Josephine Crease
1864–1947 · Canadian watercolour painter
Josephine Crease (August 7, 1864 – December 24, 1947) was a Canadian artist best known for her watercolours of local landscapes. Her career unfolded in British Columbia from the late nineteenth century into the first half of the twentieth, and she is remembered above all for her part in the artistic life of Victoria, on Vancouver Island.
The daughter of Sir Henry Pering Pellew Crease and Lady Sarah Lindley Crease, she was born in New Westminster and moved with her family to Victoria in 1869. She studied at art classes at King's College in London alongside her sister Susan. Back in Canada, she made sketching trips around Vancouver Island and painted watercolours of the surrounding countryside.
She was a founding member of the Island Arts and Crafts Society, serving as its honorary president in 1939, and a member of the Victoria Sketch Club, which she presided over in 1903. Her work was shown in exhibitions of the British Columbia Society of Fine Arts and at the Victoria Fair, and the Vancouver Art Gallery presented her work in 1978. She died in Victoria at the age of 83. Her work is held in the collections of the Provincial Archives of British Columbia and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.