Water and image

Water has always had a role in Canadian art; however, its dominance has varied with the changing popularity of landscape as a subject for artwork. Further, artists differed in their treatment and focus; some artists concentrated on the East while others found their inspiration in the West; some had a photographic style, while others were clearly impressionistic.

Religious themes dominated early French-Canadian art. Nevertheless, the backdrop to these pious paintings was often a landscape dominated by water. But Canadian landscape painting really began after 1759. At first, it was mainly the British who were drawn to land and water as art subjects. One of the most creative of these painters was Thomas Davies, a British military officer, in whose pictures rivers, lakes, and waterfalls are dominant features.

Davies' paintings sparkled with brilliant colour, in contrast to the muted tones of many of his colleagues. This can be seen in one of his most famous paintings, A View of the Lower Part of the Falls of St. Anne near Quebec  ^A. By European standards, his colours seemed exaggerated, but Davies' watercolours are today the most valuable sketches of Canada from the eighteenth century.

Joseph Légaré was one of the first Canadians to begin moving out of the old world tradition, pioneering the use of oils in landscape painting. His Les Cascades de la rivière Saint-Charles à la Jeune-Lorette,  ^B circa 1840, marked a new departure in Canadian painting.

Between 1860 and 1890, many artists responded to national aspirations of expansion, with landscape paintings featuring the rivers and streams of the West. They were encouraged by the patronage of the Governor General and by the free transportation provided by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR).

William Armstrong painted many scenes of western Canada. He was an engineer who accompanied Colonel Wolsely's expedition to subdue the Red River Rebellion in 1870. He painted many natural settings during the journey; particularly notable are those of streams and lakes along the north shore of Lake Superior.

Paul Kane (1810-1871), is one of the most celebrated 19^th century painters of the Canadian West. While recording the lives of Aboriginal peoples, he sketched rivers, waterfalls, portages and life along the waterways on which he travelled by canoe with fur traders of the Hudson's Bay Company. White Mud Portage, Winnipeg River  ^C (c. 1851-1856) is one of the numerous paintings Kane produced from sketches made during these trips. But even his wildest landscapes were romanticised in the European tradition.

British artists, accustomed to the gentler English countryside, were stimulated by the sheer size and frequently violent nature of Canadian waterfalls and rivers. Most of them, however, were so heavily influenced by European traditions that they tended to draw the land as they thought it should be instead of how it really was. These ties to the past prevented most of the paintings of this period from being truly "nationalistic," a product of a uniquely Canadian experience and perception.

There were, however, some painters in this period who managed to overcome this over-reliance on European conventions in painting. Many would argue that Cornelius Krieghoff and G.B. Fisher are such artists. G.B. Fisher's drawings of the St. Lawrence River, the Grand River, and Chaudière Falls, are still considered to be among the most beautiful prints of the Canadian landscape.

While Kane was concentrating on the West, Cornelius Krieghoff was similarly engaged in the East. He focused on the rural people of Quebec, but many of his settings feature the rivers and lakes that were the centres of life and commerce in that time. His depictions of the inhabitants and untamed natural scenes convey a feeling of intimacy and joy. Canoes, log rafts and portages are usually portrayed as being small and somewhat insignificant within the dominating natural world. In paintings such as The Passing Storm, Saint-Ferréol  ^D (1854), waterfalls plunge into the St. Lawrence, the foaming turbulence set off against the glowing colours of autumn. Krieghoff seems to have enjoyed his life in the New World; perhaps this is somehow conveyed in his work, making him one of Canada's best loved artists.

Water and Art Menu  Previous  Next