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Inventory # A22F-E21818-001

BCSFA CGP
1871 - 1945
Canadian

Kitwangak
watercolour on paper on board, circa 1928
titled in Carr's handwriting and inscribed "8/16"
30 x 22 1/4 in, 76.2 x 56.5 cm

PROVENANCE
Barbara E. Spencer, British Columbia
Galerie Claude Lafitte, Montreal
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Ira Dilworth and Lawren Harris, Emily Carr: Her Paintings and Sketches, National Gallery of Canada, 1945, a watercolour of the same title and size listed page 58
Gerta Moray, Unsettling Encounters: First Nations Imagery in the Art of Emily Carr, 2006, pages 133, 134 and 296


Emily Carr’s interest in First Nations imagery began as early as 1899, when she visited Ucluelet on Vancouver Island, which was then part of a Nootka reserve. From her youth she had felt an affinity with First Nations people, whom she saw as living simple, unpretentious lives. In Ucluelet, the Indigenous people she met had accepted her without concern for Victorian social mores, which annoyed Carr, and which she felt hindered her ambition as a female artist. Carr’s first encounter with carved poles took place in 1907 in Skagway, Alaska, where she saw the Kaigani Haida poles that had been moved there.

In 1912, Carr visited the central and northern coastal communities of Alert Bay, the Skeena River valley and the Queen Charlotte Islands on an ambitious six-week sketching trip. It was her first experience of the Skeena village of Gitwangak (once known as Kitwangak). Gerta Moray wrote that here, “Carr began to apply the experience she had gained in rendering carved forms at Hlragilda ’Ilnagaay / Skidegate to impart mass and volume to the Gitxsan poles.” Carr noted that the poles “up the Skeena River [were] warm brown in colour and almost appear like new wood, though on close observation you can see they are of great age and much worn.” It was her opinion that the people of that area (in contrast to the Haida, she pointed out) regarded life with a more light-hearted outlook, and consequently “there were many more cheerful countenances depicted.”

Carr’s optimistic plans to bring attention to the Indigenous people and their plight by documenting their houses and carved poles (which she felt would soon be completely gone) did not fully come to fruition until 1927, when she was visited by anthropologist Marius Barbeau and National Gallery of Canada director Eric Brown. They subsequently included her work in the now famous exhibition West Coast Art, Native and Modern, held at the gallery that December, and they invited Carr to attend. This watershed exhibition threw Carr into the Canadian spotlight, and it was during this trip that she would meet Lawren Harris and other members of the Group of Seven. Their support for her work and respect for her as an artist renewed Carr’s enthusiasm to pursue her art, which had suffered numerous financial and critical blows during the previous decade.

With this, her desire to sketch remote First Nations villages was also renewed. Immediately upon return from her trip east, Carr made ambitious plans to travel north. She set out in June of 1928 and revisited a number of villages on the Skeena River that she had seen on her 1912 trip. She returned to Gitwangak to discover that, because it was on the railway line, it had been the subject of a Department of Mines – CNR totem pole restoration project. The poles had been stabilized with reinforcement posts, covered with thick paint that was not traditional, and re-installed in a straight line in the village. Although these procedures were intended to preserve them, Carr was offended by the restoration. She set out to document the poles, as Moray notes, “In pencil and watercolour on eight drawing-book pages, supplemented with five oil sketches, she noted all twelve of the poles then standing in the row along the river, thus renewing her acquaintance with them.” In these works, she was primarily concerned with the proportions and masses of the poles, often in close-up, as we see here in this superb watercolour from this trip. The carved motifs are animated, as if barely contained on the pole, and the viewer feels the intensity of their gaze, even seen from the side. The backdrop of the mountains, described with transparent washes, is majestic and their insubstantiality makes the solidity and definition of the poles stand out.

This pivotal 1928 trip would be Carr’s last extended visit to First Nations villages. Although she did make shorter visits the following year, by 1930 the forest had become the focus of Carr’s attention.

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