Loring

My name is Christine Boyanosky, I'm an independent curator and art historian, and I curated an exhibition about the girls, Francis Loring and Florence Wyle in 1987 for the Art Gallery of Ontario.

These are two portrait busts that Francis Loring and Florence Wyle did of each other when they lived in New York City in 1910. Both of the girls were American by birth. They met as students in Chicago, they lived and worked together in New York City and then moved to Canada. When they first came to Toronto, which I think was 1913, they immediately launched into the small art world as it existed at the time and showed with the Ontario Society of Artists. There was no Sculpture Society of Canada. That was later, that came in 1928. And they were both founding members of that body which was formed to promote sculpture, to help the cause of the artist and also to educate the public about sculpture. So they were very important at a very early period in the growth of sculpture and its appreciation in Canada.

If you look at the bust of Francis Loring by Florence Wyle, it's on a very sort of heavy base. She was a larger person and had a large personality and Florence Wyle's is elevated on a plinth and is much more delicate because she did have more delicate features. You'll notice that they both have worn their hair braided and arranged around the crown of their heads. The dress is sort of loose, probably what they wore as artists in that era. And they're pretty realistic, which is how they worked all their lives. They never really got into abstraction.

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