Homer Ransford Watson (January 14, 1855 – May 30, 1936) was a Canadian landscape painter. He has been characterized as the painter who first painted Canada as Canada, rather than as a pastiche of European painting. He was a member and president (1918–1922) of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, as well as a founding member and first president (1907–1911) of the Canadian Art Club. Although Watson had almost no formal training, by the mid-1920s he was well known and admired by Canadian collectors and critics, his rural landscape paintings making him one of the central figures in Canadian art from the 1880s until the First World War. Life and career Homer Ransford Watson was born on 14 January 1855, in Doon, Ontario, the second of Ransford and Susan Mohr Watson's five children. A small village founded in the 1830s at the junction of Schneider's Creek and the Grand River, Doon's earliest documented population was 150 in the 1871 census. Watson descended from German Mennonite settlers who arrived in Ontario in the early 19th century. His father, a mill and factory owner, died in 1861 when Watson was six years old. Following Ransford's death, the family's only source of income was Susan's work as a seamstress. Ransford left behind a library of books that Watson studied from and influenced his early drawings. A gift of a set of paints from an aunt made him decide to become an artist. He sought the advice of Thomas Mower Martin in Toronto, and moved there in 1874. He copied works at the Toronto Normal School and was mainly self-taught, but met other artists in Toronto (e.g., Lucius O'Brien) while working part-time at the Notman-Fraser photography studio. In 1876, Watson traveled to New York State, and may have seen the work of painter George Inness. Although he never met Inness, he was influenced by the Hudson River School and painted along the Hudson and Susquehanna Rivers in the Adirondack Mountains. In 1880, the Marquis of Lorne opened the first exhibition of the Canadian Academy; Watson's work was displayed and he was elected an Associate member. That same year, he sold a major work, The Pioneer Mill, to the Marquis for Queen Victoria. Watson married Roxanna (Roxa for short) Bechtel in 1881, and the couple moved into the Drake House at Doon. They bought the house in 1883, and he kept the house as his