This week in Sackville I am painting images of the town and of the surrounding countryside that were painted in the late 19th century by the artists John Hammond and Ethel Ogden. Ethel was quite an accomplished and innovative painter for her short life but the only recognition she received in her time was a short mention in the local paper of her china painting.
There is an unconfirmed story of a relationship between the two of them that has surfaced occasionally this week. There is some evidence that Ethel may have been instrumental in bringing Hammond to Sackville in 1893 with the Owens Art Collection. She studied under him in Saint John and then continued as a colleague in Sackville. The extent of the relationship is not clear, but he was her teacher and mentor and they would have gone out together to do plein air landscape painting. Many of their compositions are uncannily similar. Ethel died at a young age of tuberculosis but before this Hammond had married someone else.
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