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Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

Famous People Column ? An open Column for all writers

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October 25, 2007

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FAMOUS PEOPLE

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EMILY CARR

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Born December 13th 1871 ? Died March 2nd 1945.

Canadian Artist and Writer: Emily Carr studied in San Francisco in 1889-95, and in 1899 she traveled to England, where she was involved with the St. Ives group and with Hubert von Herkomer's private school.

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She lived in France in 1910 where the work of the Fauves influenced the colourism of her work and she came into contact with Frances Hodgkin?s.? Discouraged by her lack of artistic success, she returned to Victoria where she came close to giving up art altogether.

However, her contact with the Group of Seven in 1930 resurrected her interest in art, and throughout the 1930s she specialized in scenes from the lives and rituals of Native Americans.? She also showed her awareness of Canadian native culture through a number of works representing the British Columbian rainforest. She lived among the Native Americans to research her subjects. Many of her Expressionistic paintings represent totem poles and other artefacts of Indian culture.

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Emily Carr Chronology of Paintings

?? Totem Walk at Sitka - 1917

?? Guyasdoms d'Sonoqua - 1928-30

?? Indian Church - 1929

?? Untitled (Forest Interior Black and Grey) - c.1930

?? Big Raven 1931

?? Zunoqua of the Cat Village - 1931

?? Tree Trunk - c.1931

?? Untitled (Formalized Cedar) - c.1931

?? Red Cedar 1931-33

?? A Rushing Sea of Undergrowth - 1932-35

?? The Mountain - 1933

?? Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky - 1935

?? Old Tree at Dusk - c.1936

?? Self-Portrait - 1938

?? Forest - c.1940

?? Cedar Sanctuary - c.1942

?? Odds & Ends - Date Unknown

She was born in Victoria, British Columbia, and moved to San Francisco in 1890 to study art after the death of her parents. In 1899 she travelled to England to deepen her studies, where she spent time at the Westminster School of Art in London and at various studio schools in Cornwall, Bushey, Hertfordshire, and elsewhere. In 1910, she spent a year studying art at the Acad?mie Colarossi in Paris and elsewhere in France before moving back to British Columbia permanently the following year.

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Carr was most heavily influenced by the landscape and First Nations cultures of British Columbia, and Alaska. Having visited a mission school beside the Nuu-chah-nulth community of Ucluelet in 1898, in 1908 she was inspired by a visit to Skagway and began to paint the totem poles of the coastal Kwakwaka?wakw, Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit and other communities, in an attempt to record and learn from as many as possible. In 1913 she was obliged by financial considerations to return permanently to Victoria after a few years in Vancouver, both of which towns were, at that time, conservative artistically. Influenced by styles such as postimpressionism and Fauvism, her work was alien to those around her and remained unknown to and unrecognized by the greater art world for many years. For more than a decade she worked as a potter, dog breeder and boarding house landlady, having given up on her artistic career.

In the 1920s she came into contact with members of the Group of Seven (artists) after being invited by the National Gallery of Canada to participate in an exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art, Native and Modern. She travelled to Ontario for this show in 1927 where she met members of the Group, including Lawren Harris, whose support was invaluable. She was invited to submit her works for inclusion in a Group of Seven exhibition, the beginning of her long and valuable association with the Group. They named her 'The Mother of Modern Arts' around five years later.

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The Nuu-chah-nulth of Vancouver Island's west coast had nicknamed Carr Klee Wyck, "the laughing one." She gave this name to a book about her experiences with the natives, published in 1941. The book won the Governor General's Award that year. Her other titles were The Book of Small (1942),The House of All Sorts (1944) and Growing Pains (1946) Pause and The Heart of a Peacock (1953), and in 1966, Hundreds and Thousands. They reveal her to be an accomplished writer. Though mostly autobiographical, they have been found to be unreliable as to facts and figures if not in terms of mood and intent.

Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Emily Carr Elementary School in Vancouver, British Columbia, Emily Carr Middle School in Ottawa, Ontario and Emily Carr Public School in London, Ontario are named after her.

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Emily Carr is interred in the Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria.? Her gravestone inscription reads "Artist and Author / Lover of Nature". Under Canada's copyright laws, Carr's works became public domain at the beginning of 1996, 50 years after her death

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Her other titles were The Book of Small (1942),The House of All Sorts (1944), Growing Pains (1946), Pause and The Heart of a Peacock (1953), and in 1966, Hundreds and Thousands. They reveal her to be an accomplished writer. Though mostly autobiographical, they have been found to be unreliable as to facts and figures if not in terms of mood and intent.

Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Emily Carr Elementary School in Vancouver, British Columbia, Emily Carr Middle School in Ottawa, Ontario and Emily Carr Public Schools in London and Toronto, Ontario are named after her.

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Note:

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Vancouver Art Gallery: Emily Carr [Macromedia Flash Player]
http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/EmilyCarr/

?????????????Created by the Vancouver Art Gallery (with a little help from the Virtual Museum of Canada), this is possibly the largest, most comprehensive web site devoted to the works of Canada's beloved artist, Emily Carr.??? The site includes a featured works section, where, using Flash, visitors can view Carr's works arranged on a timeline and zoom in for more information. There is also an extensive biography of Carr, outlining all the phases of her varied career, such as her work as an artist, documenting the First Nations cultures of British Columbia using Native American motifs, painting magical forests and totems, as well as creating crafts such as bowls and rugs.??? Carr is also known as an author of books such as "Klee Wyck", Carr's tales of First Nations communities, and for her literary depictions of nineteenth- century Victoria.?? The search function of the web site searches all 1,688 works by Carr held by the Vancouver Art Gallery, and will retrieve digital images of Carr's paintings, drawings, crafts, and sketchbooks, many accompanied by captions.?????For example, Haida Totems, 1912 has a quote from Klee Wyck describing the totem's setting at Cha-atl on Queen Charlotte Island.

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Hartson S. Dowd

hsdowd@telus.net