Carl Henry Ahrens

Carl Ahrens was born in Winfield, near Elora, Ontario. He moved to Berlin, Ontario where he attended school until his father’s death in 1875. He later lived in Winnipeg and travelled extensively in the American and Canadian west.

Returning to Berlin, Ahrens worked as a dyer in a button factory, where he began his mastery of colour. In his early twenties he began to paint from his Toronto studio. His first exhibition was at the Ontario Society of Artists in 1889. In 1891 he was elected associate painter of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. He later studied painting and sculpture in New York. From 1900 to 1902, Ahrens lived in New York State where he helped to start the Roycroft pottery.

In 1922, after a sojourn of several years in the U.S., Ahrens and his family moved back to Toronto, and soon after settled in a farmhouse near Galt, Ontario, which Carl named “Big Trees.” Here he painted and taught, often entertaining Homer Watson, a lifelong friend. A childhood bout of tuberculosis in the hip left him an invalid in his later years, although he continued to paint until his death in 1936 at the age of 73.