bio2

marriage because Lillian was an Anglican so Lillian converted to Roman Catholicism to marry Donald.

The wedding was delayed by the death of Sir William and Donald’s sister, Aileen, who died in a boating accident. But in 1908 at the age of 27 Lillian Peterson married Donald Hingston in Goderich where her family lived after her father retired. It was a small wedding as the groom’s family was still in mourning. The couple had five girls: Osla (Grey-Donald); Elizabeth (Betty Daly), Katherine (Gallery Williams), Andrea (Dolan McNally) and Cynthia (Vaughan).

After the birth of her daughters, Lillian began to concentrate seriously on painting. In 1920 at the age of 39, she was confined to bed for a year and she could only paint with one hand. She had a table made to fit across her bed and began to copy flower pictures. ‘It was wonderful how this diversion helped to pass the time,” she said to a local art critic. In 1921 she started working in oils and in 1929 her paintings were shown at Montreal’s Annual Spring Exhibition alongside such Canadian artists as A.Y Jackson of the Group of Seven and portrait painter Lilias Torrence Newton.

When their family was young, the Hingstons lived in Lady Hingston’s house on the corner of Peel and Sherbrooke Sts. . They later moved to their own house on Roslyn Ave. in Westmount.