Rex Woods

Who is Rex Woods?

Rex Woods, an artist and illustrator, was born in England, in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, on 21 July 1903 and died in Toronto, Canada on 18 November 1987. Woods came to Toronto as a young man in 1920 and studied at the Ontario College of Art. After graduating, Woods worked in various Toronto art studios. In 1928 he married Etheldreda Jeanne Mott, a ballet dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Company. Sometime in the 1930s, Woods decided to work independently and quickly became one of Canada's most successful and sought-after illustrators. He contributed on a regular basis to popular magazines such as Maclean's and the Canadian Home Journal, and drew advertisements for many of Canada's leading companies. He painted one of the most iconic Canadian images of the twentieth century, The Macdonald's Lassie, used for decades by Macdonald Tobacco on their Export "A" brand of cigarettes. Not so widely known is his important monumental group portrait of the Fathers of Confederation, a copy of the original by Robert Harris destroyed in the fire on Parliament Hill in 1916. The copy is a liberal recreation in which Woods added three figures to the original composition. The picture was commissioned by Confederation Life Assurance and donated as a centennial gift to the country in 1967. It hangs in Parliament.