An Artist Redefined

Emily Carr once wrote that “I’ve been loved furiously and not able to pay back, and I’ve loved furiously with cold response.”

A remark such as this has the power to reveal a lot about the individual and more importantly, their thoughts on how they are experiencing the world. Selected from a passage in Carr’s journal, putting this line out in the open does unravel a tad of the mystery. But perhaps the first question should be: Who was the real Emily?

Born and buried in her hometown of Victoria, Carr is already recognized as a well-known West Coast artist and award-winning author whose fame has continued to increase posthumously. Nevertheless, there is a lot about her personal life that has remained concealed.

In an effort to become reacquainted with the iconic Canadian exhibit, the Royal BC Museum is ready to unveil its latest instalment, The Other Emily: Redefining Emily Carr, on March 2.

The exhibition draws on the museum’s vast Carr collection to showcase the first-ever exploration of the artist’s life before she became famous — from her teenage years to just before her emergence on the national art scene in 1927.

“Because she didn’t achieve fame as an artist or author until later on in her life, so much information about her comes from that time in her life, “ says curator Kathryn Bridge. “The way she seems to have presented herself is very independent and practical. She was really type-cast; the exhibit will try to counter that, showing she actually lived a very full life.”

Along with other prominent Canadian nationalists of her day, it was a combination of Carr’s family background, the region in which she painted, the subjects she chose to paint and her own ideas about Canada and art that produced a vision of the West Coast that remains popular today.

Brilliant, both in prose and on the canvas, adventurous and an independent spirit, Carr was understood as an artist but misunderstood to an extent in friendship and family. Bridge explains one of the aims of The Other Emilywill be to shake off the stubborn stereotypes that have come to characterize the Canadian icon.

“There’s this perspective of her being all alone, living the lonely, starving-artist lifestyle,” says Bridge. “What we’re trying to say is she wasn’t and certainly did not take up the persona we have come to presume she was, as being unloved and misunderstood.”

Bridge herself is a Carr enthusiast who believes the opposite. In her view, Carr was a deeply talented artist living in a traditional artists’ area of Canada, and this sense of community, on top of support from family and friends, gave her the strength to lead her own life.

“In published works of hers, there is little reference as to why she never did the expected thing young women of that time did: Get married and start a family,” says Bridge, “She had many suitors, but turned them down. We now know there was one she was really infatuated with — and he is shown with her and her family in a portrait, leaning up against her in a familiar way”.

This discovery is one of many exciting aspects of the exhibition, displaying new material that has come to light on Carr and her life. If the chance to take in original paintings is not enough, visitors can also admire more than a dozen rarely seen sketches and drawings, view numerous manuscripts and handwritten letters, read personal diary accounts, examine archival photographs and more. Eighteen contemporary paintings of Carr by artist Manon Elder are presented alongside the archival photographs that inspired them. Displays of period clothing, objects and artifacts bring the historical aspects of the exhibit to life and provide further insights into this time in Carr’s development.

Royal BC is not the only stop on the West Coast for one to view Carr’s works up close and in person. In an educational showcase, the Vancouver Art Gallery has teamed up with the Art Gallery of Alberta to bring Nature and Spirit: Emily Carr’s Coastal Landscapeto Edmonton audiences, beginning March 5.  Organized by senior curator Ian Thom, this installation spans Carr’s career and features early examples of her work in European modernism, her fascination with the art and culture of the aboriginal people of the Pacific northwest coast, and its landscape.

After many decades of study, Bridge elaborates we are still learning more about this influential figure.

“Her complexity continues to interest me, as to how she was able to paint in words and with paint. A lot of people don’t have that facility,” says Bridge. “Her work’s also still very current, it’s not stale-dated. It seems like the more we study her, we’re more amazed at the success of generations who understand her. She possesses that timeless quality.” •
 

Did You Know…?

Emily Carr was born in 1871 in Victoria. 

Her elder sisters were Edith, Clara, Elizabeth (Lizzy) and Alice. A brother, Richard, was born in 1875.

The earliest extant Emily Carr letter is from 1888 when she was 16 years old.

Emily Carr played the guitar and mandolin. In the 1890s she also sang solos in concerts in Victoria.

Carr had two paintings hung in an exhibition in Paris in 1911. This was her first international showing.

Source: Royal BC Museum