Exhibited
“Emily Carr: Paintings and Watercolours”, Dominion Gallery, Montreal, 19 October‒4 November 1944, no. 6
“Emily Carr Retrospective Exhibition”, Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal, 2002, no. 18
“Max Stern”, Concordia University/Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2004, no. 49
“Pop Up Museum”, Canadian Friends of the Israel Museum, 9 August 2017
Literature
Marius Barbeau, “Totem Poles of the Gitskan, Upper Skeena River, British Columbia”, Ottawa, 1929, page 108‒109, 118, poles photographed on page 257
Emily Carr, “Klee Wyck”, Toronto, 1941, 2003 edition, pages 138, 142‒143
“MagazinArt, 12:1” (Fall 1999), reproduced page 138
“MagazinArt, 15:1” (Fall 2002), reproduced page 47
“Emily Carr Retrospective Exhibition”, Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal, 2002, no. 18, reproduced page 8
“Max Stern”, Concordia University/Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2004, no. 49, reproduced page 7
Emily Carr’s work was introduced to the Canadian art world when the anthropologist Marius Barbeau included her paintings in the monumental exhibition, Canadian West Coast Art: Native and Modern, held at the National Gallery of Canada in 1927. The exhibition included an important group of Carr’s 1912 paintings of First Nations totems and villages painted using the knowledge that she had gained during her training in France. This body of work was warmly received by other artists, most notably for Carr, Lawren Harris and other members of the Group of Seven. After years of her work being little appreciated in her home province, Carr was encouraged and resolved to return to painting with a new conviction.
On her 1912 trip to Northern British Columbia to paint Indigenous subjects, Carr was unable to visit the village of Gitanyow, or Kitwancool, renowned for the totem poles there, because the Gitsxan elders had little time for outsiders in their village. In 1928, however, Carr was able to secure passage to the village and produced a fine body of work from this visit.
Carr’s trip to Kitwancool (now Gitanyow), the Gitxsan village on the Kitwanga River, a tributary of the larger Skeena River, is recounted in her story, Kitwancool, which appears in Klee Wyck, her Governor General’s Award-winning book of 1941. Carr writes, “the thought of those old Kitwancool poles pulled at me.” After a difficult wagon journey, Carr, upon her arrival, is asked by the elder Mrs. Douse why she had come to the village and replies, “I want to make some pictures of the totem poles...because they are beautiful.” Carr was able to remain in the village for six days, working intensively.
Several canvases were produced from studies done in Kitwancool when Carr returned to her studio in Victoria. There is a fine canvas, “Kitwancool”, 1928-30, (Glenbow Museum) but more interestingly, in relation to this canvas, there is a similar work, “Corner of Kitwancool Village” (McMichael Canadian Art Collection). Both canvases depict two poles in the village in some detail and show several other poles and longhouses in the background and a distant mountain.
We know from Marius Barbeau’s, “Totem Poles of the Gitskan, Upper Skeena River, British Columbia”, that the two poles belong to Malee (the one on the right of the image) and Weerhae (on the left). Barbeau describes the pole belonging to Malee as follows: “The figures on the third pole, the nearest to the river are: the Cormorant (Ha-o’ts) at the top and farther below; a Bear cub; and the ancestress Disappeared (Temdee-mawks), at the bottom.” The pole belonging to Weerhae: “The fourth pole, the most recent, also bears the name of Mountain-eagle or Thunder-bird (Skaimsem). It stands on the lower terrace, nearer to the river, and represents in simplified form the same mythic adventures and emblems: the Mountain-eagle, at the top; Tsiwiladaw, the mythic ancestress with a child in her arms; four of her chilred; and Large- nosed-person (Git’weedzarat).” In both the present canvas and the McMichael version, the top of the pole, the Mountain-eagle, is unseen: only the Tsiwiladaw with her child; a roughly indicated grouping of the children below this and then the figure of the Git’weedzarat (large- nosed-person) are depicted. Sadly, it is not possible to securely identify the other poles in either image, nor the longhouses behind. In both canvasses, strongly painted blue mountains rise above the village in the background. In “Kitwancool”, Carr has slightly shifted her viewpoint to the right, and the pole belonging to Weerhae, pushes against the left edge of the image. The change in viewpoint also means that we see another pole in distance and, more importantly, there is a greater immediacy to the image than in the McMichael version, because the pole of Malee is also brought closer to the picture plane.
Both works, were first shown in the exhibition “Emily Carr: Paintings and Watercolours” held at the Dominion Gallery, Montreal in 1944. “Kitwancool” was sold the following year, and “Corner of Kitwancool Village”, remained in the collection of Dr. Max Stern, the Dominion Gallery owner, until he gave it to the McMichael in 1977. While it is perhaps unusual to have two compositions so closely related, a strong case can be made that “Kitwancool”, the more dynamic work, is the later of the two paintings. It is more challenging compositionally, with a vigourously delineated fore and mid-ground, and Carr has eliminated a small structure behind the pole at the left (seen in the McMichael canvas) clarifying the composition to great effect. The sky in “Kitwancool” is also more active, than in the earlier canvas.
Carr wrote of the village of Kitwancool: “The sun enriched the old poles grandly. They were carved elaborately and with great sincerity. Several times the figure of a woman that held a child was represented.” This mother figure appears, notably, in the pole of Weerhae, on the left, and, perhaps most famously in, “Totem Mother, Kitwancool”, 1928 (Vancouver Art Gallery).
What is most striking about “Kitwancool” is how vividly Carr has captured the beauty of these majestic poles, proud sentinels of the Gitxsan nation, Kitwancool (Gitanyow) and the families of Weerhae and Malee. The poles are indeed “enriched” by the sunlight which streams in from the left and Carr has conveyed their sincerity and power.
We extend our thanks to curator and art historian, Ian Thom, for his assistance in researching this artwork and for contributing the preceding essay.
