Clara Mountcastle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Clara Mountcastle
Clara Mountcastle ca 1893.jpg
Born(1837-11-26)26 November 1837
Huron Tract, Canada
Died24 May 1908(1908-05-24) (aged 70)
Clinton, Ontario, Canada
Known for

Clara H. Mountcastle (26 November 1837 – 24 May 1908)[1] was a Canadian artist and author who published her early work under the pseudonym Caris Sima.

Early years and education[]

Clara H. Mountcastle was born in Clinton, Ontario, Canada in 1837, one of 12 children of Sidney Harmon Mountcastle, a farmer, and Frances Laura (Meikle) Mountcastle.[1] Mountcastle received early art training from her mother, an amateur painter,[1] and later (1855–57) studied art in Toronto while living with her uncle John George Howard, an architect.[1][2] By 1881, she had returned to Clinton, where she lived with two of her sisters for the remainder of her life.[1]

Career[]

Mountcastle's watercolors won five prizes at the 1870 Provincial Exhibition in Toronto.[1] She continued exhibiting at provincial and national exhibitions through the 1880s.[1][2] Critics noted her skill with traditional marine subjects.[1] In 1897, as the new Impressionist style gained favor, her work was rejected by the Ontario Society of Artists, where she had previously exhibited, and she was also prevented from joining the society.[1] She joined the Women's Art Association of Canada instead.[1]

Mountcastle's writing career did not begin until the 1880s. She published both poetry and prose and also gave dramatic readings of her work.[2] Her first two books, The Mission of Love (poems, 1882) and A Mystery (novella, 1886) came out under the pseudonym Caris Sima, which she derived from her childhood nickname of 'Carissima'.[1] Her third book, Is Marriage a Failure? (essay, 1899), came out under her own name.[1] She earned praise for her ability to write poems in a wide range of forms spanning from hymns to dialect verse, though she did not handle all equally well and her poems tended towards conventional sentimentality rather than originality.[1] Recurring subjects included rural life, ill-fated love, and attacks on critics.[1] Her meditations on aging and poverty speak to the struggles of genteel poverty which many women of her day faced, including the Mountcastle sisters.[1]

She died of kidney cancer in 1908.[3]

Publications[]

  • The Mission of Love (poems, 1882)
  • A Mystery (novella, 1886)
  • Is Marriage a Failure? (essay, 1899)

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Godard, Barbara (1994). "Mountcastle, Clara". Dictionary of Canadian Biography.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c Willard, Frances E., and Mary A. Livermore, eds. A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks Of Life. Moulton, 1893, pp. 527–28.
  3. ^ "Mountcastle, Clara". Canada's Early Women Writers. Simon Fraser University. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
Retrieved from ""