Collection: Paul Alfred

Paul Alfred (1892-1959)
OSA, CSG, CSPWC

Paul Alfred was born in Hanley, Staffordshire in England. He attended the Polytechnic School of Art at Hanley from 1902 to 1906. The year he graduated Alfred moved to Canada, returning to England to continue his studies at the Polytechnic in London in 1920. As a landscape and genre painter, Alfred’s chief mediums were tempera, watercolour, and pen and ink. He exhibited at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, London in 1924 and at the First Pan American Exhibition in Los Angeles in 1925. Alfred received honourable mention at the Lord Willingdon Competition in Ottawa in 1927, and that same year he exhibited with the Exposition d’Art Canadien at the Musee du Jeu de Paume in Paris. Alfred served overseas in the Royal Canadian Electrical Mechanical Engineers during World War II and worked with the Department of National Defence in Ottawa. As an illustrator, Alfred worked on tourist and other publications for the Department of National Resources of Canada. Alfred taught watercolour painting at the Art Association of Ottawa and painted murals for Army Affairs at the messes in Ottawa and in Petawawa. He was a member of the Canadian Society of Graphic Art and the Ontario Society of Artists, as well as being a founding member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour. Alfred’s work is represented in the Edmonton Gallery, the Public Archives of Canada, and the National Gallery of Canada. 

*Source: MacDonald, Colin S. A Dictionary of Canadian Artists. Volume 1.