John Adrian Darley Dingle
(1911 - 1974) ARCA, RCA, OSA

Adrian Dingle Biography
(1911 - 1974) ARCA, RCA, OSA

Born in Barmouth, North Wales, he came to Canada with his parents in 1914 and settled in Oakville, Ontario. He worked in an insurance office until he was 19. He left his job to study art and in 1931 took instruction from J. W. Beatty. During the 1930s he worked as a commercial artist to supplement his career as a painter. In 1937 he went to England where he studied at the Goldsmith College, London, under John Mansbridge and James Bateman. He did several portraits and exhibited with the London Portrait Society. On his return to Canada he exhibited regularly with the Ontario Society of Artists and other groups and much of his work was sold through the T. Eaton Company’s Fine Art Gallery. In the years that followed he did illustrations for several publishers including the Standard and the Star Weekly and was art director for Bell Features Publishing Company and the Stillwell and Darby Company. He co-founded the publishing company Hillborough Studio in 1941.

As a painter, he did landscapes, marine subjects, figure studies and as mentioned before, portraits. His technique was described by the London Free Press in 1959 a follows, “. . . in every picture there is a heavy underpainting and then an overpainting that gives the impression of glossy varnish and creates a brightness, or feeling of presence of light, no matter how dark, drab, or fogbound the colours and atmosphere might be expected to be. The artist varies his palette wisely to present paintings that glow with brilliant colour . . .”

Much of Dingle’s painting was done in oils and his output was once said to be from 150 to 200 paintings a year. In the summers he had travelled to the east coast where he had painted Cape Breton Island and other areas. During the winter, he seldom went beyond a 50 mile radius of Toronto. He also painted in Italy, France, Spain and the British Isles.

He was a member of the Ontario Society of Artists; Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy; Ontario Institute of Painters and Fellow of the International Institue of Arts and Letters. His paintings have appeared on calendars of the Sellotape Canada Limited and on Christmas cards produced by Austin Marshall. He often gave lectures to various groups and demonstrations at the Art Gallery of Ontario. He lived at Erindale, Ontario.

Sources: "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume I: A-F", compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1977