Emily Carr
Emily Carr
1871-1945
Northwest Artist
Emily Carr is considered to be one of Canadaʼs
most renowned artists. She was significant as a
landscape painter and as a modernist, and was
the most important British Columbia artist of her
generation. Carr is best known for her paintings
of the totemic carvings made by the First Nations
people of British Columbia, and of the rain forests
of Vancouver Island. The fact that she produced
her largest and most important body of work in her
late fifties, in an artistic climate often hostile
toward women, makes her accomplishment even
more extraordinary.
Emily lived in socially conservative Victoria, British
Columbia, and spent most of her life in cultural
and artistic isolation. The two major themes of
her work revolve around topics unique to the
region: a unique and besieged Indian culture, and
the powerful nature of the northwest rain forests.
She spent periods of time studying in San
Francisco, London and Paris and thus was aware
of a wider artistic context. Over her long career,
she experimented with various art styles which
paralleled the global development of modern art.
A lack of support and appreciation plagued her
early years, but her “discovery” at age 56 brought
her a measure of recognition and success. In
1926, after her introduction to Canadaʼs Group of
Seven, Carr produced her most significant work,
and developed a style entirely her own –
monumental totemic structures, dark rhythmic
forests, and vast dancing skies.
Vocabulary
Fauves—(fov) (French for Wild Beasts) A shortlived, loose grouping of early 20th century modern
artists whose works utilized strong color rather
than realistic values. Matisse was a leading player
in this movement. Their paintings often showed
brushstrokes rather than hiding them.
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First Nations—The native people of Canada. The
Northwest natives were allowed to remain on their
land rather than being sent to reservations, thus
they were, with some restraint, able to retain
many customs. Emily Carr visited their villages
many times, and represented them in her
paintings.
Group of Seven—A well-known group of
pioneering Canadian landscape artists. Influenced
by the late Impressionist movement, this group
met in 1913 and banded together for mutual
support, travel, and exhibitions at a time when the
Canadian landscape was considered unsuitable
for artistic attention. They (and Carr) created a
myth of the Canadian landscape, and together
their work continues to influence how Canadians
view the land and, more broadly, the nation's
cultural identity.
Stylize—To simplify realistic details into their
basic lines and shapes for decorative or artistic
purposes.
Art Elements
Color—Color has three properties: hue, the name
of the color; value, the lightness or darkness of the
color; and intensity, which refers to the purity of
the hue. Carrʼs early colors started out pale, but
after her trip to France, she adopted the wild
Fauve palette, which enlivened her landscapes.
Carr began using dark, brooding colors in the late
1920s, but by the 1940s her work could be
described as “luminous.”
Space—Refers to the feeling of depth in a
painting. It is the area around, within, or between
images or elements. Space that appears threedimensional in a two-dimensional painting is an
illusion created by the artist. This can be created
by using such techniques as overlapping of
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Emily Carr
objects, varying of object size or placement,
varying of color intensity and value, and use of
detail and diagonal lines. Carr used all of these
methods
– she created receding space by
arranging trees in parallel, diagonal lines,
overlapping them and varying their size from large
to small, and by making the color values of the
objects darker and using less detail as the picture
recedes.
Art Principles
Emphasis—Emphasis is used by artists to create
dominance and focus in their work. Artists can use
color, value, shape or other elements to place
emphasis on the most important aspect of their
work. Carr often creates emphasis through central
placement of a large object. Her later works often
include a luminous area of emphasis.
Repetition/Rhythm—The repetition of elements
(color, shape, line, value, space, texture) moves
the viewerʼs eye across a work of art and creates
rhythm. Regular rhythm is the repetition of
elements that are the same or nearly the same in
regular sequence. Progressive rhythms are those
in which the elements change size as they
progress or move across space. Carrʼs work
involved a great deal of repetition – repetition of
motifs such as totems, trees, etc., lines, shapes,
colors and brushstrokes, all of which created
rhythm.
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Emily Carr
which she felt trapped. She created a studio in the
family cow barn.
