John Sugden Tempest

1864 - 1941

BiographySelf-taught artist John Sugden Tempest was born in Skipton, Yorkshire in 1864. He studied at the Keighley Technical Institute and earned a Bachelor of Science Degree from Canarvon College in Wales. Before coming to Canada in 1896, John taught at St. Mary’s, Keighley and was a principal at St. Mark’s College in Bristol. Once arriving in Canada, John became an engineer for Canadian Pacific Railway and then worked for the Department of the Interior, eventually becoming Commissioner of Irrigation and Reclamation for the Western Provinces.

John travelled the country with work and on holiday, exposing himself to all that Canada’s wilderness had to offer. As such, John’s landscape paintings encompass a wide variety of terrain, including the Algoma region, prairie scenes, mountains, the Pacific Coast, and a tribute to his birthplace, the English Shires. With paintbrush or sketchpad in hand, John led a very active life, leaving a great number of sketches behind to prove it.

His paintings were shown in a number of exhibits with the Alberta Society for the Arts, of which John was an original member. John passed away in 1941.