Jane Cain

Artist: Jane Cain
Media: Oil
Title: “Still life”
from the COLLECTION OF CORNELIUS FOLEY

This still life is signed Jane Cain and bears a label on the reverse identifying the artist, medium, and title, along with the note: From the collection of Cornelius Foley. Unlike many works in this collection, it arrives with both an attribution and a traceable ownership history—though neither is fully complete.

The painting depicts a carefully arranged domestic scene: glass bottles, a bowl of fruit, a vase of flowers, folded fabric, and a tabletop rendered in soft, muted tones. The palette is restrained and harmonious, with attention given to weight, balance, and surface rather than decorative flourish. The composition feels studied and deliberate, suggesting academic training or at least sustained formal practice.

The label raises the possibility that the artist may be Isabel Jane Henselwood Cain, born in Ontario in 1871 and later residing in Calgary, where she died in 1965 at the age of 93. While no definitive documentation has yet surfaced linking this painting directly to her, the name, time period, and geographic context make the connection plausible rather than speculative. At present, the attribution remains open and responsibly tentative.

Equally compelling is the note identifying the work as coming from the collection of Cornelius Foley, a longtime professor of English and philosophy at the University of Great Falls in Montana. Foley studied at the University of Calgary, creating a geographic and institutional overlap that may explain how a painting by a Canadian artist—or one connected to Calgary—came into his possession.

Purchased at Goodwill in Great Falls, Montana in May 2023, the painting carries the quiet residue of an academic life lived alongside art. Whether it hung in an office, a home, or a teaching space, it appears to have been kept not as an investment, but as a companion—an object of sustained looking.

This work occupies a meaningful space within the collection: not anonymous, not fully documented, but carefully labeled and evidently valued. It reminds us that many artists—particularly women working in the early to mid-20th century—left behind works that were preserved privately rather than publicly recorded. What survives is often enough to ask better questions, even when final answers remain out of reach.

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