{{Short description|Canadian photographer (1861–1943)}} {{for|the British suffragist and police officer|Edith Watson (police officer)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=January 2021}} {{Infobox artist <!-- See Template:Infobox artist --> | name = Edith S. Watson | image = Edith Sarah Watson, by Horace L. Bundy.jpg | birth_name = Edith Sarah Watson | birth_date = {{birth date |1861|11|09}} | birth_place = East Windsor Hill, Connecticut, U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|1943|12|23|1861|11|09}} | death_place = St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S. | occupation = Photographer | notable_works = ''Romantic Canada'' (1922) | relatives = Amelia Watson (sister)<br/>Sereno Watson (uncle) }}
'''Edith Sarah Watson''' (November 9, 1861{{snd}}December 23, 1943)<ref name=":2" /> was a photographer whose career spanned the 1890s through the 1930s.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Rooney |first=Frances |title=Working Light: The Wandering Life of Photographer Edith S. Watson |publisher=Carleton University Press |year=1996 |isbn=9780886292737 |location=Ottawa, Canada}}</ref> She is best known for her photojournalistic images of rural people working, most often women, particularly in Canada.<ref name=":2" />
==Early life== Born in 1861 in East Windsor Hill, Connecticut, United States, she was the youngest of four children of Sarah and Reed Watson. Reed farmed tobacco and, during times of poor crops, worked as a printer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Edith Watson studied at Hartford Female Seminary, founded by Catherine Beecher, educational reformer and sister of ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' author Harriet Beecher Stowe. During her early years, Watson's uncle, medical doctor, botanist and photographer, Sereno Watson<ref name=":2" />, introduced her to the art and tools of photography.
For a decade after Edith's 1882 graduation from the seminary, she and her sister, Amelia Watson, a lifelong watercolourist, shared shows and sales around New England. In 1887 they built a studio on one end of the family home, where they continued to show, sell, and work when they were at home. In the 1890s, the sisters' paths diverged: Amelia went south, Edith Watson north.<ref name=":2" />
==Photography career== thumb|Edith Watson
Watson's professional travels began in Newfoundland and Canada in the early 1890s. She went first as a painter, but soon partly, then almost exclusively, earned her living as an artistic and commercial photographer of rural people, most often women, across the country<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Rooney |first=Frances |title=Working the Rock: Newfoundland and Labrador in the Photographs of Edith S. Watson, 1890–1930 |date=2017 |publisher=Boulder Books |year=2017 |isbn=9781927099742 |location=St. John's}}</ref><ref name=":2" />. She sold her photographs to numerous North American newspapers and magazines; she sometimes bartered her photographs to obtain lodging or supplies. Through these efforts, she maintained her independence and supported herself as both artist and traveler<ref name=":1" />.
Starting in 1898, Watson spent winters in Bermuda, where she rented a studio in St. George's, and sold watercolours and hand-tinted photographs.<ref name=":2" /> In 1911, she met journalist Victoria "Queenie" Hayward (1876–1956),<ref name=":1" /> who became her partner in work and in life.<ref name=Queenie >{{cite news|last1=Rooney|first1=Frances|title=Photographer Edith Watson|url=http://section15.ca/features/people/1997/12/31/edith_watson/|accessdate=March 7, 2015|work=section15.ca|date=December 31, 1997|archive-date=April 2, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402094816/http://section15.ca/features/people/1997/12/31/edith_watson/|url-status=dead}}</ref> The pair lived, worked, and traveled extensively together through isolated areas of Newfoundland, Labrador and Canada.<ref name=Rooney />