Biography
Emily Carr was born December 13, 1871 in
Victoria, the provincial capital of British Columbia,
Canada. Victoria was a young, frontier town–logging and fishing were the main economic
activities, yet also home to a conservative population Carr called “narrow minded English.”
Victoria was quite isolated, separated from
mainland Canada by a 6-hour ferry ride.
Known as “Millie” to her family, Emily was the
youngest of 5 daughters. She considered herself
the disruptive member of the prim and religious
family. They lived in a semi-rural area with
livestock, which Carr loved. Once she was on her
own, she acquired an unusual array of animals–dogs, rabbits, chickens, a parrot, and even a
monkey. Her love of nature would remain constant
throughout her long life. Carr showed an early
talent for drawing, so at age 8 she started art
lessons. Although artistic endeavors were
deemed respectable hobbies for Victorian women,
pursuing art as a career--or anything as a career
for that matter--was counter to Victorian societyʼs
ideas of proper behavior for women. Throughout
her life, Carr would defy those ideas.
Upon the death of her father in 1888, a trust fund
provided enough money for Carr to obtain art
training away from home. Instead of going to
Europe as sheʼd hoped, however, her elder
sisterʼs objections to travel abroad forced her to
settle for three years at San Franciscoʼs
conservative School of Design. When Carr
returned to Victoria she began teaching art to
neighborhood children to earn money for further
travels to escape the conservative society in
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Carr often traveled unchaperoned, which was
unheard of for women. In 1899, at age 28, Carr
took her first trip to the First Nations lands. She
visited Ucluelet, a Nootka reserve, and recorded
the native environment. On this trip she earned
the name “Klee Wyck” which means “Laughing
One.” Later that summer Carr traveled to London
for a five year sojourn. She found London
oppressive and the Westminster School of Art
disappointing, but she liked the countryside and
her outdoor sketching class. She spent a year in
an artistic colony on the southwestern coast of
England, where she sketched often in the woods.
In 1904, back in Canada, Carr moved to
Vancouver to teach art at the Vancouver Studio
Club. Although she found the society ladies to be
too frivolous and they found her appalling, Carr
did attract young students with whom she painted
in Stanley Park. She also formed a long-standing
friendship with a native woman, Sophie Frank. At
this time, the local Indian lands had largely been
taken over and their population was in a state of
demoralization. Indians lived squalid lives on the
edges of Victoria and Vancouver. However,
farther away from these cities, First Nations
people lived their lives with less disruption. Carr
was probably attracted to these people and their
villages because they lived outside the English
society, whose narrow values she rejected. As an
outsider herself, she felt a bond with the natives.
In 1907, at age 36, Carr and her sister Alice took
a trip to Alaska where she sketched a Tlingit
village near Sitka. The deteriorating state of the
native art and totems touched her and she vowed
to paint as many totems as she could. Up to this
point, she had been painting in conventional
watercolor (the only medium considered
appropriate for women) but was determined to find
a more suitable way to convey the vivid landscape
and stark reality of Indian art. Despite arduous
travel and uncertain accommodations, Carr spent
two years working toward her ambitious goal.
In 1910, Carr set off for France and attended
classes outside of Paris and in Brittany. Here she
was encouraged to gain a new vocabulary of form
and color, trademarks of the Fauvist movement.
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Emily Carr
She was also exposed to the idea that colors did
not need to mirror reality but should express the
artistʼs feelings. After inclusion of two of her
pieces in the prestigious Paris Salon, she returned
to Vancouver to exhibit her French work. Viewers,
ignorant of the radical art being produced in
Europe, were shocked by the bold palette and
lack of detail in her work. Initially, Carr was not
discouraged: with this exhibition she had
introduced Fauvism to conservative Vancouver
society. She returned again to the Indian villages
of the North, where her work became much bolder
and intense.
Carr mounted an exhibition in Vancouver, which
excited critical interest, but the negative pubic
reaction to her style continued. Broke and
discouraged, she returned to Victoria, lived alone
and struggled to make ends meet. She took in
lodgers, bred sheep dogs, hooked rugs, and sold
fruit, rabbits, chickens and home-made pottery.
