Circus, 1919 by Peter Clapham Sheppard

Provenance:
Estate of the Artist
Private Collection, Ontario

Literature:
Bernice Fenwick Martin, C.P.E., "Biographical data: Sheppard, Peter Clapham, R.C.A; O.S.A", (c. 1965), National Gallery of Canada Artists’ Files
'O.S.A. Annual Exhibition. Color, Vigor and Originality Chief Characteristics of the Works. Great War Records', "Globe", Toronto, 8 March 1919, page 8
Tom Smart, "Peter Clapham Sheppard: His Life and Work", Richmond Hill/Buffalo, 2018, reproduced page 115

Peter Clapham Sheppard’s artistic development in Toronto in the early years of the twentieth century came at a time of rapid change and growth in the nation’s artistic landscape. A contemporary of Tom Thomson and members of the Group of Seven, Sheppard, like them, developed a practice that balanced earning a living as a commercial artist in the printing industry with a studio practice in which he worked up sketches made from the urban and hinterland landscapes of Toronto and northern Ontario.

Sheppard’s artistic “creed”, according to his close friend Bernice Fenwick Martin, “was to observe and paint the world around him, without becoming a participator in the passing scene.” Believing that artists should stand apart, Sheppard roamed around his native Toronto capturing in paint and pencil sketches the lively urban scene and the characters of its neighbourhoods. A gang of men constructing the Bloor Street viaduct, a woman sitting contemplatively on a park bench, boys mucking around in a pond, stevedores unloading a steamer, all give evidence of an artist comfortable with the role of watcher. Sheppard described what he saw with an objectivity that spoke of a curious chronicler of the vitality of the society in which he lived and worked.

In 1919, Sheppard occupied a studio near Toronto’s King and Yonge Streets, an address that was at the centre of city life. A contemporary review of his work singled out his predilection to choose “garish commonplace” subjects that caught his attention. Among these were scenes from the nearby Canadian National Exhibition. It was this interest that, no doubt, also drew Sheppard in 1918 to interpret the circus, the subject of a major canvas "Arrival of the Circus" (c. 1919, oil on canvas, 101.6 x 147.3 cm) in which a circus parade with its gaudily-clad performers, its gaily-caparisoned elephants, and its colour and allurements are all shown against a cityscape background of skyscrapers looming over a grey railway bridge veiled with wisps of lavender smoke that trails the jolly entourage making its way to the CNE grounds.

"Circus (study)", a "plein-air" sketch that is one among many that he made of the CNE at the time, likely constitutes a preliminary study for "Arrival of the Circus" (private collection). The view is backstage where Sheppard paused to draw elephants and figures, some on horseback, set on a dais or stage where the elephants are grouped in a cluster at the composition’s centre, perhaps hauling the tent poles of the big top. As troubling as the subject is by today’s standards that ban the formerly barbaric treatment meted out to circus animals, particularly elephants, Sheppard approached his subject with a non-judgmental touch, more on-the-spot reportage, in which he records what he is witnessing.

This sketch bears an affinity to the work of New York painters who formed the group The Eight and later the Ashcan School, early 20th-century societies of artists who looked to the streets of New York City, its hustle and bustle, and its visual cacophony for subject matter, all the better to reflect the close relationship between life and art. Just as his American counterparts reached for an American reality by immersing themselves in the untidy, dense and diversely populated avenues, markets and harbours of the city, Sheppard equally identified with human subjects in gritty urban settings.

"Circus (study)" shows that Sheppard’s approach to painting was direct and expressive, a style characterized by vibrant brushwork all the better to simulate in paint the action of the scene in front of him.

We extend our thanks to writer, curator and art gallery director Tom Smart, former Director of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, for contributing the preceding essay. Tom is the author of "Peter Clapham Sheppard: Life and Work" (2018).