This painting was created in the first year of classes at the newly opened Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (now ECUAD). It was an exercise in designing a repetitive wallpaper pattern, using poster paper and poster paints. Versions of this exercise by other students were published in The Paint Box, the art school's annual, alongside another one of Maud's paintings.
Born in Mission City, BC, Maud lived in Vancouver from 1903. She was given a watercolour set for Christmas in 1912, and never stopped painting. She was tutored by Josiah Wilson McAdam, an artist and teacher living next door, and started exhibiting her artwork as early as 1917 with the Vancouver Sketch Club. Her father Ruiter Stinson Sherman was an artist, teacher, writer, photographer, and land surveyor. The two of them took lessons from Thomas W. Fripp, and went with Fripp on a 1922 sketching trip to the Interior. They were all members of the BC Art League, formed in 1920 to help create a local art school and art gallery. Maud was a founding student at the Vancouver School of Decorative & Applied Arts in September 1925, and showed work in the first major exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1932.
One of her paintings was published in the student annual The Paint Box in June 1926, as well as a lengthy article titled Places to Sketch. In her second year at the school she wrote about taking lessons from F.H. Varley. For unknown reasons she did not graduate from the school, perhaps because she was already illustrating for J.M. Dent & Sons in Mother Nature Stories and Nature & Language Workbooks, and for the Vancouver School Board in School Days magazine. She exhibited artwork in over 60 group exhibitions up to 1961, won prizes, and had work selected for traveling shows. She died in a North Vancouver care home.
We thank Gary Sim for contributing the above essay. See also www.sim-publishing.com/bca/shermanm.htm.
The four lower images left to right show Maud Sherman in Stanley Park; Maud in the middle of 5 women at Parakontas, her studio, where Varley also had a studio; the autograph page from The Paint Box annual; other examples of the wallpaper pattern exercise published in The Paint Box.
The Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (VSDAA) opened on October 1, 1925, marking the beginning of formalized art education in the city. Founded through the efforts of the British Columbia Society of Fine Arts, the school was a response to Vancouver’s rapid growth and the need for cultural institutions. Under its first director, Charles H. Scott, and with prominent faculty including Jock Macdonald and Fred Varley, the VSDAA quickly became a centre of artistic activity. A vibrant social and intellectual community grew around the school, supported by figures such as John Vanderpant and Harold Mortimer Lamb. In 1933 the school was renamed the Vancouver School of Art, and over the decades it continued to expand, eventually becoming Emily Carr University of Art + Design. In 2025 the institution celebrates its centenary, a testament to its enduring role in shaping the cultural landscape of Vancouver and beyond.