Sidney Carter
Canadian photographer and founder of th Studio Club (Toronto, 1904).
Sidney Robert Carter was born 18 February 1880 in Toronto. In 1897, he was listed in the Toronto Business Directory as a "clerk". But he had discovered his talent for photography early; in 1901, he exhibited at the Royal Photographic Society in London and in Philadelphia. By 1902, Carter was exhibiting with the Toronto Camera Club and in the Philadelphia Salon; he was represented the next year in the "first Salon" of the Toronto Camera Club, as well as in Chicago.
His activity and talent in the direction of pictorial photography were so well received by 1904 that he was elected an Associate of the Photo-Secession in New York. From 1904 to 1906, Carter exhibited with the Canadian Society of Applied Art, with the Toronto Camera Club (where he also served on the Executive Committee), and in Philadelphia, London, Vienna, and with the Photo-Secession in New York. Imbued with dedicated pictorialist ambitions, he was an originating force behind the establishment of "The Studio Club" in Toronto, which was intended as a Canadian version of the Linked Ring in England. During at least part of this time, he earned his living at the Ontario Bank in Toronto. In November of 1906, however, the bank failed and he found himself unemployed. He immediately moved to Montreal to begin a partnership in professional portraiture with Harold Mortimer-Lamb. The venture was unlucky from the beginning, whether because their style was too advanced for their market or because Mortimer-Lamb had other concerns. Their partnership stayed alive if not vital for about a year. Yet within that time Carter had engineered the successful opening of Canada's first pictorialist exhibition. This had taken place between 23 November and 7 December 1907, in the galleries of the Art Association of Montreal. Carter's activities in 1907 also included writing the Canadian chapter for Photograms of the Year and organizing the Canadian section of the Royal Photographic Society show in London. Despite these herculean efforts, and Carter's coup of a Rudyard Kipling portrait taken during the poet's visit to Montreal in 1907, the city's buying public preferred other photographers. In 1908, Carter was employed in an office of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and early in January 1909, he began working for W. Scott & Sons, fine art dealers with offices in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa. Hopes of a professional photography career were put away until about 1917. Possibly visits to Toronto in 1909 (one extended by a bout of smallpox) caused him to be listed as an "artist" in that city in the Toronto Business Directory. However, Montreal was still his home. By 1917, he was an "artist" at "344 Dorchester, W." and in 1918 an "art and antique dealer" at "340 Dorchester W.." This period marked his re-entry into professional portrait photography in Montreal. Pictorialism had acquired some vogue among professionals, and over the next twelve years or more Carter was able to produce a long series of society portraits and images of prominent personalities such as Sergei Prokofieff, Bliss carman, Percy Grainger, and John Singer Sargent. By this time some of the disturbing haunting quality of Carter's style had been replaced by a firmer outline and an interest in graphic effect. He kept up his amateur photography for some time, submitting prints to the Toronto Camera Club's 1930 all-Canadian exhibition. As an art dealer, however, Carter achieved a reputation for having fine objects, particularly from the Orient. He managed to maintain his business through some monetary reverses and through the Depression, despite an unbusinesslike attitude which was apt to lead him to give works away or to sell low to those who appreciated art. He liquidated the stock of his studio/gallery just two years before his death in Montreal on 27 March 1956. Works by him are located in the National Archives of Canada; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Stieglitz Collection; and in private collections.
