Personal History and Career
Born in Québec City, he moved with his family to Montreal in 1869, where he apprenticed for an engraving firm. Commissioner George Arthur French of the North-West Mounted Police appreciated the value of good public relations. He knew the Canadian public was interested in the new police force and thought that providing a visual record of the force would help maintain that interest. Since in 1873 photographs could not be reproduced in newspapers, French wrote to the manager of the Canadian Illustrated News inviting them to send an artist-journalist to accompany the expedition. The idea appealed to the newspaper as they would get an exclusive set of articles and pictures to publish. The young artist was immediately sent on his way.
Nevertheless, Julien's western experience gave him a degree of self-assurance he had not previously possessed, and it was not long before he became a leading figure in the field of illustrative art in Canada. The 1870s and 1880s were the heyday of the engraver and lithographer, just before the machine replaced the artist, and Julien's illustrations were sought by magazines around the world. He is buried in Montreal's Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery. His drawing Le Vieux de '37, depicting an old man going to fight the Lower Canada Rebellion, is one of his best known of his works and of the Patriote iconography today.
A print by Henri Julien of the "Royal Military College of Canada Uniform of Cadets", which appeared in the Canadian Illustrated News is in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, Ontario. Accession Number: 19850291-004.
Read more about this topic: Henri Julien
Famous quotes containing the words personal, history and/or career:
“I am in no boastful mood. I shall not do more than I can, and I shall do all I can to save the government, which is my sworn duty as well as my personal inclination. I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)