Living Room

Molly Lamb Bobak (1920-2014)
Painter, watercolourist, and printmaker, Vancouver-born artist Molly Lamb Bobak was the first Canadian woman to be appointed an official war artist, towards the end of WWII. She is best known for her expressionistic oil paintings celebrating ordinary life in crowds of people and interiors, largely produced after the war. She is also known for the humourous and satirical drawings of her wartime diary, depicting the day-to-day activities of the Canadian Women's Army Corps, and at times subtly critiquing gender bias. She has been compared to the British Neo-Romantic school for her gestural application of pigment and rootedness in the organic.
A pioneering Canadian artist, Lamb Bobak’s appointment as an official war artist launched her professional career as one of Canada’s first generation of professional women artists. Assigned to document the aftermath of the war in Europe, Lamb met other Canadian artists, including Bruno Bobak, Alex Colville and Lawren P. Harris. Family friend A.Y. Jackson and Jack Shadbolt, with whom she studied with at the Vancouver School of art, were influential figures in her life. A member of Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Lamb Bobak was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1995.