This paper looks at the life and art of Emily Carr. The development of her craft through different phases, her thought processes, spirituality and influences are all studied to gain an understanding of her art and artistic stance. While she dabbled in pottery and worked as a cartoonist, the main focus of this research is on her paintings and writings.
Emily Carr was born in Victoria, British Columbia on December 13, 1871 and past away on March 2, 1945. She was the offspring of Richard Carr and Emily Saunders and the second youngest of nine children. Emily's mother died in 1886 and her father and her older sister Edith died soon after in 1888. While a rebellious nature dominated her attitude from a young age, these events likely also helped shape her independence.
She lived most of her life on Vancouver Island but did live in San Francisco for three years, five years in England and one year in France. Each of these experiences had a profound effect on her development.
She moved to San Francisco because of the lack of art schools, art collections and professional artists in the Victoria area that she could learn from. Eventually a lack of finances forced her to return. After the California School of Design in San Francisco, she returned to Victoria to teach art classes to children. In 1899, Carr took up studies at the Westminster School of Art in London. And also attended sketching classes in Cornwall. In 1910, she enrolled in the Academie Colarossi in Paris. It was here that she would break away from her more traditional teachings. Unfortunately, her work was not received well when she returned to Vancouver. British Columbians were unwilling to deviate from the English landscape tradition (Dodd, 1984).
In 1913, Carr needed to supplement her income by raising livestock, growing vegetables and making pottery. But by 1927, she was invited to Ottawa for an exhibition and met Lawren Harris, who had a profound effect on her and her work. The confidence and encouragement shown by the Group of Seven rekindled her spirit and motivated her to return to painting.
The two driving themes of her work were the unique and vanishing Native culture and a powerful coastal nature. Her first trip to Native villages was in 1898. Between her fifty-sixth and seventy-first years, her paintings of dark forests, Native carvings, trees, wild storms and infinite skies reflected her Pacific Coast experience. Earlier in her life, she went through a number of other phases. During one phase in her career, she painted in a French postimpressionist and Fauve School manner and in another showed links to Cubism. Her work suggested connections to van Gogh and German Expressionism. (Shadbolt, 1979).
Walker (1996, p. 102), in attempting to understand Carr's spirituality, suggests that: "… the pattern of women's lives depicted in medieval hagiography manifests patterns of discontent and difference that mirror the preoccupations of the writers of women's lives now." Carr's Native experiences had a major influence on her work. The sketching of totem poles, which were often found in remote locations subject to harsh weather conditions, is seen in many of her paintings. According to Shadbolt (1990), Carr identified virtues in Native art that related to her vision of art. Carr tried to recreate the artist's creative intention in her own work. She saw Native carvings as "… stirring creations of a people of an imagined noble past…" (Shadbolt, 1990, p. 8). However, by 1931 she left the Native theme. Her change of focus was likely due to Lawren Harris and Mark Tobey, who both advised her to create art from within herself. For Carr, she had intuitively grasped the Native's relationship to the natural and spiritual world and his environment. By gaining this understanding, she decided to move on to new challenges.
Carr also expressed herself in writing. In 1927, she was encouraged by Lawren Harris and Eric Brown to write about her life and experiences. She took a course in journalism. Her journal entries between 1927 and 1938 make reference to her writings. In 1941, "Klee Wyck", in 1942, "The Book of Small", in 1944, "The House of All Sorts", in 1946, "Growing Pains", in 1953, "Pause" and "The Heart of a Peacock", and in 1966, "Hundreds and Thousands" were published. Dilworth (1986, Ed.) points out that her written works were often overlooked in favor of her paintings, when Carr's primary talent may have been writing.
While studying these writings may seem an excellent way of getting a greater insight into her state of mind, Shadbolt (1979) states that her writings were distorted and were recounted many years after the actual events making them unreliable for biological detail. Carr often understates her age and embellishes her writings with dramatizations and idealization. Even a chronological history of paintings is difficult, since she stopped dating her paintings after 1930. Historians are left to evaluate the style or geographic location and attempt to correlate it with a year (Shadbolt, 1975).
Dodd (1984) believes that her writing helped her painting. Ideas could be illustrated in words and then reworked in paint. The 1930's saw a rebirth of both her writing and painting. But by 1937, her confinement to bed limited her painting activities.
