Emily Carr
unknown photographer, Emily Carr c 1893, carte-de-viste photograph, British Columbia Archives collection, Royal BC Museum Corporation, Canada
- Born
- 1871
- Died
- 1945
‘Art is art, nature is nature, you cannot improve upon it … Pictures should be inspired by nature, but made in the soul of the artist; it is the soul of the individual that counts.’
Emily Carr, Shoreline 1936 (detail), oil on canvas, McMichael Canadian Art Collection
Emily Carr (1871–1945) is recognised today as one of Canada’s greatest artists, though she spent much of her life working in relative obscurity. Carr was an early Canadian adopter of post-impressionist painting techniques which were not readily accepted in her home country. She is best known for her bold use of colour and her spiritually charged landscapes which depict the verdant wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.
Carr was born in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province. She lived there most of her life but travelled widely to train as an artist. It was after her parent’s deaths, while she was in her late teens, that she began to pursue art in earnest. She studied at the San Francisco Art Institute between 1890 and 1893, which was then the closest art school. In 1899, she travelled to London, and enrolled at the Westminster School of Art, before taking informal classes with Impressionist painters Julius Olsson and Algernon Talmage at the St Ives art colony in Cornwall in 1901 when Ethel Carrick was also there in the summer months. In 1910, Carr returned to Europe, this time to train in Paris, where she was exposed to the work of the Fauves. She studied at Académie Colarossi before travelling to Sweden and then on to Brittany.
Carr returned to British Columbia in 1911 and travelled to remote villages with an aim to paint the land and culture of First Nations peoples at risk of erasure due to colonialism. However, there were few buyers interested in Carr’s modernist paintings and so she made a living as the owner and manager of a boarding house.
In 1927, Carr was invited to exhibit her works at the National Gallery of Canada’s Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art: Native and Modern. A major turning point in her career at age 56, this opportunity allowed her to meet the Group of Seven artists, who were regarded as Canada’s foremost modernists. With the encouragement of the Group’s unofficial leader, Lawren Harris, Carr entered the most productive period of her life, during which time she created her most celebrated paintings.
Carr suffered from chronic illness for many years, and died of her fourth heart attack in 1945, just over two months prior to being awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of British Columbia.
Annabel McGowan, Assistant Curator, Australian Prints
