Lucius Richard O'Brien, R.C.A. (1832 - 1900) Inducted 1980

Lucius Richard O'Brien, was the outstanding Canadian artist of his day and the founder and first president of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art.

He was born in Shanty Bay in 1832, and he and a brother conducted a general store in Orillia for a number of years. He was a member and reeve of Orillia Township Council and sat on the Simcoe County Council. He was a member of the Village of Orillia Council in 1867 and was a church warden of St. James ' Church in Orillia for three terms.

He studied and practiced as a civil engineer and was proficient as a draftsman. He was president of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art, which he helped found, for ten years. His diploma picture, Sunrise on the Saguenay, is in the National Art Gallery, Ottawa, and it is this painting that was used for the 35 cent Canadian stamp, issued in 1980.

O'Brien's paintings are in the National Gallery and other galleries and in private hands in Canada and elsewhere. There are a number in private homes in Shanty Bay, and the Orillia Public Library also owns one. He exhibited in London, England, in Chicago and Philadelphia and other places as well as in Canada.

O'Brien's works are mostly landscapes in water colour and oils. His early paintings were done in the Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching areas.

O'Brien returned briefly to engineering work but became a full time artist about 1872. He painted widely in Ontario and in the eastern parts of Canada, visited the Rocky Mountains in 1882 and in 1886, and painted on the Pacific Coast in 1888. He was art editor of the large two volume illustrated work, Picturesque Canada by George Munro-Grant, published in 1882, and many of the black and white engravings are his. A large oil painting of Kakkabekka Falls near Thunder Bay, which depicts an incident on the fur-trading portage, is another of his works in the National Gallery. His death occurred in 1900.