The great nephew of the artist notes that The Nymphs is unsigned because Frederick W. Hutchison painted it for his brother, Harry Hutchison, to be installed in a decorative plaster encasement on a wall in his home.

The background of the composition is of the Hutchison family’s orchard on the shore of Lake of Two Mountains in Hudson Heights.

Stephanie Thomas in her 1982 thesis on Fred Hutchison writes that the father of Frederick Hutchison, John Henry Hutchison, living in what is now known as Westmount, originally rented a home for the summer in Como, Quebec west of Montreal. While renting that property, she writes “ in the course of paddling up the river in his canoe, John Henry Hutchison found the site for the cottage he wanted to build for his family. It was an ideal location overlooking the Lake of Two Mountains, well treed, especially with birches which were to be a favourite theme for his son, Frederick William, to paint, and it posted a wide panoramic view of the river and Oka Mountain on the opposite shore. It was here J.H. Hutchison built a small cottage, thereafter called ‘Braeside,’ which was later enlarged into a two-story wooden house with wide verandahs on three sides. On the west side was an apple orchard and a deep ravine ran down which stone steps were built to reach the beach below. ” [1] In later years, Fred Hutchison purchased the family property, ‘Braeside’.

It is precisely for Braeside and with the above described view as his inspiration for composition that around 1908 /9 Fred Hutchison painted the magnificent and decorative canvas we offer here.
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[1] Stephanie A. Thomas, “Frederick William Hutchison (1871-1953)” (Master’s thesis, Concordia University, March 1982), p. 6, https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/3314/1/MK55701.pdf .