The Mysterious Death of Tom Thomson, Canadian Painter

[Image: Tom Thomson, public domain]

Tom Thomson (1877-1917) is considered one of the greatest of Canadian artists. His spectacular landscapes of the New Ontario wilderness – composed with vivid colour, passionate brushwork and startling brevity and energy – are considered not only stylistically ground breaking but have become icons of the glory of the Canadian landscape. Alongside the Group of Seven and Emily Carr, Thomson is beloved by Canadians and enthusiasts of Modernist landscape painting worldwide.

Thomson worked in Toronto as a commercial artist, producing lettering and graphic designs for publication. He had been an enthusiastic artist from childhood but began painting seriously in 1913, travelling to the Algonquin Park to capture the sights en plein air, using oil paint on small boards. In 1914 he exhibited publicly for the first time in an open exhibition, meeting with success. Thomson returned to the park each summer, travelling out into the wilderness using a canoe, taking with him tent, survival equipment and provisions as well as painting supplies. According from companions, he was apparently an experienced and judicious outdoorsman, capable of setting fires, pitching tents, hunting, fishing and defending himself against wolves and bears. Due to his frequent visits and long stays, he was regarded as familiar with the landscape and the locals.

[Image: Tom Thomson, The Canoe (1912), oil on canvas, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, public domain]

Death on Canoe Lake

Supposedly, on 7 July 1917, Thomson spent the night drinking with friends at Canoe Lake. It is alleged that this ended in a fistfight, with Thomson fighting either Martin Blecher Jr or Shannon Fraser. Fraser owed Thomson money, though (apparently) they were on good terms. Regarding the war, Thomson was pro-Canada and Blecher pro-Germany and there was bad feeling between them. This was an awkward situation, as Thomson was staying at Mowat Lodge (a large guest house), run by the Blechers. However, this scenario was not mentioned in 1917, only in 1970.

On 8 July, Thomson helped Fraser carry a boat, then went fishing alone in his canoe or he departed for a two-week trip (reports vary). That afternoon, at 3:05 p.m., the undamaged canoe was seen floating upturned by Blecher Jr, who did not report it nor consider it significant. Searches were mounted and George Thomson, the artist’s older brother, visited to help. No trace of Thomson was detected; George was due back at his work and departed. On 16 July, Thomson’s body was found floating in Canoe Lake by Dr Goldwyn Howland, a holidaymaker, and his daughter. As the coroner had not arrived by the following day, Howland was deputised to perform an ad hoc examination. Howland and Robinson examined the body and Howland concluded the cause of death was accidental drowning, perhaps caused by a blow which had left a bruise to the right temple and/or forehead (reports vary). A later report noted a short length of fishing line was wound around his left ankle and cut/snapped. (This was possibly from the rod of Howland’s daughter, who it was claimed had snagged the body underwater and causing it to rise. Others suggest the line was Thomson’s own. An obvious alternative is that it was the line that was used to tow the body to the shore or – more sinisterly – used to tether the body underwater.) No post-mortem was conducted. Due to decomposition and the hot weather, it was decided to inter Thomson in the village cemetery, Mowat Cemetery. The coroner, Dr Ranney, arrived but decided not to disinter the body to perform as post-mortem; instead, he took witness statements and recorded a verdict of accidental drowning.

On 18 July an undertaker sent by the Thomson family disinterred the body and placed it in a fresh coffin for removal to the family plot in Leith Presbyterian Church cemetery, Ontario. Although the formalities were not observed and the undertaker had worked hastily, the park warden permitted the removal of the body. Mark Robinson, a park ranger and friend of Thomson, noted that the excavation in the local cemetery was very shallow, which troubled him. On 21 July, in a closed-coffin funeral, Thomson was reburied in Leith, with his family in attendance.

The Aftermath

Fraser wrangled with the Thomsons over expenses he incurred regarding the recovery and return of Tom’s body. Gradually, the Thomson family became aware Fraser owed Tom the remainder of an unpaid personal loan. Locals did not consider Fraser trustworthy and Tom had become suspicious of him and his wife snooping on his personal life. Fraser had some of Tom’s possessions from his final trip, which he did not return until February. (They were all mundane items – clothing and cooking utensils – no art or writing.) By early 1918, the Thomsons, protective of their reputation and Tom’s legacy, were content to treat his death as a tragic accident.

By 1931, author Blodwen Davies decided to write an expanded appreciation of Thomson. Unbeknownst to her, rumours of suicide or foul play were circulating. Weather was mild, somewhat rainy. There was doubt that a sober man – particularly a known strong swimmer such as Thomson – would drown in placid inland water such as Canoe Lake. Contradictions became more numerous. The coroner recorded – second hand – that the head wound was on the left temple. Yet Dr Ranney cited Howland as recording the wound on the other temple and bleeding from the right ear. When manipulated, it was determined there was air in the lungs, which ruled out death by drowning. Blecher Jr claimed he did not recognise the upturned canoe, yet all Thomson’s acquaintances knew the canoe, which was painted a distinctive dove-grey (or green). The hasty burial of the body despite the imminent announced arrival of the coroner was highly irregular. There was scepticism that the man who exhumed Thomson’s body could have dug up the body, placed it in a metal coffin, soldered it shut and removed the coffin by lantern light in three or four hours at night. Davies pressed for an examination of the Mowat Cemetery in order to establish that it was Thomson’s body that had been exhumed from the small site which had multiple burials close to each other.   

