Lake Memphremagog (1893), watercolour on paper, 38.9 x 67.3 cm., General Purchase Fund, 1991 Lucius Richard O'Brien (1832-1899) was born in Muskoka at Shanty Bay and died in Toronto, Ontario. His early art education is undocumented, but he may have received brief training from John Howard, a prominent Toronto architect and art teacher at Upper Canada College, and from civil engineering experience. He travelled widely and taught private art classes. O'Brien was the editor of Picturesque Canada in 1881 and the founding president of the Royal Canadian Academy. He exhibited his work as a member of the Ontario Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy and also exhibited at the annual Art Association of Montreal shows and at many international exhibits. Through his second wife, Katherine, the daughter of Archdeacon Brough, O'Brien was connected with London, Ontario. His work originally followed a luminist style and later an impressionistic one. Genre, landscape and marine themes are his "principal subjects" executed in either oil or watercolour.