Sophia Theresa "Sophie" Pemberton (13 February 1869 – 31 October 1959) was a Canadian painter who was British Columbia's first professional woman artist. Despite the social limitations placed on female artists at the time, she made a noteworthy contribution to Canadian art and, in 1899, was the first woman to win the Prix Julian from the Académie Julian for portraiture.
Pemberton first studied art at Mrs. Cridge's Reformed Episcopal School and at age 13 had two watercolour landscapes included in a presentation album for the visiting Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll. She often sketched en plein air, and recorded landscapes of the Cowichan Bay and Shawnigan Lake areas north of Victoria as well as the Fraser Valley. She attended finishing school in Brighton, UK where she received preliminary training in oil painting. Working from her studio in the family home, Pemberton aimed at becoming a professional artist.
Training abroad
In 1890, she travelled to London and studied with Arthur S. Cope following the curriculum of the South Kensington School of Art, where she excelled in her studies. She returned to Victoria afterward but came back to England, to the Clapham School of Art (1892–1893), taking the South Kensington School exams, receiving first-class grades in drawing from life, the antique, and still life, and had begun to attend the Westminster School of Art when in 1893 her father died and she experienced an emotional and physical breakdown, returning to Victoria the following year to recuperate. Her life would be punctuated, at inconvenient and unexpected moments with episodes of (possibly psychosomatic) ill health with severe physical weakness.
In London again in 1895, she established herself in a studio in Chelsea, and met a network of artists, among them Anna Nordgren and Canadian artists Sydney Strickland Tully (with whom she shared a painting model) and Florence Carlyle. She went on a sketching trip to Brittany with Nordgren in 1896. Between 1896 and 1898 Pemberton exhibited steadily, receiving positive reviews. She was a member of the women's 91 Art Club and was active in the movement for women's suffrage. A major breakthrough for Pemberton came when the Royal Academy of Arts accepted Daffodils, 1897, a large academic realist oil painting, for its annual London summer exhibition.
The following year she received the Julian-Smith Prix of 300 francs, another important achievement, reflecting the high quality of her portraiture. In 1900, Pemberton returned to live in Victoria following five highly successful years working in Europe. the Royal Academy in London (1897, 1898, 1901, 1904, 1907, 1910, 1916), the Paris
Salon with honourable mention medal in 1899 for her painting Little Boy Blue (Art Gallery of Greater Victoria) (1899, 1900 and 1903), the Canadian section of the Exposition Universelle in Paris (1900),in Victoria (1902, 1904), in Vancouver (1904), Also in 2023 to accompany the show, Bridge wrote, Sophie Pemberton: Life & Work for the Art Institute of Canada, available online, which supplied additional information on Pemberton, including her extensive sketching travels in Europe, friendship with Victoria Sackville-West (mother of Vita Sackville-West), her role in the Women's Suffrage Movement, and her baffling recurring illnesses.
Selected public collections
Pemberton's work is in the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Vancouver Art Gallery, Royal British Columbia Museum/B.C. Archives, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. and was a member of the B.C. Society of Fine Arts.