Over the years, more reports emerged, some with perplexing details. One was that the Blechers had retrieved the canoe, which was found floating upright. Robinson’s audio-recorded account, recorded at the end of his life, adds further confusion, as they contradict his earlier statements. It seems that $50 was missing from Thomson’s body – or it was left at his lodgings and disappeared from there. Locals speculated that the affections of Thomson’s close friend or lover Winnifred “Winnie” Trainor (1885-1962) (a local woman) was the subject of rivalry between Thomson and Blecher Jr. However, some close to Thomson (and his family) suggest that Winnie was keener on Thomson than he was on her; Thomson had not mentioned engagement to Winnie to anyone, it seems. There are no reports from people who knew Thomson first hand to contradict this, though second- and third-hand assertions were published much later.

An Unauthorised Exhumation

Without permission, in 1956 a group of men (including William Little) decided to excavate the Mowat cemetery to settle the suspicion that Thomson’s was not the body transferred to Leith. They did find a body, with a skull that had a seeming bullet hole in the left temple. Forensic anthropologists concluded that the shape of the skull and dental characteristics suggested Mongoloid (First Nations/Indian) typology; bones indicated a height of about 5’8” (Thomson was estimated to be 6’0”) and aged 20-30 (Thomson was almost 40), therefore the skeleton was not Thomson’s. One doctor thought that the hole was the result of trepanning, not typical of a gunshot. No bullet was located in the skull, which had no exit wound. It seems impossible to belief that an experienced doctor such as Dr Howland could have missing a bullet wound to the head, especially where the hair would have been short.

The subsequent discussion and William Little’s The Tom Thomson Mystery (1970) foregrounded the suspicion of murder among the general public. Little suggests that he believed that Blecher Jr murdered Thomson by striking him on the head with a paddle by the lakeside. Little’s book – which summarised and published little-known sources – became a key book and powerfully influenced debate. Charles Plewman’s essay and talks in the 1970s suggested that pressure from Winnie regarding marriage had potential driven Thomson to desperation, even to the point of suicide. A still later theory was that Thomson had been killed by accident in the fight of 7 July and that his body was disposed so as to make it appear an accidental death. One of the last survivors of the era, Daphne Crombie, gave interviews in which she says that Fraser’s wife admitted that her that her husband had killed Thomson by accident during the supposed fight of 7 July. Fraser struck Thomson, who had fallen and hit his head on a fire grate, killing him. She had no corroborative evidence to add. By the 1970s, there was a cottage industry of articles, books and television films about Thomson’s death.

Determining the cause of death at a distance, relying on sources that are not full post-mortem examinations, is impossible. Was the bruise to the forehead or temple related to Thomson’s death or was it the result of the reported fight from the previous evening? Was it actually discoloration due to decomposition? Likewise, blood from the ear may be putrefaction fluid leaking from a body that was apparently very swollen and becoming rotten by the time Howland examined it.

In The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact From Fiction, Gregory Klages attempts to patiently unpick the way rumour and legend were added to the Thomson story over the years, with the changing information altering interpretations. Various individual writers became attached to certain theories and sought to defend them over decades, with subsequent books splicing in new snippets of information and paraphrasing information that was already unreliable. Klages rightly dismisses the idea of suicide by voluntary drowning and can see no plausible alternative method of suicide that explains the circumstances. Klages thinks murder is not proven (true), any culprit not identified (also true) and that “we can reasonably and confidently conclude that Tom Thomson was not murdered”[i] – which seems too definitive. With regard to death by murder, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Klages states there is not enough evidence to disbelieve the narrative of Thomson’s body removal from Mowat to Leith.

While Klages can be disparaging of authors, he is at times a little unclear himself. The most contentious point of Klages is “Thomson’s body did not have wounds that suggested trauma or violence.”[ii] Klages attributes the bruise or marking to the temple to post-mortem decomposition and – it seems – the ear blood to decomposition. Yet he also seems to hold out the possibility that these observations indicate the results of an accident. This is unclear. Contusion due to injury due to a fall on a canoe gunwale or rock is still “trauma or violence”, even if it is not deliberate or inflicted by a person. Whether the marks were due to man-inflicted violence, accidental injury or decomposition is indeterminate at this point – though it is possible to assign probabilities to each discrete possibility – and this uncertainty is not compatible with Klages’s definitive dismissal of “trauma or violence” and murder. Klages favours a scenario of Thomson’s canoe hitting a submerged log (common due to the logging industry) and causing Thomson to strike his head on the canoe or log, dying by drowning. There are two problems with this. Firstly, according the Fraser in 1917, the canoe’s two paddles were tied in for portaging. This means that the canoe was not in movement in the water to strike any log. Secondly, drowning is contradicted by the evidence of air in the lungs. Cerebral haemorrhage causing instant death would be feasible, as that would not entail drowning, but it seems that the bruise (if it was a bruise) did not indicate cranial fracture to the examining doctor. Such an injury would have to have taken place while the canoe was stationary. Klages, however, maintains that Thomson’s death was through drowning and not suspicious.

