Canoes in a Fog, Lake Superior, 1864

Walker's Galleries, London, England, March 1914 

John Rogers, Toronto 

By descent to the present Private Collection

Janet E. Clarke, Frances Anne Hopkins 1838-1919: Canadian Scenery, Thunder Bay, 1990, see page 85 for a similar work in the collection of the Glenbow Museum 

Thomas Schultze, Frances Anne Hopkins, Images from Canada, Manotick, 2008, see pages 81-83 for similar works in the collection of the Glenbow Museum 

Letter from Edward M. Hopkins to his friend John McIntyre dated 5 August 1864, cited in Mary-Ellen Weller-Smith, Frances Anne Hopkins: Hudson’s Bay Company Wife, Voyageurs’ Artist, Madison, Wisconsin, 2022, page 113

The reputation of Frances Anne Hopkins as an artist is well-established within Canadian cultural life. She is well-known for her depictions of daily life in Canada at a key moment in our country’s history, as the canoe brigades and timber rafts gave way to the steamboat and the railroad, and as Confederation took shape in response to American aggression in the post-Civil War period. Her art shows the enormous love she had for a country where she spent almost twelve years of her life, raising several children and being forced to endure the loss of several others. She never forgot the life that she lived here and returned to Canadian themes in her art long after she returned to England. 

Hopkins was born in London in 1836 and was raised in a famous and artistic family. Her grandfather, grandmother, and uncles were all artists, while her father Captain Frederick Beechey, R.N., was a notable Arctic explorer and amateur artist himself. She was likely taught to draw and paint by family members. In 1858, she married Edward Martin Hopkins, a Hudson’s Bay Company official and a widower fifteen years her senior, moving to Canada to help raise his three boys from a previous marriage. From 1858 to 1870, she lived mostly in Lachine and Montreal, although returning to England for extended periods of time. She gave birth to six children, of whom only two lived into adulthood. She was left to cope with a large household for many years, but she found time to sketch and paint, and to become involved with the Art Association of Montreal and the Montreal Sketching Club. 

Because of her husband’s work, she was able to undertake canoe outings in the vicinity of Montreal and on the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. She also made three longer journeys: in 1864, she accompanied her husband on a voyage along the north shore of Lake Superior from Fort William to Michipicoten; in 1866, she travelled up the Ottawa River to the Temagami District; and in July-August 1869, she travelled by canoe with her husband from Fort William to Montreal. As her husband noted in a letter to one of his fur trade colleagues: “Canoe travel agrees with her.” 

After her return to England, Mrs. Hopkins began to exhibit her art at the Royal Academy and in other London galleries. Her experiences in North America became the dominant theme of her artistic output, as she made use of the many plein air sketches she created during her time in Canada. She had exhibited on multiple occasions in Canada, the last time in the spring "Conversazione" of the Art Association of Montreal in 1870, when sixteen watercolours, all related to her canoeing experiences, and the disappearing life of voyageur travel, were displayed. 

The two watercolours in this sale represent major subjects of Hopkins’ artistic oeuvre (see lot 13: Lumber Raft on the Ottawa, 1886). Canoes in a Fog, Lake Superior, is one of several sketches that Hopkins made during her first trip on Lake Superior in July 1864 and formed the basis for the first painting by her to be accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 1869. The painting, acquired by the Glenbow Museum in 1955, became more widely known after being chosen to be engraved and published by Knoedler & Co. in 1873. Five Hopkins sketches related to the painting are known to exist, with three in the Glenbow Museum, one in the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and the fifth being the work in this sale. Each sketch offers variations in colours, composition, the presence or absence of certain elements, and dimensions, but this work is in my opinion the first large-scale work that she prepared, most notably due to the multi-coloured wheel-star on the stern of the canoe, which is mirrored in the painting, and because of the inscription on the verso, written in the artist’s lifetime. This watercolour may have been one of the sketches shipped back to England in October 1866. The colours remain remarkably bright and the details of the clothing are exquisite. A beautiful work, it records the moment when canoeing transformed from being a means of travel and the transport of goods into a leisure time pursuit. 

We extend our thanks to Jim Burant, art historian and curator, for contributing the preceding essay. Jim spent four decades with the art and photo holdings of Library and Archives Canada. He has organized or co‒organized many exhibitions and has written and lectured widely about aspects of Canada’s visual heritage. His most recent publication, Ottawa Art & Artists: An Illustrated History (2022), was published by the Art Canada Institute. He was awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for services to Canada in 2002, and is a member of the Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation.