Provenance
Gift of the Artist to Dorothy Mawdsley and Marjorie Leeming, British Columbia
Gift of Dorothy Mawdsley to the Present Private Collection, Victoria
Literature
Maria Tippet, “Emily Carr: A Biography”, Toronto, 1979, page 74
Emily Carr, “Sister and I in Alaska”, Vancouver, 2013, page 20
At the age of twenty in 1891, Emily Carr began to pursue art seriously and studied at the California School of Art and Design in San Francisco for two years, before later enrolling at the Westminster School of Art in London in 1899. Upon her return home to British Columbia in 1905, after also visiting the art colony in St. Ives, Cornwall, Carr took up a successful teaching position in Vancouver and began taking sketching trips.
In 1907, Carr travelled to Alaska with her sister, Alice. Carr recorded this inspirational visit to Alaska in ‘Sister and I in Alaska’, a delightful, illustrated diary. The pair left from Seattle on August 18th, 1907, on the ‘S.S. Princess Royal’. As Maria Tippet shares, “the boat passed mile upon mile of wooded shore, snow–capped mountains that rose out of the sea, fiords that bit deep into the coast, bleak Indian villages, noisy fish canneries, and rowdy lumber camps.” Upon docking at Sitka on Baranof Island, Emily and Alice spent a week exploring. Their adventures were extensively documented in Carr’s notebook. The women endeavoured to climb the 3,354–foot Mount Verstovia.
This mountain range is located a few miles east of Sitka and it is a very steep climb to the summit. In ‘Sister and I in Alaska’, Carr recalls the treacherous hike up the mountain, recording with humour how she and Alice squeezed under logs, climbed trees, scaled cliffs, and shed their heavy clothes before collapsing in pure exhaustion. Recorded with a sketch of the tired looking sisters on their journey, Carr writes, "This mountain [was] excessively steep and rugged and reaching almost to the heavens lies in the rear of Sitka, there being but one obscure trail, to loose which is certain death. We arose at dawn and wrestling with an agony of sleep: but well provided with luncheon. We started for the launch that was to bear us to the foot of ‘Vestovias’."
This watercolour was possibly executed on the spot at the base of Mount Verstovia. The riot of colours depicted in the flowers of the foreground are perfectly balanced against the towering peaks of the mountain and the heavy clouds of the background. The watercolour, executed in the English Victorian tradition, displays Carr’s level of artistic ability after her early conservative training in San Francisco and London, as well as a burgeoning interest in the tenets of modern painting. This is a rare and early watercolour by Carr from a transformative period in her artistic career.
This artwork was acquired from Carr by Dorothy Mawdsley and Majorie Leeming of Vancouver. These women both held prominent positions at the University of British Columbia and were in the same academic circle as Walter Gage, Garnet Sedgewick and Ira Dilworth, all acquaintances of Emily Carr, and proponents of both her painting and writing. As well as her family being neighbours with Carr in James Bay, Majorie Leeming was a lifelong friend of Carr and a student of the artist in Vancouver. The painting was later given to the present owners, acknowledging their close friendship with Leeming and Mawdsley.
We extend our thanks to the late Dr. Kerry Mason, Canadian art historian, for her assistance in researching this artwork and for contributing details that led to the preceding essay.
