Robert Clow Todd Biography

Robert Clow Todd (c.1809–1866) was a British-born Canadian painter who recorded the landscapes, winter pastimes and working life of nineteenth-century Quebec. He was probably born in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, and worked as a decorative painter in Edinburgh and London before emigrating to Lower Canada around 1834. In Quebec City he advertised his services as a painter of signs, carriages and ornamental designs, work that helped support his more personal landscape and animal paintings.

Todd became known for carefully detailed portraits of horses and sleighs, often commissioned by members of Quebec's prosperous military and merchant communities. Montmorency Falls, near Quebec City, was a favourite winter resort where visitors watched the enormous cone of ice that formed at the foot of the waterfall. Todd returned repeatedly to the subject, painting sleighs, horses and figures against the dramatic snowy landscape.

His The Ice Cone, Montmorency Falls (c.1845), held by the Art Gallery of Ontario, captures this unusual winter spectacle. The precise outlines of the horses, buildings and ice reveal his background in decorative and carriage painting, while the lively activity gives the scene the character of a visual record of Quebec society.

His interest in local customs can be compared with that of Cornelius Krieghoff, another painter of Quebec's landscapes and everyday life, although no direct collaboration is implied. Todd also produced views of the timber docks and summer landscapes.

Todd moved to Toronto in 1853 and continued to advertise as an ornamental painter, but appears to have struggled financially. He died there on 7 May 1866, leaving relatively few known paintings.