Just when she had almost abandoned the notion
that art could be a serious vocation, a turning
point in her life occurred. In the 1920s, a number
of eastern Canadian and American artists had
explored the totem villages, at the suggestion of
anthropologist
Marius
Barbeau.
Barbeau
introduced Eric Brown, director of the National
Gallery of Canada, to Carrʼs work. Brown was
impressed by the quality of her painting and
astounded by her total isolation from the artistic
movements of eastern North America. He
selected paintings, hooked rugs and pottery for
inclusion in the Exhibition of Canadian West Coast
Art--Native and Modern, showing more of Carr's
works than any other artist in the modern section.
Carrʼs participation in the exhibition transformed
her life. She was introduced to the “Group of
Seven,” artists from Toronto who were revolutionizing Canadian art. For the first time in her life,
Carr found herself in the company of people to
whom she could relate, people who appreciated
her talent. She visited their studios and was
inspired by their work and excited by their
acceptance and encouragement of hers. She
returned to Victoria reenergized, at age 56, and
wrote in her journal: “Oh, these men, this Group of
Seven, what have they created?—a world
stripped of earthiness, shorn of fretting details,
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purged, purified; a naked soul, pure and
unashamed; lovely spaces filled with serenity.”
Rejuvenated, Carr revisited many of her earlier
subjects. Over the next few years, her style
evolved in a distinctive direction. A fellow artist
and member of the Group of Seven encouraged
her to move beyond the totems, to express her
own findings rather than recreating that of others.
Following his advice, Carr moved away from First
Nations imagery and into the forest. She sought a
new medium to allow her to focus on movement
and spontaneity. She found watercolor inadequate
and oil too heavy for her purpose, so she invented
a new technique. She thinned oil paint with house
paint and gasoline and applied it to paper; this
gave her the desired result: a medium that had the
proper consistency to create her desired visual
effect, yet inexpensive, light and fast drying. She
could translate an idea to paper very quickly,
which infused the work with spontaneity. “I've
learned heaps in the paper oils--freedom and
direction. You are so unafraid to slash away
because material scarcely counts. You use just
can paint and there's no loss with failures. I try to
do one almost every day. I make a sketch in the
evening and a large paper sketch the following
morning--or vice versa.”
In painting the forest, Carr explored the dark,
forbidding side of nature. She then moved on to
paint open woods, fields, treetops, and beaches,
conveying natureʼs animating life and joy. There
were stylistic and expressive changes as well.
Movement rather than space became a major
theme of her work, expressing the life force,
growth and spiritual energy. Color, form, tone,
shape all became secondary. The sky became not
just a background, but a pulsing, flowing, spinning
entity. In 1933, at age 63, Carr bought a trailer
and had it towed to the woods where she would
camp with her animals and paint. While this
solitude was undoubtedly an important aspect of
her work, her correspondence portrays a lonely
old age. By the late 1920s, there were several
artists of stature in Vancouver and opportunities to
exhibit had become more frequent, but Carr
remained a loner.
By 1935, Carr was appreciated as one of
Canadaʼs significant artists but poor sales dogged
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Emily Carr
her. While she craved a positive response to her
work, she was simultaneously embarrassed by it
and distrusted compliments. She was a loner who
yearned for affirmation but repelled it at the same
time. “Real success must be this,” she wrote, “to
feel down in your own soul that the thing you have
striven for has been accomplished. To this must
be added the appreciation of the thing done by
those you love and whose appreciation you
value.”
In 1937 and in 1939 Carr suffered heart attacks,
and her health was poor for the rest of her life.