With her camera, Watson documented the lives of people in Newfoundland, Labrador, the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, and then westward into Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia,<ref name=Rooney /> while Hayward wrote about them.<ref name=Dagg >{{cite book|last1=Dagg|first1=Anne Innis|author-link1=Anne Innis Dagg|title=The feminine gaze a Canadian compendium of non-fiction women authors and their books, 1836–1945|date=2001|publisher=Wilfrid Laurier University Press|location=Waterloo, Ont.|isbn=978-0889203556|page=129|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IJwyLyaT9KYC&pg=PA129|accessdate=March 1, 2015}}</ref> The two women stayed with First Nations people in Quebec and Ontario; Mennonites, Doukhobors, and other "New Canadians" in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia<ref name=":1" />; and Haida people in British Columbia.<ref name=Rooney >{{cite book|last1=Rooney|first1=Frances|title=Extraordinary women explorers|date=2005|publisher=Second Story Press|location=Toronto|isbn=9781896764986|pages=29–37|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KcPOT_xktfgC&pg=PT29|accessdate=March 1, 2015}}{{Dead link|date=February 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>
Edith worked and travelled alone for twenty years, then for almost another two decades with Victoria Hayward. Throughout that time she sold her work to governments and advertisers, as well as publications including ''Chatelaine'', ''Maclean's'', the ''Canadian Magazine'', ''National Geographic,'' and ''Ladies’ Home Journal''. Uncommonly for the time, she insisted on being credited for her published work.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" />
In 1922, Macmillan Canada published Watson and Hayward's ''Romantic Canada''. The largest travel book published in the country to that time, it featured 77 of Watson's photographs reproduced in halftone<ref name=":1" />. It was unique, as it highlighted women's contributions to rural communities.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Bassnett, Sarah; Parsons, Sarah |url=https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/photography-in-canada-1839-1989/key-photographers/edith-watson/ |title=Photography in Canada, 1839–1989: An Illustrated History |publisher=Art Canada Institute |year=2023 |isbn=978-1-4871-0309-5 |location=Toronto}}</ref> In it, Hayward coined the phrase "the Canadian mosaic" to describe the country's multiculturalism;<ref name="Rooney" /> the phrase and concept was picked up by subsequent thinkers and artists, including writer and cultural promoter John Murray Gibbon.
Watson died on a trip to St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1943.<ref name="concordia">{{cite web|title=Watson, Edith|url=http://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist.php?ID_artist=5624|website=Canadian Women Artists History Initiative|publisher=Concordia University|accessdate=March 1, 2015}}</ref>
==Photographs of Canadian women== <gallery mode="packed" heights="180"> File:Edith Watson A Canadian Gardener at the edge of a Cape Breton village Touchstone v1 394.jpg | "Hoeing Potatoes, Petty Harbour" File:Edith Watson Along the Shore at Cape Breton Canada Touchstone v1 396.jpg | "Along the Shore at Burgeo, Newfoundland, Canada" File:Edith Watson 244 Dried Berries Touchstone v3.jpg | "Dried berries being packed away for winter luxuries" File:Edith Watson 246 Weeding beans Touchstone v3.jpg | "Weeding beans on a Dutch truck farm outside Winnipeg, Manitoba" File:Edith Watson 102 Madonna of the Fields Touchstone v6.jpg | "Madonna of the Fields" </gallery>
==Photographs of Bermuda == <gallery mode=packed heights=180> File:Edith Watson 234 Flower jars Bermuda Touchstone v6.jpg | Flower jars of carved coral, Bermuda </gallery>
==References== {{Reflist|30em}}
{{commons category}} ==External links== {{Library resources box|by=yes|onlinebooksby=yes|lcheading=Watson, Edith S.}}
*[https://books.google.com/books?id=Pe9YAAAAMAAJ ''Romantic Canada'', by Victoria Hayward, illustrated with photographs by Edith S. Watson] *[https://books.google.com/books?id=e6MQAQAAMAAJ ''Working Light: The Wandering Life of Photographer Edith S. Watson'', by Frances Rooney] *[https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/photography-in-canada-1839-1989/key-photographers/edith-watson/ "Edith Watson" in ''Photography in Canada, 1839-1989: An Illustrated History''] by Sarah Parsons and Sarah Bassnett, published by the Art Canada Institute
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Watson, Edith}} Category:1861 births Category:1943 deaths Category:19th-century Canadian LGBTQ people Category:19th-century Canadian photographers Category:19th-century Canadian women artists Category:20th-century Canadian LGBTQ people Category:20th-century Canadian photographers Category:20th-century Canadian women artists Category:American emigrants to Canada Category:Canadian lesbian artists Category:Canadian LGBTQ photographers Category:Canadian women photographers Category:Lesbian photographers Category:People from South Windsor, Connecticut