Caroline Helena Armington (née Wilkinson) (attributed To) - Portrait Of A Young Algerian Woman

Caroline Helena ARMINGTON (née WILKINSON) (Attributed to)
Brompton (Ontario), 1875 – New York, 1939
Portrait of a Young Algerian Woman
Oil on cardboard
Signed lower right “Armington / Algiers / 19.. ”
37 x 31.5 cm (42.5 x 36.5 cm with frame)
Beautiful gilded wooden frame from the Art Nouveau period

Frank and Caroline Armington were a Canadian artist couple who studied in Toronto under John Wycliffe Lowes Forster, a portrait painter and Caroline Wilkinson’s uncle. Frank then left for Paris in 1899, and Caroline joined him in 1900. They married there, and after returning to Canada for a time, they came back to Paris in 1905 to continue their training at the Académie Julian (alongside their compatriots William Brymner, James Wilson Morrice, and Alex Jackson), where they settled and pursued their artistic careers.
“A classmate taught Frank Milton the techniques of etching, and soon both Armingtons had reached a high level of skill. For Mrs. Armington, etching would become more important than painting.”
“Mrs. Armington won a silver medal at the 1911 Salon for her painting depicting a peasant woman lost in thought, titled *Vieille Brugeoise*. Her *Portrait of My Mother* (1912) reveals her continued commitment to precise and solid representation, as well as her adoption of a lighter palette than she had used previously. Her husband’s work in painting was moving in the same direction. »
In the meantime, they traveled to France, Italy, and Algeria.
Caroline painted portraits in Algeria—this beautiful portrait of an Algerian woman, painted by Caroline Armington in a style reminiscent of our painting, very effective, very concise, even simplified, and bearing the same signature as our painting; it sold for 6,000 euros on April 25, 2006, at Bukowskis in Stockholm.
“Ms. Armington’s growing success was evident in the inclusion of her works in juried exhibitions and led a journalist to ask her, in 1913, if there was any rivalry between her and her husband. ‘Never,’ she replied. “We’ve produced about the same amount of work each year, and when one of us wins an award at an exhibition, the other is just as proud as if they’d earned it themselves.” ”
“During the 1920s and 1930s, Mrs. Armington continued to paint and create etchings, receiving favorable reviews in France, the United States, and Canada. In 1923, on the occasion of her first solo painting exhibition at the Simonson Galleries in Paris, art critic Eugène Hoffmann praised her in the *Journal des Arts* for a rewarding and substantial exhibition.”
(…) Research and publications in the late 20th century have revived interest in the Armingtons, particularly Caroline Helena, and have successfully integrated them into an ongoing narrative of Canadian art history that is broader and more nuanced than before. »
(Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16, Editions de l'Université Laval/University of Toronto, 2016, Article: WILKINSON, Caroline Helena (Armington))