Ross Anthony Lort, 1889-1968

Ross Anthony Lort was born in Birmingham, England where he had some art training as a young boy. He arrived in Canada with his father when he was 18 years old (1907). Within two days of arrival, he began work as a draughtsman for the Vancouver office of MacLure & Fox.

After World War One, Lort was made a partner and put in charge of MacLure's Vancouver office and the name became MacLure and Lort. With the death of Samuel MacLure in 1929, Ross Lort assumed the Vancouver office, changing the name of the practice to Ross A. Lort. 

The firm's principal work was residential: homes and apartment buildings in a variety of styles. In the later years of his practice, he expanded into smaller commercial, arts and medical facilities, and churches.

Lort married Cecilia Marion F. Rolston in Victoria on July 22, 1913, together they had five children. As an artist, Lort mostly created woodcuts, but also did watercolor and tempera paintings. In 1918 he exhibited carved animals as "crafts" with the Island Arts and Crafts Society.

In 1931 Lort published a limited edition of All Creatures Great and Small that was printed by Charles Bradbury, Vancouver, BC. Reviewed in The Vancouver Sun, 10 January 1932 (“Mr. Lort’s drawings are a delight.”). The book consisted of 26 limericks about animals, each illustrated with a linoblock print. In the 1960s Lort had another edition of the book published by Marine Printers in Vancouver.

The Spring 1936 edition of The Smock Pocket, the Vancouver School of Art Graduates' Association newsletter, noted that he had taken the position of Secretary to Charles H. Scott.

In 1945 Lort was Chairman of the Education Committee at the Vancouver Art Gallery. He was also on the New Building Committee in 1945, and was eventually awarded the commission to design the art gallery extension that opened on September 26, 1951.

Lort died in Vancouver in 1968, aged 78, from a stroke.

Memberships
B.C. Society of Artists (Member 1931, Executive 1933-37, President 1945-48)
Vancouver Art Gallery ( Life Governor)
Community Arts Council (Founding Board Member, 1946)

Selected Collections
The Feckless Collection, Vancouver, B.C.