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Canada 2020 Mary Riter Hamilton Stamp Booklet MNH
$ 5.78
- Description
- Size Guide
Description
Released in time for Remembrance Day, a new commemorative stamp issued today features a 1919 painting by First World War artist Mary Riter Hamilton.Designed by Québec artist Réjean Myette, the Permanent domestic-rate stamp reproduces
Trenches on the Somme
, one of about 350 works produced by Hamilton between 1919 and 1922. Her work comprises the largest collection of Canadian First World War paintings by a single artist according to the 2017 book,
No Man’s Land: The Life and Art of Mary Riter Hamilton, 1868-1954
, by Kathryn Young and Sarah McKinnon.
“I made up my mind that where our men went under so much more dreadful conditions, I could go, and I am very proud to have been able even in a small way to commemorate the deeds of my countrymen, and especially if possible to lend a helping hand to the poor fellows like those of the Amputation Club who will be life-long sufferers from the war,” Hamilton said in a 1922 interview with the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.
Despite petitioning the Canadian War Memorials Fund to become a frontline war artist, Hamilton was denied as female artists were assigned to Canada’s home front; only men received commissions for the battlefront.
STAMP DETAILS
The Hamilton issue is available in 10-stamp booklets, 130,000 of which were printed by the Canadian Bank Note Company using six-colour lithography. Each stamp measures 36 millimetres by 36 millimetres.
As part of the issue, 7,000 official first-day covers, each measuring 190 millimetres by 112 millimetres, were serviced with cancels from Teeswater, Ont., where Hamilton was born.
While the stamp references Hamilton’s birth year as 1867, other sources provide varied dates, including “either 1867 or 1868” by the Canadian Encyclopedia and 1873 from both LAC and the Manitoba Historical Society.
“There is clearly a discrepancy in these records, but it would seem that the artist was born in either 1867 or 1868 (according to census and marriage records) or 1869 (according to her death certificate),” reads the 2017 book No Man’s Land, which uses Sept. 7, 1868, as Hamilton’s date of birth.