John Little, son of William Little, has written Who Killed Tom Thomson?, published in 2018. Little states up front that he believes the bones found by his father in Mowat Cemetery were Thomson’s. Little introduces new evidence from an elderly local park guide, Ralph Bice, who stated that he had heard that Thomson was a womaniser and a heavy drinker, in fact “a drunken bum”[iii] who “couldn’t paint unless he had a bottle of gin”. According to Bice, Thomson had fallen on his head while drunk and drowned. Yet, these disparaging comments came from an individual who resented Thomson’s celebrity and never spoke to him.    

Little accepts some later additions to the Thomson story – the drunken fight, the fishing line around the ankle (not mentioned by Howland, Ranney or Robinson in 1917), Robinson’s immediate opposition to the accident verdict – and presents some rather distant tales of Thomson as a womaniser. That is not to say these aspects are either impossible or unlikely, simply not contemporaneous. Little is correct in assessing the body buried at Mowat as anomalous. The oddity of the body being in what seemed to be Thomson’s original coffin is unexplained. Even a burial just before it becoming covering the empty coffin debris is hard to understand. There were two recorded burials at the period of Thomson’s burial, with a potential third. There was no record of an Indian being buried then. Yet the forensics report defies Little’s belief that the bones were those of the artist. Little does conclusively prove that no member of the Thomson family saw the body after the exhumation. Little outlines an idea that Thomson was shot, pointing out the weaknesses of the shooting theory.

Little asked a pair of retired police detectives to review the evidence. They rule out suicide and accidental death by drowning. They believe the Mowat body to be Thomson and suspect foul play. Little concurs. Short of DNA testing the reinterred Mowat bones or exhuming the Leith body (ruled out by the Thomson family), there is no way to end the debate over the body identities and no way at all to determine a cause of death.

Gregory Klages, The Many Deaths of Tom Thomson: Separating Fact From Fiction, Read How You Want, 2017, paperback, 359pp + x, mono illus., £24.99, ISBN 9781525236884

John Little, Who Killed Tom Thomson?, Skyhorse Publishing, 2018, hardback, 409pp + xxxvii, 31 mono illus., C$24.99, ISBN 9781510733381

© 2021 Alexander Adams

To see my art and books visit www.alexanderadams.art

[i] P. 285

[ii] P. 319

[iii] P. xv

Yua: Treasures of the Arctic Peoples

[Image: Cup’ig artist, Mask (c. 1915), wood, cormorant feathers, sinew and paint, The Thomas G. Fowler Collection at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Photograph copyright 2020 the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco]

The Thomas G. Fowler Collection at the Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco consists of a wide range of art and artefacts from the peoples of the Arctic. The quality of the objects and variety of types makes the group especially valuable for anyone wishes to get an overview of Arctic cultures. Thomas G. Fowler (1943-2006) was an esteemed graphic designer and keen traveller of the Arctic north. He started collecting in the 1970s and built a collection of nearly 400 items. Upon his death, he bequeathed his collection to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where it joined the long-established Native American collection.

Yua: Spirit of the Arctic documents highlights of the collection and provides a comprehensive overview of the material culture of the people of the north. (Yua means spirit of a being in Yup’ik.) The excellent-quality large illustrations with technical data and brief notes bring objects to life. Experts provide essays covering different aspects of the many cultures in the huge area of northern North America and Greenland. The peoples represented in the collection include the Inuit, Aleut, Yup’ik, Iñupiaq, Unangax̂, Inuktitut and Kalaallit (the definitions of which sometimes overlap) and the historical groups Okvik, Punuk, Birnik and Thule. An extensive essay details the history of Western collecting of artefacts made by northern peoples.

The majority of the material dates from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries but some are much older. Pieces dating from the Okvik and Purnuk eras (100-400 AD) are small tusk carvings of figurines. Some seem to represent children in swaddling clothes. In one figurine (no. 18) the minimally decorated striations on the face and oval eyes have the countenance of West African mask carvings. The dark coloration of some pieces is due to artists using partially fossilised walrus ivory rather than fresh material. Some figures may have been dolls or for girls to dress, thereby practising skills they would use for making clothing. There is a figurine from the Thule culture, which vanished and superseded by the Inuit from 1400 onwards. The Thule did not prize art and what they left has little decoration and is unambitious – in contrast to the forceful art that previous and later eras produced.

