Yan, Q.C.I., 1912 by Emily Carr
Emily Carr
Yan, Q.C.I., 1912
oil on canvas
signed, titled and dated 1912 lower right; inscribed “83” on the reverse; inscribed “E. Carr Trust Victoria/B.10/L-1 Carr” on a label affixed to the stretcher
19.75 x 24 ins ( 50.2 x 61 cms )
Auction Estimate: $300,000.00 - $400,000.00
Price Realized $384,000.00
Sale date: December 6th 2023
Richard and Katherine Daly, Toronto
Tom Daly, Toronto
By descent to the present Private Collection, Quebec
Emily Carr, “Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr”, Toronto, 1966, page 106
Gerta Moray, “Northwest Coast Native Culture and the Early Indian Paintings of Emily Carr, 1899‒1913” (PhD. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 1993), vol. I, pages 325–326
Emily Carr, “Opposite Contraries: The Unknown Journals of Emily Carr and Other Writings”, ed. Susan Crean, Vancouver, 2003, page 204
of documenting Indigenous villages and their neighbouring forests in British Columbia.
After her return from France in 1912, where she had studied at the Académie Colarossi, and privately, with Harry Phelan Gibb, John Duncan Fergusson and Frances Hodgkins, Carr began her project, embarking on the most extensive excursion she had ever taken in the region. Visiting the islands of the Northwest Coast, including Haida Gwaii and the Upper Skeena River, Carr travelled with Indigenous guides in order to discover remote villages to document. She occasionally used photographs as sources, acquired from professional photographers or other travellers, but usually, she worked en plein air, drawing and painting. Her final studio paintings were drawn from these vibrant field notes and sketches that reflected the influences of Fauvism and post–impressionism as well as the formal elegance of Indigenous carving and design. The works from this period are animated by active brushwork, and the reduced form of the French school: a ‘unity in movement’ that used denaturalized colour and brushwork as a structural component.
In her journal, Carr wrote, “I decided to try and make as good a representative collection of those old villages and wonderful totem poles as I could, for the love of the people and the love of the places and the love of the art; whether anybody liked them or not.... I painted them to please myself in my own way, but I also stuck rigidly to the facts because I knew I was painting history.”
In 1912, Carr visited the village of Masset on Haida Gwaii. It was her last stop on the islands. The Village of Yan, located across the Masset Inlet and still used by locals for potato farming, became an obsession. She spent two long days there, according to her own record, in “Lecture on Totems,” noting the rain and wildness of the days, which was challenging since she could only paint between rainfalls: “There is a mighty calm about Yan,” she wrote, “the great solemn unpainted poles, with a carpet of fireweed running [in a] wild riot of colour around their base.” It figured prominently in a series of at least seven finished studio canvases that emerged from this visit. The journey she made also took place during a time of First Nations protests against settler encroachment on Aboriginal lands and its economic and cultural impact. Art historian Gerta Moray notes that these were the most thorough and complete record of a location and the “largest number of sketches she made in any location” during this journey. Moray also speculates that an earlier visit from artist Will Taylor in 1909 (in which he relayed to anthropologist Harlan Smith at the American Museum of Natural History, the sale price of totems Carr had painted at the cost of $1 per foot) may have added urgency to her sense of documenting the old village site. In addition, its proximity to Masset and the steamship route may have also made them seem vulnerable.
