Molly Lamb Bobak: Life & Work

The daughter of celebrated photographer Harold Mortimer-Lamb, Vancouver-born artist Molly Lamb Bobak (1920-2014) joined the Canadian Women’s Army Corps in 1942 and was sent overseas to London, becoming the first Canadian woman war artist. She brashly captured women’s military life and roles during the Second World War in her paintings, illustrated diaries, and drawings, depicting female military training as well as dynamic scenes of marches and parades.

Upon her return to Canada, Bobak married fellow war artist Bruno Bobak, and the couple settled in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where they lived and worked for over half a century. One of the first Canadian female painters to earn her living as an artist, Bobak was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1973 and presented with the Order of Canada in 1995.

Molly Lamb Bobak: Life & Work traces the career of this pioneering Canadian painter and the diverse range of her artistic output, from her still lifes and interiors to her crowd scenes and self-portraits. It explores Bobak’s legacy as a painter and educator and what it meant to be a female artist in mid-twentieth-century Canada.