Most of the materials used are traditional and locally sourced, including walrus skin/ivory, whale bone, driftwood, stone, reindeer hide/sinew, teeth, grass and birch bark. Metal was used sparingly – particularly in areas without trees, which provided the fuel for smelting. Sources included meteorites and other readily accessible sources. (The Copper Inuit is a small tribe who got its name from the ore deposits on Coppermine River, Nunavut. The Cape York (Innaanganeq) meteorite was an important source of iron for the local Inuit tribe before it was taken by Captain Robert Peary took it to the USA in 1897.) Colour is minimal – limited to soot/charcoal, red ochre, white clay and blue clay – often impermanent.

The decorated knife and hook handles show how the Inuit altered manufactured items from the south and embellished them with meaningful symbolism. Designs include animal forms and designs indicating geographical regions or cosmological zones. Some harpoon heads are decorated – relating to common beliefs about the interrelated nature of men and animals and their spirits. “Such decorations not only beautified utilitarian objects but also imbued them with spiritual meaning and honoured the life-giving power of animals and the ancestors.” The value of punctilious and diligent appeasement and mindfulness is stressed in a number of folk tales which instil the most effective ways of hunting and living. There is a belief that the spirit of a prey animal will be appeased if it is caught by a hunter who takes pride in his craft. The devotion of attention to a weapon head that had high likelihood of being lost in the hunt shows how seriously those ideas were taken.

Snow goggles carved from driftwood show us the ingenuity of technology of the Inuit. The ergonomically efficient goggles have narrow horizontal slits which reduce the glare of sunlight reflected from snow – which is so strong it can blind people – and (in this case) has a visor to shield from direct sunlight. Western travellers used tinted (or smoked) glass but the locals (who did not have access to glass, except through trade in later periods) got there earlier. This pair of goggles is dated c. 1850.

Simply from studying the form and function of these artefacts – ranging from art to tools – we can an insight into the priorities. Many objects functioned on multiple levels: utilitarian, symbolic, artistic, instructional, status demonstration, ritual, spiritual, entertainment and others. It is often hard to determine exactly what the relevance of each aspect of an object is and how it was seen by its makers and users. (See also my review of a book about Incan objects, Sculpture Journal.)

Objects indicating regular trade with the south include pipes, tobacco boxes and gunpowder horns. Clothing includes full outfits for a man and women, Greenland style, c. 1910 and 1949.

A number of later items seem to have been made specifically for the tourist trade. (One example is a (presumably) non-functional pipe carved from ivory.)

[Image: Inupiaq artist, Pipe (c. 1890), walrus tusk and pigment, The Thomas G. Fowler Collection at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Photograph: Randy Dodson, copyright 2020 the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco]

Fowler was not deceived but was a collector who wanted attractive pieces, be they functional or handicrafts. Fowler recognised that whatever the intended use for the objects, they displayed genuine invention and care in their creation.

Combs, ornaments, masks and game pieces show the Inuit at leisure, giving us a glimpse of people at play and relaxing. It is a testament to the hardiness and resourcefulness of the northern peoples that they had time to create and use such items in the most inhospitable terrain on Earth. We get an understanding of the mobile, nomadic lifestyle of the creators from the features that indicate travel: clasps on baskets, carrying cases for needles and holes drilling for threading objects so that they would not be lost during travel.

From recent decades one finds fine-art sculpture which develops traditional materials and forms in ways that enter the purely aesthetic territory. There constructions are highly complex and delicate, made the museum or private art collection. The named artists are David Ruben Piqtoukun (b. 1950), Abraham Anghik Ruben (b. 1951) and Susie Silook (b. 1960), each of whom contribute statements. Others are Judas Ullulaq (1937-1999), Kay Hendrickson (1909-2002), Levi Tetpon (b. 1952) and Naulaq.

Yua: Spirit of the Arctic is an informative and enjoyable book which provides a chance to encounter civilisations of surpassing inventiveness and enduring aesthetic traditions.

 

Hillary C. Olcott, et al, Yua: Spirit of the Arctic. Highlights from the Thomas G. Fowler Collection, de Young/Legion of Honor Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco/Delmonico/Prestel (distr. Prestel), 2020, hardback, $40/£29.99, ISBN 978 3 7913 5945 8

© 2020 Alexander Adams

To see my art and books visit www.alexanderadams.art

Kenojuak Ashevak/ᕿᓐᓄᐊᔪᐊᖅ ᐋᓯᕙᒃ, Inuktitut artist

This monograph covers highlights from the art of Kenojuak Ashevak (1927-2013). Kenojuak was an Inuit artist, part of one the Canadian First Nations of Nunavut. She is the most acclaimed and beloved native artist of Canada’s Northern Territories, considered to be one of the founders of modern Inuit art. She received many national awards and honours, dating from 1967 up to her death. Her art has continued to receive more recognition since her death.

