Emily Carr

Emily Carr (December 13, 1871 – March 2, 1945) was a Canadian artist who was inspired by the monumental art and villages of the First Nations and the landscapes of British Columbia. She also was a vivid writer and chronicler of life in her surroundings, praised for her "complete candour" and "strong prose". Klee Wyck, her first book, published in 1941, won the Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction and this book and others written by her or compiled from her writings later are still much in demand today.

Carr's keynote paintings, such as The Indian Church (1929), were not widely known in Canada at first. But her stature as one of Canada's most important artists continued to grow. Today, she is considered a cherished, even revered figure of Canadian arts and letters. Scholars and the public alike regard her as a Canadian national treasure and the Canadian Encyclopedia describes her as a Canadian icon. She has been designated a National Historic Person and had a Minor planet 5688 Kleewyck named after her anglicized native name (Klee Wyck). the year British Columbia joined Canada, Emily Carr was the second youngest of nine children born to English parents Richard and Emily (Saunders) Carr. The Carr home was on Birdcage Walk (now Government Street), in the James Bay district of Victoria, a short distance from the legislative buildings (nicknamed the 'Birdcages') and the town itself. Today it is a museum and National Historic Site of Canada called Emily Carr House.

The Carr children were raised in an English tradition. Her father believed it was sensible to live on Vancouver Island, a colony of Great Britain, where he could practice English customs and continue his British citizenship. The family home was made up in lavish English fashion, with high ceilings, ornate moldings, and a parlour. Carr was taught in the Presbyterian tradition, with Sunday morning prayers and evening Bible readings. Her father called on one child per week to recite the sermon, and Emily consistently had trouble reciting it.

Carr's mother died in 1886, and her father died in 1888. Her oldest sister Edith Carr became the guardian of the rest of the children. Carr visited Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island. She stayed in a village near Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island, home to the Nuu-chah-nulth people, then commonly known to English-speaking people as 'Nootka'. She later recalled that her time in Ucluelet made "a lasting impression on me". Upon viewing his work, she and her sister were shocked and intrigued by his use of distortion and vibrant colour; she wrote:<blockquote>"Mr Gibb's landscapes and still life delighted me — brilliant, luscious, clean. Against the distortion of his nudes I felt revolt."

thumb|Emily Carr, Breton church, oil on canvas, 1906

In Crecy-en-Brie she fully embraced the Fauve style of bold colour and broad brushwork, then traveled to Concarneau on the coast of Brittany to study with Frances Hodgkins. When she returned to Paris she found that two of her paintings had been selected by the jury and hung in the 1911 Salon d'Automne. where she documented the art of the Haida, Gitxsan and Tsimshian. At Cumshewa, a Haida village on Moresby Island, she wrote in Klee Wyck,

<blockquote>"Cumshewa seems always to drip, always to be blurred with mist, its foliage always to hang wet-heavy ... these strong young trees ... grew up round the dilapidated old raven, sheltering him from the tearing winds now that he was old and rotting ... the memory of Cumshewa is of a great lonesomeness smothered in a blur of rain".</blockquote>

Carr painted a carved raven, which she later developed as her iconic painting Big Raven. Tanoo, another painting inspired by work gathered on this trip, depicts three totems before house fronts at the village of the same name. On her return to the south, Carr organized a large exhibition of some of this work. She gave a detailed public talk titled "Lecture on Totem Poles" about the Aboriginal villages that she had visited, which ended with her mission statement:

<blockquote>"I glory in our wonderful west and I hope to leave behind me some of the relics of its first primitive greatness. These things should be to us Canadians what the ancient Briton's relics are to the English. Only a few more years and they will be gone forever into silent nothingness and I would gather my collection together before they are forever past".</blockquote>

Her "Lecture on Totems" at Dominion Hall in Vancouver is in the Emily Carr Papers at the British Columbia Provincial Archives in Victoria. In the lecture, she said "every pole shown in my collection has been studied from its own actual reality..."

While there was some positive reaction to her work, even in the new 'French' style, Carr perceived that Vancouver's reaction to her work and new style was not positive enough to support her career. She recounted as much in her book Growing Pains. She was determined to give up teaching and working in Vancouver, and in 1913 she returned to Victoria, where several of her sisters still lived.

Carr's artistic direction was influenced by Harris's work and the advice he gave in his correspondence (he told her to seek an equivalent for the totem poles in west coast landscape, for instance), but also by his belief in Theosophy.

