Presented by Signature Partner
Jul 30, 2025
The Cloud
Leading Canadian sculptor Frances Loring depicts an elegant figure in the sky
Frances Norma Loring. The Cloud, c. 1928. Plaster, paint, Overall: 112 x 184.5 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario. Gift of the Estates of Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, 1983. Photo: AGO. 83/51
Frances Loring (1887– 1968) was a leading Canadian sculptor, and one of the first women in Canada to garner wide acclaim for her work in the medium. Her architectural sculptures, monuments, war memorials and busts helped change how sculpting was viewed in Canada and paved the way for future generations of artists. Loring’s angelic plaster depiction of a woman suspended in the sky, The Cloud (1928), is the subject of this month’s RBC Art Pick.
Spanning roughly 1.5 meters wide, The Cloud is a grand and striking painted plaster work. Loring portrays the figure of a nude woman, with arms elegantly outstretched, floating atop clouds with a uniquely elongated shape. With her head bowed and legs tucked, the figure is depicted mid movement – neither sitting nor kneeling, instead she appears to float. Though never cast in stone as originally intended, this design was instrumental in Loring’s future work and entered the AGO Collection in 1983, alongside a trove of other works and archival materials of Loring’s.
Born in Idaho, Loring traveled abroad to study art in France and Switzerland, and domestically in Boston and New York. In 1909 at the Art Institute of Chicago, she met Florence Wyle (1881 – 1968), who would become her creative and life partner. Four years later, the two relocated to Toronto and became Canadian citizens. Loring began to gain renown in Canada after receiving multiple commissions to create architectural sculptures and monuments during World Wars 1 and 2. These included commissions by the Canadian War Memorial fund to create sculptures of “women on the Canadian home front” as well as the famed Queen Elizabeth Monument located in Toronto’s Sunnyside Park.
Robert Joseph Flaherty. Portrait of Frances Loring and Florence Wyle [Church Street, Toronto], 1914. Cyanotype, sheet: 14.6 x 14.7 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario. Gift of the Estates of Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, 1983. Photo © AGO. 86/117
Loring and Wyle were domestic and creative collaborators for 55 years until they died three weeks apart in 1968. The pair became a force across the city and country when they bought an abandoned Sunday schoolhouse on Toronto’s Glenrose Avenue and converted it to a home studio in 1920. “The Church,” as community members warmly referred to it, became a hub for local artists and academics. In 1928, Loring and Wyle co-founded the Sculptors Society of Canada with Alfred Howell, Elizabeth Wyn Wood, Emanuel Hahn and Henri Hébert. Loring was later made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and was one of the chief organizers of the Federation of Canadian Artists and the Canada Council of the Arts. Their joint wills outlined the creation of the Sculpture Fund to encourage both Canadian sculpture and its artists. In 1983, their estates were gifted to the AGO.
The Cloud is currently on view on Level 1 of the AGO in the Sarah & David Macdonald Gallery (gallery 130). Additional works from the Loring and Wyle archive will be on view beginning August 9 in the exhibition, Remade: Clay, Plaster, Stone. Organized by Melissa Alexander, the W. David Hargraft Fellow in Canadian Art, the exhibition is a selection of rarely seen sculptures from the AGO’s Collection, highlighting Loring and Wyle’s commitment to the artform and their conviction that sculpture is a lifelong process. The 13 works on view are made of various materials and at various stages of completion; they will be displayed alongside archival photographs and an interview with the artists, dating from 1965.
![Keith Haring in a Top Hat [Self-Portrait], (1989)](/sites/default/files/styles/image_small/public/2023-11/KHA-1626_representation_19435_original-Web%20and%20Standard%20PowerPoint.jpg?itok=MJgd2FZP)
