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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Evern "Earl" Bailly (8 July 1903 – 1 July 1977) was a Canadian mouth-painter and print-maker.[1]
Bailly was born in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia in 1903. His father, John, was a blacksmith and his mother, Willietta, a schoolteacher.[2][3] He had four siblings, George, Rayburn, Margaret and Donald.[4] When he was three years old he contracted polio, and this made him a quadriplegic for the rest of his life.[5] George and an uncle, Bert, also caught the disease, but not as bad.[6][4] Earl was educated by his mother. He learned to write, then draw, by holding a pen in his mouth, and won a drawing contest in a newspaper.[3] His mother said "His father and I tried to interest Earl in other things. We felt that he was headed for disappointment. But the other children knew better. They set up drawing boards for him — until I gave in."[7]
By the time Bailly was ten, he was painting with watercolours. His family adapted his wheelchair so he could do oil-paintings. He studied with artist George Pearse Ennis in Maine, and took further art-studies in New York, gaining recognition. He traveled widely with his brother Donald, exhibiting his art in Canada, the US and Bermuda.[3][8] He also learned how to linocut, though he found this too strenuous.[9][7] People who acquired his paintings included Canadian prime ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King and John Diefenbaker, Elizabeth II, whom Bailly met twice, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.[8][9]
In 1933, Earl and Donald traveled to the Chicago World's Fair on the schooner Bluenose.[9] According to Donald's daughter, "My dad made sure Earl had all of the adventures he wanted to have. Everyone - his brothers, my grandparents - made sure he had a real life."[6] Earl said "Don has given me everything."[7]
Bailly had visited Bermuda three times by 1967. In 1963 he attended the opening of a Bailly gallery at Shelly Bay. Apart from paintings, the gallery also displayed a few of his linocuts.[10]
Canadian writer Will R. Bird said of Bailly "... one of Canada's better artists ... an inspiration to any person, how gifted he may be."[3] According to The Saturday Evening Post in 1949, "Physicians prize his work the most. They find more curative power for crippled, handicapped patients in one Bailly canvas than in a whole chestful of medicines."[7] ARTnews said of a New York exhibition in 1949 that "His brightly colored land scapes and seascapes, painted around Nova Scotia, exuded cheer and strength and — incredibly enough — The Cut and Blue and Gold, whose choppy, impasto strokes are bound into solid compositions, well-deserved reactions of delight."[11] In 1954, foot-and-mouth painter Peter Spencer saw an example of Bailly's art, and this inspired him to display his own work. Spencer was a former WWII-pilot who had lost the use of his arms in a crash.[12][13] The town of Lunenburg says "An inspiration to others in overcoming physical challenges to lead a full, productive life."[1]
The Bailly House, where he lived and had his studio until his death in 1977, is recognized as a historic place by the Canadian Register of Historic Places.[14][15] The Pelham Street house is the oldest building in Lunenburg,[16] and his brother Donald continued living there after Earl died.[17]
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