“Yan, Q.C.I.,” 1912 may have been completed onsite rather than in the studio, and is comprised of a complex range of neutralized greens, blues and greys to unify the moving underbrush, beachfront and backlit northern sky. A celestial silver emanates from the horizon, where cloud comprised of dense, layered brushwork places a series of totems in silhouette. A hint of viridian and cerulean blue rises above the cloud, as sky melts into a glowing mauve, a colour that Carr infuses the totems with in classic post–impressionist ‘unifying’ formalism. Here, Carr also uses the technique of outlining introduced by her French studies, to individually record the figures on the totems themselves. The poles feature a series of bird crest figures that Moray notes are prominent features of the Yan poles, and the bird forms had preoccupied Carr during her research on Haida Gwaii. However, a study of light and of picture–making remains top of mind, as some totems fade into the dusk, their leaning and fallen profiles seeming to stand in for an overall narrative of loss and nature’s reclamation. “Yan, Q.C.I.” is a diligent documentation, pictured at the site of the totems’ original raising, and within reach of the small settlement. These proximities to the village are important—the poles are depicted as part of a living legacy of the region and reveal how they are part of a wholistic expression of art and architecture. The painting also reveals Carr grappling with the challenge she has set before herself: a complex village site which featured approximately 50 remaining poles or house posts. Addressing only a select few in this work, through the series Carr depicted almost half of them. Works from this period such as “Tanoo, Q.C.I.” 1913, (BC Archives), “Totem Poles, Kitseukla”, 1912, (Vancouver Art Gallery) and the larger studio work, “Yan, Q.C.I.”, 1912 (Art Gallery of Hamilton) show a similar approach to land and sky.
“Yan, Q.C.I.”, 1912 is one among over two hundred paintings produced by Carr during this period. A select number were exhibited in 1913, in the largest solo exhibition ever mounted in BC at that time and held at the Dominion Hall in Vancouver, the culmination of five years of work. Carr offered them to the provincial art collection in 1913, then a newly designated branch of the Royal British Columbia Museum. Unfortunately, the reviews were mixed, and when she offered the paintings to the new provincial museum they were refused for their vividness and expressiveness.
We extend our thanks to Lisa Baldissera, Canadian art historian, Director of Griffin Art Projects and former chief curator at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon for contributing the preceding essay. Lisa is author of the Art Canada’s Institute’s “Emily Carr: Life & Work”, available at www.aci-iac.ca.
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Emily Carr
(1871 - 1945) Canadian Group of Painters
Born in Victoria, B.C. She was educated there until she was 16. Her parents died before she was 14 and her eldest sister managed the home. Rebellious against her sister's authority she persuaded the family guardian to allow her the study art in San Francisco. About 1888 she went to the San Francisco School of Art and returned to Victoria about 1895 where she set up a studio in a renovated barn behind her home. There she painted and taught art. In 1897 she travelled to Ucluelet on Vancouver Island, with a missionary friend, where she sketched an Indian village for the first time, but not consciously seeking Indigenous motifs. In her autobiography she wrote, "...to paint the Western forest did not occur to me...I nibbled at silhouetted edges...Unknowingly I was storing...my working ideas against the time when I should be ready to use material."
In Victoria, she had saved enough money through teaching to study in England at the Westminister School of Art, and landscape under Julius Olsson at St. Ives, and landscape under John Whitely at the Meadows Studio, Bushey. Visiting London she took ill and spent 18 months convalescing a the East Anglia Sanatorium which prompted her book "Pause". She returned to Victoria in 1904 and was invited to Vancouver to supervise classes of the Ladies' Art Club of Vancouver. Too serious in her teaching and too unsophisticated for the members' liking, Emily was dismissed after a month. She conducted classes for children in Vancouver which were successful. This brought the Ladies' Art Club President to suggest amalgamation of the two groups, but Emily, understandably, refused. That summer she took a pleasure trip to Alaska with her sister and while she was sketching in Sitka, an American artist seeing her work encouraged her to pursue the Indigenous motif in her own style.
It was after this trip that she decided to paint totem poles in their natural settings. Each summer she returned to the Northern coast of B.C. And did many canvases during that five year period (c. 1905-1910). In 1910 having saved enough money to go abroad, she studied in France at the Colorossi where criticisms were given only in French; finding this too difficult to follow she changed to another studio but took ill and travelled to Sweden for a rest. Returning to France a few months later she studied under Harry Gibb both at Cressey-en-Bri and at Brittany. Gibb encouraged individuality and originality in her work and two of her canvases were hung in the Salon d'Automne. Her work gained brightness characteristic of the Fauves which Gibb himself followed. She studied briefly under an "Australian" woman water colourist at Concarneau, later thought to be New Zealand artist Frances Hodgkins by D.W. Buchanan.