The book gives an overview of the artist’s eventful life. Kenojuak was born into a nomadic Inuktitut clan in a haumuq (igloo) on South Baffin Island. Her family were hunters. Seal hunting was dangerous work and income low. Her father was murdered in a clan dispute, victim of summary justice. Any tale of Kenojuak’s life must include local hunter and part-time artist Johnniebo Ashevak (1923-1972), whom she married in 1946. His art is less well known than hers, although it is well regarded and in national collections. Kenojuak experienced forcible hospital confinement due to tuberculosis (1952-5) and lost children in infancy due to illness. She married twice after Johnniebo’s death and was mother to 16 children over the years, five adopted; seven did not survive infancy.

She learned traditional crafts from her family. Her skill was noticed and encouraged during her hospital stay. Some of her bags, dolls, boots and tapestries used stencils monochrome motifs.

Like other Inuit artists of the Cape Dorset region, her creativity was harnessed and disseminated by the couple Alma and James Archibald Houston. In the 1930s Houston had sold native crafts to Canadians in the South and the couple’s establishment of the print studio in 1956 proved highly successful, causing a sensation and leading to the introduction of Inuit art to Canadians nationwide. The studio allowed Inuit craftsmen to reach new markets and gain a significant source of income

One of the key artistic mediums of Canadian First Nations artists is the soapstone print. Blocks of local soapstone – soft enough to be cut with a knife – are flattened then a matrix cut in relief. The matrix is inked with a roller then a sheet of paper applied over it, taking the ink. The use of stencils allows variation in inking.

[Image: copyright 2020 Kenojuak Ashevak]

This catalogue for a touring exhibition (2020-2, Saskatoon, Dawson City, Kelowna, Ontario, Winnipeg and Medicine Hat) features Kenojuak’s late art, especially the bird pictures that she was famed for. The well-known late style contrasts with the few examples here of Kenojuak’s work of the 1960s. These pencil drawings lack colour and show less concern for neat shading. They are less visually appealing than the colour works but they have greater rawness and intensity. The freedom apparent compensates for the less polished finish.  As new materials became available she adapted her style to take advantage of colours.

Exhibited art includes drawings (in black and coloured inks), soapstone prints, colour lithographs and an etching with aquatint. Most of the art is late drawings from the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, alongside colour prints. Double-page spreads compare the original drawing to the subsequent print. Between the two, there are few changes in composition, only minimal changes to conform to the characteristics of the print medium. (Most of the prints were made by printmakers who transcribed drawings as matrices and editioned the prints.) Most typical of Kenojuak’s art in this book is the single animal or groups of few animals set against a blank background. Often the there are no picture borders, with the motif existing free of setting. Kenojuak favoured horizontal axes.

[Image: copyright 2020 Kenojuak Ashevak]

Kenojuak’s art shows animals frontally or in profile using curvilinear outlines, patterned shading and bold decorative fans of appendages, referring to feathers and spines. These extravagant appendages induce a hypnotic effect on the viewers. The animals are mainly birds and fishes, with frequent changes of scale. Owls, loons, swans, ravens, gulls, foxes, hares and chars all feature; Kenojuak rarely depicted whole figures in her mature work. Sometimes the animals are in the process of transformation or engaged in unclear (or unspecified) interactions.

This attractive book (trilingual in English, French and Inuktitut) provides an enjoyable introduction to one of Canada’s most beloved artists.

Leslie Boyd, Silaqi Ashevak, Kenojuak Ashevak: Life and Legacy, Pomegranate, 2020, hardback, 109pp, fully col. illus., English/French/Inuktitut text, $29.95/C$39.95, ISBN 978 0 7649 9818 8

 

© 2020 Alexander Adams

To see my art and books visit www.alexanderadams.art

Tunirrusiangit / ᑐᓂᕐᕈᓯᐊᖏᑦ

[Image: Kenojuak Ashevak, Seamaids (1978). Stonecut on paper, Sheet: 61.7 × 91.8 cm. Gift of Samuel and Esther Sarick, Toronto, 2002. © Estate of Kenojuak Ashevak]

Tunirrusiangit / ᑐᓂᕐᕈᓯᐊᖏᑦ Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak is the current exhibition at Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (16 June-12 August 2018) examining art made by two Inuit artists. Tunirrusiangit is the Inuktitut for “their gifts”, which is how members of the Inuit see the art of these two major figures in the Canadian-Inuit art world. Both artists lived in the Inuit Nunangat (Inuit homelands in Canada) and their art is a personal response to the lives and the traditions of their people. Both artists developed unique voices by departing from tradition in some respects. This review is from the catalogue.

Inuit art comprises many aspects and materials and it is not possible to accurately summarise in a short review. However, characteristics of earlier Inuit art that are relevant are a reliance on abstract patterns (especially curvilinear petal/feather forms), flat colour, a distinctly linear character, frequent use of profile and a preference for flatter as opposed to rounded modelling. Subjects often include nature, mythology, hunting, domestic and family life and essential human themes of birth, death and daily life. Materials include bone (especially whalebone), ivory (especially walrus tusk), stone carving, weaving and sewing. This has broadened in recent years to incorporate some elements of Western art and now Inuit artists use many of the tools, materials and techniques common worldwide. Tradition and modernity exist side by side – no more apparent than when a traditional theme is treated with new imported materials or a new aspect of daily life is depicted using time-honoured techniques and local materials.

Kenojuak Ashevak (1927-2013) lived her early life as a nomadic hunter and became involved in making art during a prolonged hospital stay in 1952-5.  She took art seriously when a co-operative was founded in 1959, assisting Inuit artists to promote and sell their work. For Kenojuak, she made art to support her family in the same way that she had hunted in her youth. She said, “There is no word for art. We say it is to transfer something from real to the unreal.” Thus art existed as a tool to feed and clothe herself and her family and also had a status similar to a nameless magic – the transformation of reality. Owls, geese, waders and other birds are visable in the graphics; more fantastic birds with rainbow plumage abound. Elongated feathers take on decorative beguiling qualities. The sun is a symbol of life with a female face and dotted tattoos. Fish, bears and dogs appear less often. Usually the motif floats free of any surroundings and exists as a symbol or icon.

[Image: Kenojuak Ashevak, The Woman Who Lives in the Sun (1960), Stonecut on paper, Overall: 49.7 x 66.2 cm. Gift of Samuel and Esther Sarick, Toronto, 2002. © Estate of Kenojuak Ashevak.]

The artist described her approach as intuitive, rarely making mistakes and allowing the image to develop without planning. Her art has bold curvilinear petal forms typical of Inuit art and dense patterning (in both descriptive and schematic forms). The stonecut prints, with raised designs carved on slabs of soft soapstone and inked with graduated colours on the matrix, are sometimes printed on Himalayan or Japanese mulberry paper. The clarity and forcefulness of these prints makes them ideal works for collectors. The artist also made intaglio engravings and lithographs. Most of her prints and later drawings bear her name in Inuktitut script.

Kenojuak’s colours are strong and usually limited in number. The most striking works are those with only a few colours. Many of the drawings were made with felt-tip pens, attesting to the importance of colour to Kenojuak. Unfortunately, such materials are not lightfast so careful conservation will be required. Happily, since Kenojuak’s art is now valuable, these drawings should receive the conservation attention it may need.

[Image: Kenojuak Ashevak © Couvrette/Ottawa.]

A documentary film was made about her in 1963 and in 1970 her drawing Red Owl (1960) was featured in a sought after stamp. Over the years her art received a great deal of exposure, becoming Canada’s first high profile Inuit artist. She was awarded Canada’s highest honours and her art now achieves high prices. It is easy to see the appeal of her art from even this limited selection.

Timootee “Tim” Pitsiulak (1967-2016) was an artist, sculptor, jeweller and hunter resident at Cape Dorset. Subjects of his drawings were myth, animals, landscape and everyday life. Pitsiulak drew using coloured pencils of pastels on paper, sometimes on black paper. A particularly amusing drawing is Hero 4 (2015) in which two walruses sit on a beach. From the edge a digital camera taped to a stick waves towards the animals, encapsulating the juxtaposition of untamed nature and modern technology wielded by the wary spectator. Hunting wild animals is still a vital cultural, dietary and economic activity for the Inuit. In this case the bystander is intending on shooting video footage, the next day he might be shooting the animals dead. Inuit artists never present hunting as a moral quandary because it is not one. There is no conflict between admiring the strength and beauty of animals, revering them as spirits, and killing for necessity.

[Image: Tim Pitsiulak, Morning Commute (2015), Pastel on Arches black paper, 76.2 x 111.8 cm. TD Bank Group Corporate Art Collection & The TD Gallery of Inuit Art © Estate of Tim Pitsiulak.]

Pitsiulak’s style varied from the realistic to the highly schematic, the latter reminiscent of traditional linear Inuit style. In the pastel-on-black-paper drawing How They Caught Big Game (2016) we see at the centre a depiction of a carved comb with net motif; at the edge of the drawing along a partial frame are simplified hunters in kayaks killing and hauling walruses. Whale and Hunters (2014) is a sophisticated distillation. This pastel drawing presents a dead whale seen at eye level, hunters in kayaks in traditional polar-bear-skin garments are stark against the black-paper ground.

[Image: Tim Pitsiulak, Hero 4 (2015), Pastel, 76.2 x 111.8 cm. Collection of Craig Wilbanks and Monty Kehl © Estate of Tim Pitsiulak.]

In GoPro Hydrophone (2016) shows the artist using his GoPro camera to monitor the sound of fish, whale and seal, something that he did on hunting expeditions. Pitsiulak does not shy away from the bloody end of the hunt in his art: there are scenes of killing, dragging and butchering. Pitsiulak compared making art to hunting, needing patience and skill.

