Frances Norma Loring

Came to Canada in 1912

Biographical sketch:

Frances Norma Loring (1887–1968) was a Canadian sculptor of American birth. Born in Wardner, Idaho, she studied sculpture in Geneva, Munich and Paris in the period 1901–1905 and in New York at the Art Students’ League in 1910. While at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905, she met lifetime companion Florence Wyle, with whom she subsequently shared studios in New York (1909–1912) and Toronto (1912–1966). A member in 1920 of both the Royal Canadian Academy and the Ontario Society of Artists, she was a founding member (1928) and subsequently president (1940s) of the Sculptors’ Society of Canada. Later she was involved in the organization of the Federation of Canadian Artists (1941) and the Canada Council (1950s). Among her first commissioned works were a series of munitions workers (1918), marking Canada’s war efforts in the First World War.

During her lifetime Loring produced hundreds of works, including architectural statuary and reliefs, portraits (notably Head of Sir Frederick Banting, 1947), and garden sculptures. Among her best-known public monuments are the lion of the Queen Elizabeth Monument in Toronto (originally at the eastern entrance to the Queen Elizabeth Way), war memorials at St Stephen, New Brunswick and Galt (now Cambridge), Ontario and the memorial statue Sir Robert Borden (1957), Parliament Hill, Ottawa. Loring & Wyle were together the subject of exhibitions in London, Ont. in 1962 and Toronto in 1987. Frances Loring died in Newmarket, Ontario 3 February 1968.