Newlands (1996) agrees that her recollections were distorted but also believes that her writings provide valuable insights into Carr's inner spirit and personality. From a prim and proper orthodox religious household, she asserted her rebellious nature early in life. She often escaped the rules and rigidity of her childhood household to explore nature. According to Shadbolt (1975, p. 9), she: "…resented and resisted his (her father's) authoritarianism…" and "…found intolerable the stricter discipline of her older sister and the hypocrisy of the polite social pattern which they and other 'nice' Victorians shared. The need to get away and find a world of her own was imperative." In her own words, Carr (1946, p. 5) talks of her father's "… unbendable iron will…" and "… tyrannical reality…" This provides a glimpse into one of the early influences in her life.
Encouragement from the Group of Seven, in the late 1920's, was important in her return to painting after several unproductive years. While there are similarities in style with the Group of Seven, Emily Carr was very individualistic and departed from the techniques of the Group of Seven by never using the oil field sketch. Instead she devised a unique process of oil paint used with gasoline (Reid, 1973). Her innovative ideas in 1932 were out of necessity, according to Shadbolt (1975). Conventional artist's materials were expensive. Instead she used ordinary white house paint and cheap manila paper, which she bought in bulk and was easy to carry.
She had ill health through much of her life. While in France in 1910, she had several intervals of poor health. In 1902, she became seriously ill and was in the East Anglia sanatorium in Suffolk between 1903-4. In 1937, she had her first heart attack, which was followed by another in 1939, a stroke in 1940, and another heart attack in 1942. In 1945, she had her final and fatal heart attack (Gowers, 1987).
Blanchard (1987) described Carr as a very complex person, who was both brave and spiritual, and yet overweight, irritable and socially insecure. Rather than put her on a pedestal, Blanchard recognizes that Carr was imperfect and struggled. Dodd (1984, p. x) described her as "… a religious, contemplative, questioning artist."
In her latter years, Emily Carr stated: "Spring was young, I over seventy. With Spring all about me I sat sketching in the clearing … Seventy years had maimed me, loggers had maimed the clearing … but I got immense delight in just being there, in the quiet wood, the longing was too terrific to subdue, and I felt better." (Newlands, 1996, p. 62).
In conclusion, Emily Carr grew out of a very strict upbringing with a defiant and rebellious nature that would shape her work throughout her life. Her fascination with the Pacific Coast and the spirituality of Native peoples was a profound influence on her work during certain phases of her career. She traveled abroad in order to hone her painting skills but still returned to British Columbia.
Her writings may have been underrated. While her autobiographical writings are fraught with inaccuracies, her writing as a whole has now been recognized as insightful. The combination of being able to paint and write is certainly to her credit. She desired an artistic outlet and used whatever avenue she could find.
The Group of Seven were certainly a profound influence on her work and life, although she still remained individualistic. While her styles changed over time, she managed to create work that will be remembered and cherished by people for many years to come.
Bibliography
Blanchard, P. 1987. The Life of Emily Carr. Toronto: Douglas and MacIntyre.
Carr, E. 1986. The Heart of a Peacock. Edited by I. Dilworth. Toronto: Irwin Publishing.
Carr, E. 1946. Growing Pains. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
Dodd, K. 1984. Sunlight in the Shadows: The Landscape of Emily Carr. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
Gowers, R. 1987. Emily Carr. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Hembroff-Schleicher, E. 1969. A Portrayal of Emily Carr. Vancouver: Clarke, Irwin Co. Ltd.
Newlands, A. 1996. Emily Carr: An Introduction to Her Life and Art. Willowdale: Firefly Books.
Reid, D. 1973. A Concise History of Canadian Painting. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
Shadbolt, D. 1990. "The Dark Spirit of Emily Carr." The Canadian Forum. June. Vol. 69. No. 790. P. 7-9.
Shadbolt, D. 1979. The Art of Emily Carr. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and Co. Ltd.
Shadbolt, D. 1975. Emily Carr. Vancouver: J.J. Douglas Ltd.
Walker, K. 1996. This Woman in Particular: Contests for the Biographical Image of Emily Carr. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier Press.
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