There are some striking landscapes and views of ice floes, strongly colour and employing black and white grounds effectively. Qalupalik Maqgoo (2012) is a rendering of a the underwater monsters of folk tales told to children to warn them off thin spring ice. A huge drawing (1.2 x 2.4m) shows a whale covered with glyphs of Inuit life: sleds and dogs, igloo, kayaks, caribou, fish and topographic plans. As the life of the whale makes life possible for the Inuit, so the whale’s exterior is inscribed with a macrocosm of Inuit life. It is a daring visualisation that is symbolically meaningful and visually rich.

The catalogue displays Pitsiulak’s strength as an artist and his early death in 2016 is a real loss to Inuit (and Canadian) art. All of Pitsiulak’s art in this exhibition is from 2007 and after, most of it from the last few years of his life. Let us hope a full retrospective exhibition and catalogue can be produced to mark his achievements.

[Image: Tim Pitsiulak, artist in residence at Open Studio in Toronto. Photo © Cheryl Rondeau.]

This catalogue reproduces many works by the two artists, includes photographs of the artists at work, commentary on that art by fellow Inuit creators, poems and images of their art. The poems of Taqralik Partridge are particularly good – sharp imagery, clean diction, concise. This catalogue is recommended to anyone interested in finding out more about the world’s most northerly artists.

 

Koomuatak Curley, Taqralik Partridge et al, Tunirrusiangit / ᑐᓂᕐᕈᓯᐊᖏᑦ Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak, Goose Lane Editions/Art Gallery of Ontario, 2018, hardback, 160pp, fully col. illus., C$45, ISBN 978 1 77310 091 3

© Alexander Adams

31 July 2018

Art of the Canadian Relief Camps: Alan Caswell Collier

[Image: (c) UBC Press]

In the wake of the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression, many ordinary people found themselves out of work. At the time, unemployment relief was limited or unavailable. The existing system had not been expected to cope with the vast numbers of men unable to support themselves and their families. In Canada the relief project to combat unemployment and save workers from destitution was a work programme established by the Department of National Defence. Although nominally a civilian organisation for labour, it operated with military austerity and discipline, administered by former military personnel and organised along military lines. Basic shelter and food was provided and men cut timber, dug, built and laboured for 20¢ per day. The scheme was partly to provide subsistence living for the unemployed, curb vagrancy and crime and to combat a rising tide of Communism.

One of the men who arrived at relief camp 506, Big Bend, British Columbia in September of 1934 was Alan Caswell Collier (1911-1990). Relief Stiff: An Artist’s Letters from Depression-Era British Columbia collects Collier’s letters to his fiancée while he was working in one of these camps. (A “relief stiff” is an unemployed man on government relief.”) Collier had trained as a painter at Ontario College of Art between 1929 and 1933. There he met and fell in love with Ruth Brown (1910-1993). The couple courted and intended to marry but by the time Collier graduated, the Depression was in its trough. Unable to secure a job, Collier went to work at a relief camp in the rural interior of British Columbia.

Peter Neary, professor emeritus of history at the University of Western Ontario, has compiled this reading edition of 120,000 words from a transcript of 281,000 words. He not only edited down the text but also made minor changes to increase the consistency and readability of the text, which is an intelligent decision. Neary explains the background and the context of the DND “royal twenty centers”, as the relief workers were called. He writes: “Readers of excerpts I have chosen will encounter in passing the language of racism, homophobia, ableism, nativism, anti-Semitism, sectarianism, and intolerance.” To which concern I am bound to reply that his readers are doubtless robust and adult enough to detach themselves when they encounter language and views they do not personally endorse. No warning was necessary.

The artist intended to document his time through art and letters, primarily to Ruth. He was a skilled letter writer and his lively narrative is free of pretension. He attempted to record the toughness of the life in a way that was authentic, while no doubt taking off a few rough edges and embellishing anecdotes, as all writers do. Collier took paints and paper with him and produced (according to his own records) 61 pictures during his time in the camps. He painted landscapes and portraits, oil on board. His landscapes are largely in the school of the Group of Seven, a prominent association of Canadian painters who depicted the rural landscapes of Canada in a Post-Impressionist manner. He also added to his letters sketches (many humorous) of life in the camps and the characters he knew. Photographs of the camps and men add to our immersion in the milieu.

As an artist, Collier judged his postings by the landscape as a sketching subject. He would go out to draw or paint the landscape most Sundays, painting oil on board. He drew caricatures of the men and painted portraits too, some of which he sold to the subjects for $1. Some portraits he kept for himself.

The camps where Collier worked constructed roads in inland British Columbia. The men were a mixture of working class and middle class, some skilled tradesmen and professionals, along with piece workers. Most of the men were young; some of the older ones were veterans of the Great War. There were many recent immigrants. “Out of forty in camp, 37.5% are Canadian born; 35% were born in the British Isles; and 20% are Scandinavians.” Some, such as explosives experts were employed for their expertise, others moved between jobs in the camps as needed. The men worked five and a half days a week (a half day on Saturday, Sunday off). There was no sick pay but free healthcare. Collier started as a labourer before moving to the less physically arduous but intellectually taxing position of storeman, where he issued, ordered and monitored clothing and equipment.

