Bartley Pragnell was a well regarded Canadian artist who was born in Caron in 1907.  He studied at the Winnipeg School of Art under the Canadian Group of Seven artist L. L. FitzGerald where he was awarded an honours diploma in drawing, painting and design.  During WWII Pragnell served in the RCAF. In 1947 he received a diploma from the Montreal Artists' School and later studied at the Chicago Art Institute and with American abstractionist Hans Hoffman in New York. in 1949 he became Principal at the Winnipeg School of Art. He was appointed Professor of Art at Goddoard College in Vermont in 1951 and upon returning to Canada in 1959, lived for a while in Lethbridge before moving to Edmonton to become a Professor of Art at the University of Alberta from 1963 until his death in 1966.

The arcadja.com website says of him that, "...  He worked primarily in watercolour and was ingfluenced by the Realist school portraying ordinary people engaging in everyday work and play.  The Mendel Gallery in Saskatoon has a large collection of his art."

The painting illustrated below was created during the 1930s.