Canadian artist Helen McNicoll (1879-1915) has long been neglected in art historical scholarship. Although well-known and well-regarded during her lifetime, her work has since been marginalized as feminine and dismissed as old-fashioned. Through the lens of a modernist art historical tradition that has privileged the urban and masculine above all else, McNicoll's Impressionist depictions of sunlit beaches, open fields, and rural women at work may indeed seem quaintly nostalgic. In this thesis, I argue that these images can and should be seen as both representations of modernity and assertions of feminist thought. McNicoll travelled throughout England and Europe, and across the Atlantic Ocean in search of artistic subject matter; viewed within the context of tourism---which has been theorized as a fundamentally modern activity---her images appear modern in ways that have not traditionally been recognized.

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