She pressed ahead with indoor painting,
exhibitions and writing. During her life she
published several memoirs, lectures, and books
on art, including Klee Wyck, a set of stories based
on her experiences in First Nations villages, which
won an award in 1941. Her writing turned her
thoughts back to Native elements and, in her final
paintings, totems are again incorporated. In 1945,
at age 73, in the midst of preparation for an
exhibition, Carr died. At the time of her death, the
Canadian Art world had moved beyond the Group
of Seven and Carrʼs landscape style, but her work
was “rediscovered” in the 1970s and her
reputation has soared. Carr said, “Some can be
active to a great age but enjoy life little. I have
lived.“
Web Resources
Vancouver Art Gallery Collection:
www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/EmilyCarr/en/featur
ed/
Klee Wyck by Emily Carr, Project Gutenberg Australia.
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100131.txt
www.emilycarr.org
www.b.c.archives.gov.b.c..ca/exhibits/timemach/galler1
1/frames/carr.htm
http://daryl.chin.gc.ca:8015/Webtop/CHINApps/artefacts
/chinACs.jsp?pageType=sitemap&currLang=English
www.virtualmuseum.ca/English/Gallery/index.html
Bibliographic Reference
The Art of Emily Carr, Doris Shadbolt, 1979, Douglas &
McIntyre Ltd, Vancouver B.C.
Beloved Land, The World of Emily Carr - Vancouver Art
Gallery, 1996, Douglas & McIntyre, Washington
Emily Carr, An Introduction to her Life and Art, Anne
Newlands, c1996, Bookmakers Press Inc, Kingston
Ontario
Emily Carr, At the Edge of the World, Jo Ellen Bogart,
illustrated by Maxwell Newhouse, 2003, Tundray
Books, Toronto
Forest Lover – Susan Vreeland
Four Pictures by Emily Carr – Nicolas Debon
Unsettling Encounters, First Nations Imagery in the art
of Emily Carr, Gerta Moray , 2006, UB.C. Press,
Vancouver/ Toronto
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Emily Carr
The Presentation
1. Emily Carr, age 21
1893, photo courtesy of British Columbia Archives, Royal B.C. Museum,
Victoria, B.C.
Emily Carr and Friends and Caravan “The Elephant”
1934, photo courtesy of British Columbia Archives, Royal B.C. Museum,
Victoria, B.C.
Emily Carr was born into a strict religious family living in conservative Victoria,
British Columbia. She was undeniably eccentric compared to her four sisters,
bucking the existing conceptions about how women should behave during that
Victorian period of time. She traveled, often unchaperoned, to remote
native communities in western British Columbia and southern Alaska.
These travels inspired her art, as did her undying love of the outdoors and
nature.
Carr traveled on many sketching trips, and in her later years camped out in
a trailer she dubbed the “The Elephant.” This photo, taken when she was
63 years old, shows her with friends and her menagerie of animals. (Carr
is seated on the doorstep, pet monkey on her shoulder.) Her view of art
precluded the presence of people in most of her paintings, and permitted
few tokens of their existence – she really liked to have people, in her own words, “not too near and not too
far.” In her home in Victoria, B.C., she would hoist unneeded chairs to the ceiling using ropes and
pulleys. If she liked you, she would lower a seat; if not, you stood.
2. Cedar Caninʼs House, Ucluelet
1899, watercolor on paper, 7” x 10.5”, Provincial Archives of British Columbia,
Royal B.C. Museum, Victoria, B.C.
Carrʼs first visit to a First Nations village occurred in 1899, when, at age
18, she went to Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Emily
made pen and ink sketches of scenes, as well as watercolors. During this
trip, Carr earned the native name “Klee Wyck,” which means, “Laughing
One.” She communicated with the Nootka tribe by nodding, gesturing, and
mostly by smiling, never attempting to learn their native language. Among her
earliest Indian work, this scene reflects the devitalized state of Indian culture at
the time. In her later works, human figures disappear, and she focused more
on the Indian sculptures and art.
Where does your eye go
first when you look at
this painting?!
This watercolor uses mostly pale colors but also includes bits of red, which draw emphasis to the two
girls in the bottom left and the somewhat blurry grouping of people in the center. A sense of space is
achieved by object sizing: the two girls are larger in the foreground. The structure in the background also
contributes to the sense of space, due to Carrʼs use of perspective. Repetition of the diagonally leaning
poles, the windows and the roof poles moves the viewerʼs eye along the entire building structure. The two
girls and the two diagonal areas of white that cut across the painting also demonstrate Carrʼs use of
repetition in this early painting.
