W. W. Cowell art on exhibit at Yarmouth museum

The Yarmouth County Museum & Archives on Collins Street is featuring an exhibit of works by American artist, William Wilson Cowell.

Believed to have been born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1856, he is considered primarily a landscape and marine painter.

His work was influenced by the ‘luminist’ school of art. This is a style of painting that emphasizes careful attention to the effects of direct and reflected light within a painting. His watercolours – which appear to be predominantly his medium of choice while painting in Nova Scotia – clearly demonstrate this style.

Cowell studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association in 1869 and worked in New York from 1870-1872.

He summered in Nova Scotia and in 1905 he married Florence M. Cress of Round Hill, Annapolis County. At the time of his marriage he was a widower and would have been 50 years old. On Sept. 7, 1910 died at Round Hill and was buried in Pennsylvania.

All of the paintings in the Yarmouth exhibit are watercolours. The exhibit runs until April 15. Admission is free in January courtesy of Register.com