John Russell Harper

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John Russell Harper (April 13, 1914 – November 17, 1983) was an eminent Canadian art historian who is considered to have pioneered the field of art history in Canada.

Harper was born at Caledonia, Ontario. he worked for some time as a primary school teacher before studying at the Ontario School of Art from 1938 to 1940. During World War II, he served as a radar mechanic in Canada and England. After the war, he enrolled at the University of Toronto and received a B.A. in 1948 and an M.A. in 1950 in arts and archeology.

In the 1950s, he became the chief cataloguer of the Royal Ontario Museum, and in 1951, he moved to Saint John, New Brunswick, to work for the New Brunswick Museum. From 1959 to 1963, he was the curator of Canadian art at the National Gallery of Canada, and from 1965 to 1968 the chief curator of the McCord Museum of McGill University. From 1965 until his retirement in 1979 he also lectured as professor of art history at Concordia University in Montreal.

Beginning in the 1960s, he specialized on studying Canadian painting. His Painting in Canada: a History of 1966 was the first comprehensive overview of the field. Subsequent works include the ground-breaking studies on Paul Kane (Paul Kane's Frontier, 1971) and on Cornelius Krieghoff (Krieghoff, 1979). His later interests centered on Canadian folk art.

[edit] Selected works

Painting in Canada: a History, University of Toronto Press, 1966. Reprinted 1977. ISBN 0-8020-6307-1.
Paul Kane's Frontier, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX; 1971. ISBN 0-292-70110-1.
Krieghoff, University of Toronto Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8020-2348-7.