Fun Fact: Notice the signature in the bottom right corner: M. Carr. “M” is for Millie, Carrʼs nickname.
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Emily Carr
3. Totem Walk at Sitka
1907, watercolor on paper, 17.5” x 17.5”, Collection of the Art Gallery of greater
Victoria, Victoria, B.C.
In the summer of 1907, at age 35, Carr and her sister Alice took a cruise to
Alaska. They spent a week in Sitka, where Carr discovered the so-called
Totem Walk and visited an old Tlingit village on the edge of town. There, native
carvings still existed in their original settings. Carr began sketching the totem
poles, and was deeply touched by the Indian people and their art. She decided
to focus her art on these objects, traveling on several sketching trips to distant
First Nations villages.
Would you like to take a
walk down this path?
Carrʼs watercolor of the Totem Walk shows her conventional art training.
The trees are fairly realistic, as opposed to her later paintings. The trees
and totems flanking the light-filled path, decreasing in size as they fade into the background, achieve a
sense of space. Repetition of these objects helps to lead us down the path. Warm rich colors are used
to portray the trees, while the totem poles are bold and bright. The “path” will be recreated in many of her
later works, as an invitation into the forest.
4. Autumn in France
1911, oil on cardboard, 19” x 26”, National Gallery of Canada,
Ottawa, Ontario
In 1910 Carr went to France with her sister Alice to experience the “new
art” being produced there. Working with English artist Henry Phelan
Gibb, Carr explored the bright colors and simplified forms portrayed by
the Fauves – French artists who were named the “wild beasts” by an art
critic for their daring use of color. Carr wrote that year, “A painting must
be more than a copy of the woods and fields: it must be about space, color
During what time of year
and light – it had a life of its own.” This oil painting, “Autumn in France,”
do you think this was
captures the warmth and energy of the fields ready for harvest. Before she
painted? Spring? Fall?
returned to Canada, two of Carrʼs works had been exhibited at the Salon
DʼAutomne in Paris. This marked a major change for Carrʼs art, as it was
her first use of oil as a medium, and also she painted directly from the subject matter, instead of from
sketches.
It is readily apparent that Carrʼs use of color has changed dramatically. Now, bright yellows, greens, hot
pinks and oranges define the gentle contours of the French countryside. There is a limited sense of
space, but the repetition of yellow trees and short brushstrokes moves our eye around the painting,
almost in a circular fashion.
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Emily Carr
5. Totem Poles, Kitseukla
1912, oil on canvas, 50” x 38.5”, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C.
Carr returned from France to North America with a whole new palette. She bravely
set out on one of her most ambitious excursions into northern British Columbia in
July of 1912, visiting more than 15 native villages along the coast. She produced
hundreds of sketches during this extended sojourn, and had to learn to sketch
quickly, due to the damp, rainy climate. “Totem Poles,” and other paintings done
from sketches completed on this trip, unfortunately were not well received by the
conservative patrons of Victoria, even though this new style represented a giant
advance in Carrʼs talent and technique.
How many eyes
can you find in this
Some villages Carr visited were deserted, while others were still inhabited. In
painting?
general, though, much of the native population had been decimated by disease.
Native Indians had little or no resistance to the illnesses introduced to North
America by the Europeans in the 19th century. This painting portrays a scene in the village of Kitseukla
(pronounced kit su kla), where Carr returned to the subject matter of her beloved totem poles. Kitseukla
was still a thriving community, unlike many other abandoned villages. Notice the similarities to her work
from France: bold, bright colors and short, quick brushstrokes portray both the sky and grass. A sense of
space is created by various sized totem poles, as well as the village structures in the middle ground. The
emphasis is clearly on the totems, in particular the two in the foreground. Another smaller carving on the
left provides an additional focal point. Repetition of the totem poles, as well as the shapes carved into
them moves your eye through the painting.
6. Heina, