PERMANENT COLLECTION

JULIA BULLOCK WEBSTER

NATIONALITY: British

DATES: 1826-1907

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Bullock Webster was in her late sixties when she travelled by train from Oxford (her home) to Liverpool, England; then by steamship to the St. Lawrence River. She crossed the Canadian Prairies by rail, following the route taken by Catherine Schubert thirty years earlier. Once in British Columbia, she boarded a paddle steamer and travelled down Lake Okanagan. Finally, she caught a stage coach to meet her sons in Keremeos.

She wrote a meticulous journal of her two-year stay, detailing day-to-day domestic chores and comparing the relative sophistication of English Middle Class life with her experiences in the sparse wilderness of the B.C. Interior.

Julia painted watercolour sketches of the abundant local flora as well as many scenes of the Lower Similkameen Valley.