From these letters we learn about his daily routine, his reading and views on current events, especially relating to the economic situation. There is much talk of food, grumbling about the rations – daily expenditure on food was 23.34¢ per man – and the competence of the cook. Clothes were issued monthly. Collier sold his tobacco ration to earn an extra 50¢ a month.

Like soldiers on deployment, separated from friends and families, the relief-camp workers killed free-time with letter-reading and -writing, playing horseshoes, gambling, washing their own clothes by hand and sleeping. There are stories of fist fights, drunken escapades, strikes and petty pilfering. The writer does not shy away from the seedier aspects of life in the camps. He comments how locals had low opinions of camp workers, most of the times they encountered works them was when they came to town on payday to drink, fight and cause a rumpus.

He atmospherically describes life in the snowbound camp. “That train that was buried at Three Valley was completely buried, and part of it is still in there. There was forty feet of snow on top of the mail car and engine.” At another camp, an avalanche killed three camp workers. Workers at Camp 376, Tappen envied the workers at camps located near towns. Those workers could earn up to 40¢ per hour snow shovelling – quite an improvement on 20¢ per day.

Discontent with the economic situation and lack of security provided the resentment that allowed Communist ideas to flourish. While sympathetic to limited social change in areas, Collier was critical of Communism. He took a leading part in a camp strike when a foreman abused his authority and refused to listen to workers’ grievances but he was opposed to general strikes to further Communist-aligned goals. Relief Camp Worker, a Communist newspaper, incited strikes and disruption. Collier quoted an article discussing individuals killed in an accident. “’We do not regret the accident. We suggest that they represented the type which will have to be exterminated before a perfect society can be realized. This type is an obstacle to world sanity.’ […] Statements like that show what kind of men run the Red organization.”

The camp system was riven with inefficiency, profiteering, corruption and theft and Collier struggled to do right by the system and the men. He attempted to curb wastage and balance the books. He tried to protect hardworking amiable men and to retain the best cooks.

In the summer of 1935, Collier left camp, toured the USA and continued his art education in New York, joined by Ruth.

In these letters young artist comes across as serious, intelligent and independent. He seems – on the basis of these letters – a shrewd judge of character and sceptical of political ideology, fundamentally a pragmatist. His few casual slurs are typical of the time and – given the tough conditions – he seems free of malice or bitterness. He displays empathy and patience. His love of the landscape shines through in his descriptions of sketching trips.

The book contains an introduction, which sets out the methodology of the editorial process and explains the artist’s early life. The index is a useful addition and the footnotes are mostly informative and well judged. An afterword covers Alan and Ruth Collier’s subsequent lives and Alan’s art. During 1940s he painted photograph-derived montage-style paintings in a dry naturalistic style, produced art in mines and became a specialist in landscape painting. Each summer, from the 1950s until the end of his life, Alan and Ruth and their son Ian, toured Canada in a mobile home, Alan working on landscape paintings. He achieved considerable success in Canada and the USA as an artist, while Ruth chose to concentrate on home and family, ably supporting her husband’s career.

This book is an easy read and will appeal to general readers, as well as those interested in the 1930s life or Canadian art. This fascinating slice of social history forms a Canadian counterpart to the volume of Pollock family letters.

 

Alan Caswell Collier and Peter Neary (ed.), Relief Stiff: An Artist’s Letters from Depression-Era British Columbia, March 2018, hardback, UBC Press, 368pp, 89 mono illus., C$45, ISBN 978 0 7748 3498 8

The Franklin Expedition: A Victorian Era Moon Landing

“In May 1845, two Royal Navy ships, HMS Terror and Erebus, embarked from London on a voyage with ambitious aims. The mission would forge a passage through the partially mapped channels of northern Canada and pioneer the Northwest Passage. This route from Greenland to Alaska via the icy channels on the Arctic Circle would open new trading routes and allow vessels to forgo the dangerous and lengthy passage around Cape Horn. The attempt would use new technology pioneered in Britain – coal-fired engines powering propeller screws for locomotion, and tinned food.

“The Admiralty decided on a large party in two ships under the command of Arctic veteran Sir John Franklin. Hostile conditions, the use of new technology, and – critically – operating beyond immediate assistance of the few trading forts and whaling stations to the south, meant the expedition was the equivalent of a Victorian-era moon landing. If men, supplies, technology, knowhow or leadership failed, then deaths could be expected. However, experience suggested that if the attempt met insurmountable obstacles there was a fair chance of retreating with only minor casualties, if leadership was decisive enough…”

Read the full review on SPIKED, 30 January 2015 here:

http://www.spiked-online.com/review_of_books/article/the-franklin-expedition-a-victorian-era-moon-landing/16565#.Vd-MbvldU5k