William Hope (1863-1931)

He was born at Montreal and travelled to Paris in the 1880s to study art under Aime Morot, Luc Oliver Merson and Antonin Mercie, often practicing in the Forest of Fontainebleau. He continued his studies in Rome and the Netherlands before living for a period in Bath, England. On returning to Montreal, he quickly became an influential member of the city's art community and in 1890, for the purpose of "social enjoyment, and the promotion of arts and letters", he founded the "Pen and Pencil Club of Montreal". The club first met at Hope's home in Montreal and after his death the club continued to meet up until the 1960s in the studios of Edmond Dyonnet, also on Dorchester Street. The Pen and Pencil Club quickly rose to prominence and its members included William Brymner, Maurice Cullen, Edmond Dyonnet, Robert Harris, Stephen Leacock, Lt.-Colonel John McCrae, Sir William Cornelius Van Horne, William Henry Drummond, Louis-Honoré Fréchette, Henri Hébert, Ernest Cormier, William Sutherland Maxwell, Percy Erskine Nobbs and Sir Andrew Macphail. As women were not allowed to join, it helped precipitate the creation of the Women's Art Association of Canada in 1894.

In 1906, Hope was elected a member of the council to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. He painted in oils, watercolours and ink, travelling widely throughout rural Quebec and the Canadian Maritimes drawing landscapes, harbours, boats, marine views, mountains, interiors and historic buildings. He was awarded a bronze medal for his work at the Canadian exhibition at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904 and in 1924 his painting The Sand Bar was purchased for the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada. Several other of his paintings can be seen at the McCord Museum in Montreal and his own portrait was executed by Alphonse Jongers in 1927.

In 1897, he was married at Toronto to Connie Jarvis, daughter of Arthur Murray Jarvis, nephew of William Botsford Jarvis of Rosedale. Hope's best men were his brother-in-law, Angus Hooper, and Fred Meredith, and the wedding was described in The Herald as, "quite a brilliant affair". Hope lived with Connie and their two children between 994 Dorchester Street West in Montreal - attached to which was "an attractive painting studio" - and "Dalmeny," their summer home at Saint Andrews, New Brunswick. Both their townhouse and their summer house were designed for them by the brothers William and Edward Maxwell. William R. Hope died in his apartments at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Montreal.