Influence of the Pacific Northwest school

In 1924 and 1925, Carr exhibited at the Artists of the Pacific Northwest shows in Seattle, Washington. She invited fellow exhibitor Mark Tobey to visit her in Victoria in the autumn of 1928 to teach a master class in her studio. Working with Tobey, Carr furthered her understanding of modern art, experimenting with Tobey's methods of full-on abstraction and Cubism, but she was reluctant to follow Tobey beyond the legacy of Cubism.

Although Carr expressed reluctance about abstraction, Doris Shadbolt at the Vancouver Art Gallery, a major curator of Carr's work, records Carr in this period as abandoning the documentary impulse and starting to concentrate instead on capturing the emotional and mythological content embedded in the totemic carvings. She jettisoned her painterly and practiced Post-Impressionist style in favour of creating highly stylized and abstracted geometric forms.

In 1938 she had her first annual solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery as well as success at the Tate Gallery in London, England.

She began to meet other artists. In 1930, for instance, Carr travelled to New York and met Georgia O'Keeffe.

Shift of focus and late life

Carr suffered her first heart attack in 1937, and another in 1939, forcing her to move in with her sister Alice to recover. In 1940, Carr suffered serious trouble with her heart, and in 1942 she had another heart attack. With her ability to travel curtailed, Carr's focus shifted from her painting to her writing. The editorial assistance of Carr's great friend and literary advisor Ira Dilworth, a professor of English, enabled Carr to see her own first book, Klee Wyck, published in 1941.

In 1942, Carr established the Emily Carr Trust, and donated close to 170 paintings to the Vancouver Art Gallery. She had the only successful commercial show of her career at the Dominion Gallery in Montreal in 1944. She suffered her last heart attack and died on March 2, 1945, at the James Bay Inn in her hometown of Victoria, British Columbia, shortly before she was to have been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of British Columbia. Carr is buried at Ross Bay Cemetery.

Work

Painting

thumb|Autumn in France, 1911. [[National Gallery of Canada]]

thumb|Among the Firs, c. 1931, [[Glenbow Museum, Calgary]]

thumb|Above the Gravel Pit, 1937

Carr is remembered primarily for her painting. She was one of the artists who attempted to capture the spirit of Canada in a modern style. Carr's main themes in her mature work were the monumental works of the First Nations and nature: "native totem poles set in deep forest locations or sites of abandoned native villages" and, later, "the large rhythms of Western forests, driftwood-tossed beaches and expansive skies".

Carr is known for her paintings of First Nations villages and Pacific Northwest Indian totems, but Maria Tippett explained that Carr's depictions of the forests of British Columbia from within make her work unique. Carr constructed a new understanding of Cascadia. This understanding includes a new approach to the presentation of native people and Canadian landscapes.

After visiting the Gitksan village of Kitwancool in the summer of 1928, Carr became captivated by the maternal imagery in Pacific Northwest Indigenous totem poles. After Carr was exposed to these types of images, her paintings reflected these images of mother and child in Native carvings. The greatest part of her mature work was oil on canvas or, when money was scarce, oil on paper.

Legacy

Carr's work is still of relevance today to contemporary artists. Her painting Old Time Coast Village (1929–1930) is referred to in Korean Canadian artist Jin-me Yoon's A Group of Sixty-Seven (1996). The work is composed of sixty-seven portraits of the Korean Canadian community in Vancouver standing in front of Old Time Coast Village and a landscape painting by Group of Seven member Lawren Harris. She is the subject of books and articles by authors such as Gerta Moray and many others.

From January 25, 2025 – January 19, 2026, the Vancouver Art Gallery examined her paintings of nature—impenetrable in earlier work, more open in later work—in a show of Carr's paintings from the collection titled Emily Carr: Navigating an Impenetrable Landscape. This was followed by their show That Green Ideal: Emily Carr and the Idea of Nature from February 6 – November 8, 2026; the exhibit examined "the artist's obsession with the landscape of the Pacific Northwest."

Writings by Carr

Fresh Seeing. Clarke, Irwin and Company, 1972
Growing Pains. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2005;
Hundreds and Thousands. The Journals of Emily Carr. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2006;
Klee Wyck. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004;
Pause: A Sketchbook. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2007;
The Book of Small. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004;
The Heart of a Peacock. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2005;
The House of All Sorts. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004;

Writing by Carr edited by other authors

Bridge, Kathryn ed. Sister & I From Victoria to London. Victoria: Royal BC Museum, 2011
Bridge, Kathryn ed. Wildflowers. Victoria: Royal BC Museum, 2000;
Crean, Susan ed., Opposite Contraries. The Unknown Journals of Emily Carr and other writings Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2003;
Morra, Linda ed. Corresponding Influence. Selected Letters of Emily Carr & Ira Dilworth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006;
Silcox, David P., ed. Sister & I in Alaska. Vancouver: Figure 1, 2014;
Switzer, Ann-Lee ed. This and That. The Lost Stories of Emily Carr. Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2007;
Walker, Doreen ed. Dear Nan. Letters of Emily Carr, Nan Cheney and Humphrey Toms. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1990.
Switzer, Ann-Lee ed. This and That: The Lost Stories of Emily Carr; Revised and Updated. Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2024.

