. In 2006, an exhibition of his works, some 200 in all, was exhibited for the first time at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. The works include landscapes of his own and neighbouring farms, and portraits of family members. He often practiced by copying images from the pages of the Illustrated London News.

As one of the rare regional artists to emerge from nineteenth century New Brunswick, his work “opens a window on a time and place now gone”.[1]

His modest house, which he built, is being restored as a museum in Cambridge-Narrows by the Queens County Historical Society.