27.25 × 21 in (69.2 × 53.3 cm) (sight)
(including Buyer's Premium)
Tara de Grandmaison, granddaughter of the Artist
Masters Gallery, Calgary, July 2013
Private Collection, Alberta
Hugh Dempsey, History in Their Blood: The Indian Portraits of Nicholas De Grandmaison, Vancouver, 1982, page 46
Nicholas de Grandmaison spent four years in a German prisoner of war camp during the First World War, interned with Allied officers from France, Great Britain, and other countries. His military training in cartography and topography had provided him with basic drawing skills, but his talent for portraiture developed during this period as he sketched fellow prisoners and even German officers. After the war, the artist moved to Manitoba to work as a farm worker, before moving to Winnipeg to begin his artistic career as a portraitist. By 1930, de Grandmaison was finding success and exploring farther afield, portraying subjects he encountered on his excursions—trappers, prospectors, fur traders, Métis and Indigenous peoples. Blood 148, a First Nations reserve in Alberta, became his main source of inspiration. He frequently visited to paint the people of the Kainai Nation, or Blood Tribe.
De Grandmaison devoted his life to recording the faces of the Kainai Nation. “I wish to preserve their faces for posterity”, he wrote, “I shall paint them until I die.” Using pastel paper imported from France and Grumbacher pastels, he recorded the fine nuances and warm textures of the faces of these figures, as exemplified in Dan Wildman, Stoney.
