Four White Boats: Canadian Gothic

John Christopher Pratt was born on December 9, 1935, in St. John's, Newfoundland. He first started painting watercolours in 1952 and won the provincial government's Arts and Letters Competition for his piece "Shed in a Storm." In the fall of 1952, he initially enrolled in Memorial University's pre-engineering program, where he received training in surveying, drawing, and precise measuring that would later influence his artwork. In 1953, Pratt moved to New Brunswick to study pre-medicine at Mount Allison University. However, he quickly became interested in the institution's Fine Arts Department and was encouraged to develop his talent by instructors Alex Colville and Lawren P. Harris. It was at Mount Allison that he met artist Mary West, whom he married in 1957.

From 1957 to 1959, Pratt studied at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland, accompanied by his wife Mary. During the summers, he returned to Newfoundland to work as a construction surveyor at the American Naval Base at Argentia. In 1959, the Pratts returned to Mount Allison University, where both graduated with Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in 1961. During this period, Pratt began to make silkscreen prints. His early screen print "Boat in Sand" (1961) was included in the National Gallery's fourth Biennial Exhibition, and the praise it received from the biennial jury launched his career.

In 1961, Pratt accepted the position of curator at the newly opened Memorial University Art Gallery in St. John's. He remained at the gallery for two and a half years before resigning in 1963 to concentrate on his painting full-time, moving his family to Salmonier in St. Mary's Bay. His first solo exhibition took place at the Memorial University Art Gallery in 1965. That same year, he became an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and a member of the Canadian Society of Graphic Art. Pratt's subjects included landscapes, roadscapes, architecture, waterscapes, boats, interior spaces, and the human figure. His work explored themes related to Newfoundland's geography, culture, and the transformation of traditional ways of life through progress and modernization. He worked primarily with oil paints, watercolours, lithography, and silkscreen, creating paintings that were carefully organized, precisely executed, and infused with memories filtered through his search for order and simplicity.

Pratt's work was exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. His work was the subject of a major touring retrospective organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1985, a touring print retrospective "The Prints of Christopher Pratt: 1958-1991" in 1992, a major traveling retrospective organized by the National Gallery of Canada in 2005, and a ten-year retrospective at The Rooms in 2015. In 1976, his work was exhibited in New York, and from 1982 to 1983, a show of his paintings, prints, and drawings toured London, Paris, Brussels, and Dublin. In 1992, a fire destroyed Pratt's studio, an event that had a strong effect on his later work, which became more immediate and sometimes had an air of foreboding.

Pratt served on the Canadian government's Stamp Design Advisory Committee from 1972 to 1975 and on the Board of the Canada Council for the Arts from 1975 to 1981. In 1980, at the request of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, he designed the Provincial Flag of Newfoundland and Labrador. In 1973, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada and was elevated to Companion of the Order in 1983. He was awarded the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador in 2018 and received honorary doctorates from Memorial University (1972), Mount Allison University (1972), and Dalhousie University (1986). Pratt and Mary divorced in 2004 after having five children together. He later married Jeanette Meehan in 2007, divorcing in 2016. Pratt continued to live and work in St. Catherine's, Salmonier, at the head of St. Mary's Bay until his death on June 5, 2022, at the age of 86. His work is held in collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Vancouver Art Gallery, The Rooms, and Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.