Antonia Larribe Eastman was our beloved grandmother, our mother’s mother, and Ian McNeill, her son-in-law, was our dear father. Our mother, Isabelle Eastman McNeill, had a remarkable artist’s eye and was Ian’s muse, cheerleader and critic, as well as much more. My brothers and I are so enamored with them and their art that we created this web-site to honor them.

Antonia was born in 1886 in Paris, France, was orphaned at the age of twelve and was raised by her aunt. She married Mack Eastman, a Canadian diplomat, in Paris, and they raised their two children in Geneva, Switzerland, while he served at the League of Nations. Due to the threat from Nazism, they moved to Canada just before WWII, where their daughter, Isabelle, enrolled in the University of Toronto.

J. Ian McNeill was born in Kinglassie, Scotland in 1920. Ian moved with his parents to New Zealand and then to Canada following the calling of his minister father to preach at churches there. One fine day in 1943, Ian, who was at that time a medical student at Queen’s University, was visiting a friend and they went to play tennis on the courts of the University of Toronto. Playing on the court adjacent to Ian was the lovely Isabelle Francoise Eastman. They married two years later and that began the auspicious connection between Ian and his mother-in-law Antonia.

Antonia was a creative, intelligent, disciplined and bold artist who had trained with the best in France and had continued her study and practice as a painter in Canada.

Ian was a dedicated and thoughtful medical doctor of internal medicine with an artist’s sensibility and eye who admired and adored his mother-in-law.

One summer in the early 1960’s, Ian expressed to Antonia that he was interested in learning to paint and asked for her guidance and blessings. She agreed with him that water color was a good medium for him and helped to launch what became his prolific body of work. He loved to sketch and then water color up on Bowen Island, B.C., in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and along the seaside of the Monterrey Peninsula in California. He also painted flowers and animals and humorous cards and little scenes capturing their travels. All along the way he shared his work with Antonia and she encouraged and coached him.

While Antonia was his inspiration and guide, his muse was his brilliant wife Isabelle who was convinced that Ian’s talent was worthy of being shared with the world. She held on tightly to every sketch and painting as if they were worth fortunes.

When Ian passed away in January of 2015, along with those hanging on the walls, his children found hundreds of watercolors in drawers and closets in his studio, many still in spiral notebooks. They also found a few dozen of Antonia’s oil paintings and other works.

His children were so touched by the beauty of the collections that they committed to create a website to honor their legacy and to share their beautiful creations.

Enjoy!

Catherine Antonia McNeill Parrish
(on behalf of my brothers, Harry Robert McNeill, Charles Ian McNeill and Edward James McNeill)