PROVENANCE
Dominion Gallery, Montreal
Acquired from the above by a Private Collection, Ontario, 1944
Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, May 23, 2007, lot 162
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Doris Shadbolt, Emily Carr: A Centennial Exhibition, Vancouver Art Gallery, 1975, reproduced page 83 and a similar work entitled Stumps and Sky reproduced page 46 and listed page 84
Doris Shadbolt, The Art of Emily Carr, 1979, pages 175 and 214, reproduced page 160
Maria Tippett, Emily Carr: A Biography, 1979, page 229
Christopher Varley, Emily Carr: Oil on Paper Sketches, Edmonton Art Gallery, 1979, reproduced #9
Doris Shadbolt, Emily Carr, 1990, reproduced page 200
Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr, 2006, pages 154, 205 – 206 and 208

EXHIBITED
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Paintings in Ottawa Collections, April 10 – May 6, 1959
Vancouver Art Gallery, Emily Carr: A Centennial Exhibition, May 18 – August 29, 1971, traveling to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, September 24 – November 14, 1971, and the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, February 15 – March 15, 1972, catalogue #93
Edmonton Art Gallery, Emily Carr: Oil on Paper Sketches, June 29 – September 3, 1979, catalogue #15

The 1930s found Carr in a state of liberation with her work. Within easy reach of Victoria, in Esquimalt Lagoon, Metchosin, Sooke and Albert Head, were cathedral-like forests, second-growth woods and seashores. Carr sketched in different parts of the Metchosin area in camping sessions in May and September of 1934, June and September of 1935, June and September 1936, and twice in 1940. In September of 1934, she was sketching on Metchosin Road at Esquimalt Lagoon in a caravan that she called The Elephant, with her dogs and monkey. She bought the caravan in 1933 and kept it until 1938, adapting it to her artistic needs, and it liberated her from having to find accommodation. She would have it transported to a camping spot and, cozy with all her supplies and creatures, surrounded by nature, she was free to create. While in this location she enthused, “It is glorious weather again with a moon at nights. Sketching full blast.… High and blue sky, straggle of distant pines and stumps and dry grass in the foreground, and all soused in light and vibrating with glow.… The whole place is full of subjects.”

In Metchosin, the composition is opened out and solid elements are dissolving, leaving slender tree trunks as the structure around which foliage and the very air itself is in motion, dissolving into energy. Rather than the compressed density of her earlier forest paintings, works such as this express energy and movement. Metchosin contains distinctive mottled whorls in the sky like those of van Gogh, which Carr used in other paintings such as Stumps and Sky, circa 1934, in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario. Indeed, Carr was thinking of the work of van Gogh, as she writes in Hundreds and Thousands: “I woke this morning with ‘unity of movement’ in a picture strong in my mind. I believe Van Gogh had that idea.… Now I see there is only one movement.…”

What made this expression of movement and energy possible was her new medium—oil paint thinned with substances such as turpentine and gasoline painted on paper—that allowed effects ranging from the transparencies of watercolour to the thicker impasto of oil. This more liquid medium allowed greater freedom of movement in Carr’s brush-stroke. Visualizing Carr in the forest, Maria Tippett writes:

With her sketching-board on her lap and brush or charcoal in her hand, she would strike out with her arm and wrist and with curved or slashing motions make great sweeping strokes that included rising spirals, s-curves and interlocking rings. All the elements previously defined separately were now powerfully fused to convey the internal push of growth, as in Metchosin and Stumps and Sky.

Carr’s expression of the energy that she saw as animating all of nature was not only a consideration of the formal elements of painting but also came from a deep spiritual basis. Again at Metchosin Road, Carr wrote, “The trees are so inexplicably beautiful! I’ve been thinking about them, how in a way they are better than we humans.… They go straight ahead doing what God tells them; they never pause or question; they grow, always moving in growth, always unfolding, never in a hurry, never behind, doing things in their season.”

Metchosin was widely exhibited across Canada in major museums, and it is reproduced in numerous publications. It is an outstanding work of her period of liberation. The distinctive whorl formations are unique, giving the work a spirited animation. In this transparent forest vibrating with life, Carr expresses a joyous state of identification with all of nature.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars