William Notman Studio
1877
Fire in Mr. Notman`s studio in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada

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George Stewart, Jr. The Story of the Great Fire in St. John. N.B.: June 20th, 1877 (Toronto: Belford Brothers,1877), p.49
 
Mr. Notman's beautiful studio with its gems of neat things in art, and its hundreds of elegant picture frames, went next. The premises had only recently been opened, and the reception room was a perfect gallery of beautifully arranged pictures and chromos, and India ink copies. A number of oil paintings, some of them of considerable value, a good many choice bits in water colour, some decidedly clever engravings together with pieces of statuary, and a bronze or two perished in an instant. Not a negative was saved, and the fine picture of Mr. John Melick's handsome boy, which was so artistically finished in India ink by Mr. James Notman, shared a like fate. The studio was full of handsome work, and lovers of the aesthetic whenever they had a spare minute or two always wandered into Notman's and inspected the new things he had there. It was a place of resort for the cultivated mind, and the eye always rested on something pleasing and charming. This building went so rapidly that the occupants barely escaped with their clothes.
 
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