Mary Wrinch

Mary Evelyn Wrinch (1877-1969) RCA, OSA, CPE

Mary Wrinch was born in 1877 in Essex, England, and immigrated to Ontario in 1885. She studied at the Ontario School of Art (now OCAD) in Toronto under Robert Holmes, Laura Muntz, and G.A. Reid, whom she later married (1922). Wrinch displayed her work at a number of important exhibitions in her time, including the 1924 British Empire Exhibition (Wembley, London), the Tate Gallery's 1938 exhibition "A Century of Canadian Art", and another exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1969, which was curated by Joan Murray. Wrinch and her husband Reid lived in the noted Wychwood Park area of Toronto, a major arts and crafts community initiated by artist and businessman Marmaduke Matthews, who established the area as a private enclave for artists in 1888. In later years Wrinch worked as an art teacher at Bishop Strachan School in Toronto. Her work is held at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada.