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Bartley (Bart) Pragnell was born in 1907 in Caron, Saskatchewan. He studied at the Winnipeg School of Art in 1932 under Canadian Group of Seven painter L.L. FitzGerald, where he was awarded an honours diploma in drawing, painting, and design. In 1947, he received a diploma from the Montreal Artists' School and later studied at the Chicago Art Institute and with American abstractionist Hans Hoffman in New York. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War, and in 1949 became Principal at the Winnipeg School of Art. He was appointed Professor of Art at Goddoard College in Vermont in 1951 and upon returning to Canada in 1959, lived for a while in Lethbridge before moving to Edmonton to become a Professor of Art at the University of Alberta from 1963 until his death in 1966.
Bart Pragnell had a very successful career as an educator, but is remembered today as an important Western Canadian artist, particularly for his watercolour portrayals of prairie landscape and small town scenes. His art displayed his solid academic training, but also showed his very personal synthesis of modern influences. His response to his subject-matter was intuitive and honestly expressed, and conveyed much of the spirit of prairie life during the period.
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