She returned to Victoria and to Vancouver in 1912 where she held an exhibition of her French paintings. They were rejected by everyone. Her new style lost her teaching opportunities but her spirit at this point was not broken for she wrote, "In spite of all the insult and scorn shown to my new work I was not ashamed of it...it had brighter, cleaner colour, simpler form, more intensity."
With so few pupils she spent more time painting large canvases from her earlier Indigenous village sketches. Finally in 1913 with no pupils, no market for her work, she was forced to return to Victoria. She built an apartment house (The House of All Sorts) from family land and borrowed money. She took in roomers but was not able to make ends meet. In that period she raised 350 Old English Bobtail Sheep-dogs and with her own crude kiln in her back yard made pottery, sometimes in batches of 500 pieces which she decorated with Indigenous designs. These were very much sought after by tourists. She wrote, "...I ornamented my pottery with Indian designs- that was why the tourists bought it...Because my stuff sold, other potters followed my lead and, knowing nothing of Indian Art, falsified it. This made me very angry. I loved handling the smooth clay. I loved the beautiful Indian designs, but I was happy about using Indian design on material for which it was not intended..."
Running a rooming house, raising dogs, and making pottery kept Emily from painting for about 15 years. It was not until Marius Barbeau in 1921 learned of her work from his Indigenous interpreter and brought it to the attention of Eric Brown, National Gallery of Canada Director, (although Mortimer Lamb had also shown interest in her work) that she became known to the rest of Canada. It was Brown who told her of the Group of Seven and F. B. Housser's book "Canadian Art Movement" which she bought and read from cover to cover. She loaned 50 of her paintings for the West Coast Indian Art exhibit organized by the National Gallery in 1927 and her work was well received. Travelling East for the opening, she visited A.Y. Jackson, J.E.H. MacDonald, and Lawren Harris in Toronto hanving read of their work in Housser's book. Heading West after the opening, she stopped at Toronto again to see Lawren Harris who became the inspiration and motivation in her development as a painter.
A change of style soon followed her visit East, notably with the canvas "Blunden Harbour" which Dr. Hubbard considers her most monumental of this period. Although Harris influenced her, he never tried to mould her; he encourages her individuality and eventually prompted her to seek liberation from the dominant Indigenous motif in her work. She turned to the forests of B.C. Using oil-on-paper in a powerful spiral like style described by Dr. Hubbard as an expression of "immense fertility of the earth and the irresistible force of nature.” Emily Carr travelled East several times as an invited contributor to the Group of Seven shows and on one occasion visited New York where she viewed works of American artists. By 1943 however, William Colgate notes in his book, "Her recent painting...is characterized by an eccentricity of design and a cloudiness of colour which stand in marked contrast to her earlier work...Whatever the cause, her painting has indubitably suffered because of it." Eleven years later, on reviewing her water colour work, Paul Duval wrote, "She did not hesitate to use whatever means necessary to attain her desired end. Some passages in her painting have a scrubbed look, others are delicately washed in, and there are frequent moments when her brush slashed the appear with the marks of a lash. System or non, Emily Carr registered souvenirs of her love of the Pacific Coast which are as affecting as any created in Canada."
Emily Carr sold her apartment home in 1936 and turned to full time painting and writing. Through a friend, Ira Dilworth learned of her work and became her literary executive. He had her stories read over the BCB at Vancouver and later took her manuscripts to the Oxford University Press in Toronto. "Klee Wyck" was published in 1941 and won the Governor General's award for the best non-fiction of that year; others followed: "The Book of Small", "The House of All Sorts", "Growing Pains", "The Heart of A Peacock", "Pause-A Sketch Book". Her paintings are in the collections of the the following galleries: Art Association of Montreal, Art Gallery of Ontario, Hart House, University of Toronto, Vancouver Art Gallery, The Lord Beaverbrook Collection, and the National Gallery of Canada in addition to many private collections.
Source: "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume I: A-F", compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1977
