John Arthur Fraser was a British artist, photography entrepreneur and teacher. He undertook various paintings for the Canadian Pacific Railway. He is known for his highly realistic landscapes of Canada and the United States, many of them watercolors.
John Arthur Fraser was born on 9 January 1838 in London, England.His parents were John Fraser of Portsoy, Scotland, and Isabella Warren of London.His father was a tailor and an outspoken supporter of the Chartist movement.His father's parents had moved to Stanstead in the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada (Quebec) as pioneers in 1831.Fraser may have taken evening classes in drawing at the Royal Academy Schools around 1852, and later he was described as "a pupil of the South Kensington Schools", but neither school has any record of him. On 4 April 1858 he married Anne Maria Sayer in Forest Hill, London, describing himself as an artist on his marriage certificate.They would have three sons and three daughters.Very soon after his marriage he moved with his wife and parents to Stanstead, Lower Canada, where his grandmother had lost her husband two years earlier.
John Arthur had moved to Montreal by 1860, looking for work as a decorative painter.His father also moved to Montreal and worked as a book agent while writing on politics until his death in 1872. Fraser became a photograph tinter with William Notman's firm. Notman had been paying William Raphael on commission, but was not satisfied with his work.He engaged Fraser in 1860 as his main artist, with the young Henry Sandham as his assistant. Fraser was paid a salary of $125 per month.
Over time Fraser's art department grew to employ a large staff that coloured photographs, retouched negatives and painted backgrounds. Painted photographs were made from the carte-de-visite size, 3.5 by 2.25 inches (89 by 57 mm), or the cabinet photograph size, 5 by 3.5 inches (127 by 89 mm). The negatives were projected onto sensitized paper and processed in the normal way. The paper was then pasted onto canvas on a stretcher frame, or onto cardboard, and after the artist had done their work was place in an ornamental guilt frame by Notman's framing department.
The work of Fraser and Sandham was included in Notman's first book Photographic selections (1863), which also included work by Montreal artists sch as Otto Reinhold Jacobi, Charles Jones Way and Robert Stuart Duncanson. Fraser's genre painting of a pond with children in the foreground was entitled Sunshine and Shower.The text by Thomas Davies King said that the artist "has not had more opportunity of following a branch of art in which he would be successful", an allusion to Fraser's work supervising Notman's art department.
Fraser also exhibited oil paintings of New Hampshire and Eastern Township landscapes with the Art Association of Montreal, and sold these paintings through dealers. Notman was a charter member and ongoing supporter of the Art Association of Montreal. His studio became a center for members of the artistic community of Montreal and visitors from elsewhere.In 1867 Fraser, Sandham, and Fraser's brother William Lewis Fraser were charter members of the Society of Canadian Artists, which was organized in Notman's studio. In May 1868 Fraser was elected a member of the New York-based American Society of Painters in Water Colors.
Fraser left Notman's firm in Montreal in October 1868 and in November 1868 opened the partnership of Notman and Fraser in Toronto. In Toronto Fraser employed young painters such as Horatio Walker, Homer Watson and Frederick Arthur Verner to provide high-quality artistic work. In 1876 Notman and Edward Wilson formed the Centennial Photographic Company, which obtained a monopoly on photography at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.Fraser was employed as art supervisor by the company, which had 100 employees working in a large building on the exhibition grounds.
Fraser was the driving force in creating the Ontario Society of Artists (OSA). On 25 June 1872 he arranged a meeting at his home with six other artists who decided to from the OSA.The founders were Fraser, J. W. Bridgman, Robert Ford Gagen, James Hoch, Marmaduke Matthews, Charles Stuart Millard and Thomas Mower Martin. The honorary president was William Holmes Howland, and on 2 July 1872 Fraser was elected vice-president.The society held its first exhibition on 14 April 1873 at the Notman and Fraser premises, recently built for the firm.The press paid most attention to the work of Fraser, Lucius Richard O'Brien and Frederick Arthur Verner.Fraser was reelected vice-president of the OSA in 1873, but drew criticism for the way he dealt with the treasurer, who had embezzled funds.O'Brien replaced him in June 1874, and in December 1874 he resigned from the OSA.
In February 1877 Fraser again became a member of the OSA, and in summer of 1877 went by rail on a sketching trip to New Brunswick.In May 1878 he submitted a large number of oils and watercolors from his sketches to the OSA exhibition, where he received much praise for his work. That year he first exhibited his work with the American Watercolor Society. In October 1876 the Government of Ontario agreed to give the OSA a grant of $1,000 to open the first art school in Ontario at 14 King Street West in Toronto. Fraser was elected to the council of the Ontario School of Art in 1878, and in September that year began general supervisor of paintings at the school.His pupils included George Agnew Reid and Ernest Thompson Seton.

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