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Toni Only. Silent Boulders. Etching. 1971-1973.
Toni Onley. Silent Boulders. Etching. ca 1971-1973.
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Metadata
Title
Silent Boulders
Artist
Onley, Toni
Biography
1928-2004 – Born in Douglas, Isle of Man in 1928, Toni Onley began his art education under local landscape painter John Hobson Nicholson before attending the Douglas School of Fine Art. Emigrating to Canada in 1948, he furthered his studies at Ontario’s Doon School of Fine Art with Carl Schaefer. Early recognition came in the 1950s, followed by a transformative period of study in Mexico, where he shifted from traditional landscapes to abstract forms under the influence of James Pinto. A major commission for the Queen Elizabeth Theatre and a Canada Council grant to study printmaking in London further cemented his career. After returning to Vancouver in 1965, Onley gradually embraced the landscape again—this time integrating abstraction with figuration, creating works that balanced form with feeling. He became a passionate pilot, using aerial views as inspiration for sketches and paintings. Onley’s life ended tragically in 2004 when he died in a plane crash at the age of 79.
Origin/Creation Date
January 1, 1971
Media
Etching
Frame
No
Literature
BOOKS:
Flying Colours: The Toni Onley Story, Onley/Strong, Harbour, 2002
Toni Onley: A Silent Thunder, by Roger Boulet (Prentice-Hall, 1981)
The Walls of India, with George Woodcock (Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1985)
Voyage en Arctique: Toni Onley, Claude Péloquin (Éditions Depratto Onley Parisien
Péloquin, 1987)
Onley’s Arctic: Dairies and Paintings of the High Arctic (Douglas McIntyre, 1989)
Toni Onley’s British Columbia: A Tribute (Raincoast Books, 1999)
Flying Colours, the Toni Onley Story, with Gregory Strong (Harbour Publishing, 2002)
CATALOGUES:
Watercolors by Robert Murray and Toni Onley, November 21 - December 31, 1976 (Olympia
Galleries, Philadelphia, 1976)
Toni Onley: A Retrospective Exhibition, with Ted Lindberg (Vancouver Art Gallery, 1978)
Toni Onley: Major Works from the Sixties (Heffel Gallery, 1981) Onley’s True North (Kamloops Art Gallery, 2004)
DOCUMENTARY:
Landscape Revealed: The Art of Toni Onley, by Mehdi Ali (Fountain Productions, 2004)
Exhibition
HONOURS & AWARDS:
1964: Elected a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts 1977: Awarded the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal
1999: Appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada
2000: Awarded a D.Litt. by Okanagan University College, Kelowna, BC
2002: Awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal
2002: The Isle of Man Post Office issued a set of stamps of Onley’s Manx watercolours 2007: Island Mountain Arts in Wells, BC, renames its summer art school (the Wells
Artists’ Project) the Toni Onley Artists’ Project in memory of him
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS:
Agnes Etherington Art Center, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, BC
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Audain Art Museum, Whistler, BC
Confederation Centre, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
London Public Library & Art Museum, Ontario
McMichael Conservation Gallery, Kleinberg, Ontario
Memorial University, St. John’s, Newfoundland
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Quebec
Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, Quebec
Museum of Modern Art, New York City
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Seattle Museum of Fine Arts, Washington
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC
Sir George Williams University, Montreal
Tate Gallery, London, UK
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC
Vancouver Art Gallery, BC
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK
Willistead Gallery, Windsor, Ontario
Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba
York University, Toronto
Essay
Toni Onley was a master of distilled landscape, known for his serene and timeless portrayals of Canada’s wilderness—especially the remote northern reaches. Working primarily in watercolour, but also in oils, lithographs, silkscreen prints, and etchings, Onley developed a distinctive approach that fused the Canadian landscape tradition with Eastern aesthetic influences. His paintings are marked by subtle coloration, elemental forms, and a degree of abstraction that imbues his work with both immediacy and introspection. Often using a large Chinese brush and working outdoors, Onley would capture his initial impressions in broad washes, later translating these into refined studio compositions. His subjects—icebergs, coastal waters, windswept trees—were rendered with restraint and sensitivity, evoking not just place, but atmosphere and silence.
“It’s the timeless things that I’m looking for, it’s the things that don’t date. The things that are there now and have always been there – this is what feeds my art.” Quote from Landscape Revealed, 2004, sited in an artist biography from The Feckless Collection: https://www.fecklesscollection.ca/toni-onley
