1

John Grayson and Vaughan
1898
Moose Jaw, SK


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

2

Vaughan Grayson was not the first painter to tour the Rocky Mountains, but her mature and emotional connection with them is worthy of recognition. She was a girl born on the bald prairie, outside of Moose Jaw when Moose Jaw was in its infancy, yet she developed a profound relationship with the Canadian Rockies and the Okanagan Valley, and spent her whole life sharing that relationship with the rest of the world.

3

Grayson Home
Circa 1900
Moose Jaw, SK


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

4

Ellen Vaughan Kirk Grayson was born in 1894 on a farm just outside of Moose Jaw, SK. Her family settled into a house near the centre of town shortly after her birth. Grayson grew up on Main Street, which she described as "much rutted by wagon wheels and carriages" in the days of her childhood. She grew up with the city as it expanded after the turn of the century. She attended Victoria School until Alexandra School was built, and in 1910 was part of the first class to attend Central Collegiate, the first collegiate in Saskatchewan.

5

Family
1910
Moose Jaw, SK


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

6

Vaughan Grayson's father, John Hawke Grayson, had settled in the Moose Jaw area in 1883, and married Adela Babb, from Manitoba. Vaughan was one of two children, along with her younger brother Keith.
She was born into an affluent family. Her father, John Hawke Grayson, served as an alderman and as Moose Jaw's first postmaster. Her uncle was William Grayson, a prominent lawyer and one of the town's first mayors, and it was through him that she was first exposed to art.

7

Girl Guides
Circa 1905
Moose Jaw, SK


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

8

Painting at the Beach
1924
British Columbia


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

9

William Grayson had amassed a collection of about 60 pieces of art from his travels. Vaughan Grayson developed a deep fascination for art, and, imagining that she would not be able to afford to buy paintings, she decided to paint them herself. She enjoyed drawing as a child, and received lessons from a local artist named Gertrude Rorason. There are few remaining examples of her very early work, but it was probably influenced by her uncle’s collection.

10

Keith and Vaughan at Banff
1909
Banff Park, AB


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

11

When she was 14, her family travelled by train to the Rocky Mountains. This trip changed Grayson's life; it began what would become a lifelong kinship with the Rockies. Her father and uncle were well-travelled themselves, and her family's prosperity allowed plenty of opportunity to see the world. After finishing high school, she went to Europe, South America, South Africa, and Egypt with her cousin Ethel Kirk Grayson.

12

Moose Jaw River
1920-30
Moose Jaw, SK


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

13

Nurse
1918
Moose Jaw, SK


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

14

In 1918, she worked as a nurse, treating victims of the Spanish Influenza epidemic.

15

Graduation
1923
New York


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

16

The same year, she returned to school, attending the Curry School of Expression in Boston, which was an art school set up for wealthy young women. She specialised in elocution (acting), which involved memorising plays, prose, and poetry, and then presenting them orally. She spent a brief period at St. Margaret's College studying under Marion Long, and in the early 1920's, she studied at the Teacher's College at Columbia University in New York. There she received a Bachelor of Science, also studying art education and receiving a professional certificate in Fine Arts.

17

Teacher's College
1925
Regina, SK


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

18

In 1922, Grayson was appointed Art Curriculum Supervisor for the Moose Jaw Public School Board. A few years later, she began instructing at the Normal School teacher's college in Regina, and in 1929, she was made Director of Art at the Normal School in Moose Jaw. During this time she wrote two books on art appreciation for elementary and high school students. The books took examples of Canadian and European artwork and gave brief interpretations of them, as well as correlating them to music, prose, and poetry. They became widely circulated during the 1930's. In the 1940's, she led sketching trips into the mountains for the Banff School of Fine Arts. Grayson would continue to be an art educator in some capacity for the next twenty years.

19

Alpiners
1920-30
Tonquin Valley


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

20

Grayson with Two Friends
Circa 1926
Rocky Mountains


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

21

Grayson travelled extensively throughout her life. During the 1920's, she continued to travel to the mountains during the summers, joining excursions with the Canadian Alpine Club, or "Alpiners", as she called them. This was a group comprising climbing enthusiasts from around the world who joined together for guided mountain climbing expeditions, yet Grayson did not attend these for the experience of climbing and summitting the Rocky Mountains. She was far more interested in hiking to those locations among the lakes and mountains that provided sketching and painting opportunities. She only went out with the Alpiners a few times, and afterwards preferred to organise her own excursions.

22

Blue Velvet
1926
Moose Jaw, SK


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

23

Vaughan Sketching
1937
Rocky Mountains


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

24

After her marriage in 1929, she began to paint more seriously. In the 1940s, she became more successful exhibiting her pieces. She showed some of her work at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto on 1940, and showed at the Annual British Columbia Exhibition from 1942 to 1945. Her painting Mount Rundle was voted third out of 133 works at the 1942 exhibition.
The majority of her works were produced in the 1950's. She briefly involved herself with sculpture, but didn't stay with it, saying that she "could handle painting" better. The overwhelming preference in her art was for mountain scenery, with which she had fallen in love during her earlier trips to the Rockies. Lakes and trees were also commonly featured; she always tended towards the grandeur of nature. Rarely did her paintings ever show evidence of human presence.

25

Around this time, she also learned the art of silkscreen printing. She was taught by a man from Edmonton and took to the new medium immediately. Silkscreens were still somewhat new as an art-making technique, and Grayson continued to experiment with them throughout the 1950's. She usually made editions of 20 prints for her paintings, and would always sell out.

26

Adventures of an Artist in the Canadian Rockies, by Vaughan Grayson
22 March 2006
Moose Jaw, SK


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

27

Grayson's expeditions into the Rockies continued well into her 60's. During the 1950's and early 1960's, she completed a manuscript entitled Adventures of an Artist in the Canadian Rockies. It details several trips through Alberta and British Columbia where she completed the majority of her artwork. It is divided into brief chapters, each one dealing with a different locale, and each one assigned a different quotation from various poets or authors. The personal narrative is limited, and interactions with other people even moreso. The book's primary focus is to convey the impression that the grandeur of nature in the Rockies has on Grayson. She submitted the manuscript for publication in 1962, but it was rejected. It would finally be published nearly a decade after her death.

28

Vaughan and Arthur
Circa 1950
Oyama, B.C.


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

29

She had married Arthur J. Mann in 1929, and throughout their life together they lived at a house in Summerland, B.C. They lived there until Mann's death in the 1960's. After that, Grayson returned to Moose Jaw, but still preferred to spend her summers in the Okanagan. Her enthusiasm for travel didn't abandon her, and throughout the 1960's and 1970's, she took trips to Alaska, Japan, and New Zealand, as well as studying art at the Instituto Allende in Mexico.

30

Art Guild
1960
Moose Jaw, SK


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

31

She had four solo exhibitions while she was alive, the last being Ellen Vaughan Grayson: A Retrospective, which was held at the Kelowna Art Gallery in 1985. She had never sold any of her work, and the bulk of her paintings were bequeathed to her nephew, David Grayson, who, in turn, passed them onto the Moose Jaw and Kelowna art galleries.

32

Vaughan Grayson
Circa 1980
Moose Jaw, SK


Credits:
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

33

She died in 1995 at the age of 100, leaving a remarkable, if little-known, legacy behind her.