Biographies of Emily Carr

Baldiserra, Lisa. Emily Carr, Life and Times. Art Canada Institute.
Bridge, Kathryn ed. Emily Carr in England. Victoria: Royal BC Museum, 2014;
Hembroff-Schleicher, Edythe. Emily Carr: The Untold Story. Saanichton: Hancock House, 1978;
Shadbolt, Doris. The Art of Emily Carr. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre and Clarke Irwin, 1979.
Shadbolt, Doris. Emily Carr. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1990.
Shadbolt, Doris. Seven Journeys: The Sketchbooks of Emily Carr. Douglas & McIntyre, 2002.
Thom, Ian M. and Charles Hill (ed). Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon. Vancouver and Ottawa: Vancouver Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada, 2006.
Tippett, Maria. Emily Carr. A Biography. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Recognition

thumb|left|upright|Blunden Harbour, 1930, [[National Gallery of Canada]]

Carr's life itself made her a "Canadian icon", according to the Canadian Encyclopedia.

In 1952, works by Emily Carr along with those of David Milne, Goodridge Roberts and Alfred Pellan represented Canada at the Venice Biennale.

thumb|1971 Canada stamp honoring Emily Carr, based on her painting Big RavenOn February 12, 1971, Canada Post issued a 6¢ stamp 'Emily Carr, painter, 1871–1945' designed by William Rueter based on Carr's Big Raven (1931), held by the Vancouver Art Gallery. On May 7, 1991, Canada Post issued a 50¢ stamp 'Forest, British Columbia, Emily Carr, 1931–1932' designed by Pierre-Yves Pelletier based on Forest, British Columbia (1931–1932), also from the Vancouver Art Gallery collection.

In 1978, she was awarded the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Medal. In 2014, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London exhibited From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia with a book/catalogue edited by Sarah Milroy and Ian Dejardin. It was first time such solo exhibition was held in Britain. In 2020, a travelling exhibition organized by the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, B.C. and co-curated by Kiriko Watanabe and Dr. Kathryn Bridge and titled Emily Carr: Fresh Seeing – French Modernism and the West Coast explored this aspect of Carr's work in detail.

Record sale prices

On November 28, 2013, one of Carr's paintings, The Crazy Stair (The Crooked Staircase), sold for $3.39 million at Heffel's live auction in Toronto. As of the sale, it is a record price for a painting by a Canadian female artist. Heffel has sold the top three most valuable works by Emily Carr ever offered at auction, including "Cordova Drift" for $3,361,250 on December 1, 2021, and "Tossed by the Wind" for $3,121,250 on June 23, 2021. Heffel currently leads the market for sales of works by Emily Carr globally.

At a Cowley Abbott Auction in Toronto, December 1, 2022, Carr's The Totem of the Bear and the Moon (1912, oil on canvas, 37 x 17.75 ins), sold for $3,120,000.

At a Cowley Abbott Auction on December 6, 2023, Carr's Nirvana (oil on paper, mounted on canvas, 35.25 x 20.25 ins), sold for $744,000.

Institutions named for Carr

thumb|Emily Carr's gravestone, Ross Bay cemetery

Emily Carr House in Victoria, British Columbia
Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia
Greater Victoria Public Library Emily Carr Branch in Victoria, British Columbia
Emily Carr Secondary School in Woodbridge, Ontario
Emily Carr Elementary School in Vancouver, British Columbia
Emily Carr Middle School in Ottawa, Ontario
Emily Carr public schools in London, Toronto, Ontario Oakville, Ontario
In 1994, the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union adopted the name Carr for a crater on Venus. The Carr crater has an approximate diameter of 31.9 kilometers.
Emily Carr Inlet, an arm of Chapple Inlet on the North Coast of British Columbia

References

Cited sources

External links

https://royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/visit/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/emily-carr-timeline
https://royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/visit/exhibitions/emily-carr-fresh-seeing-french-modernism-and-west-coast
https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/royal-bc-museum?hl=en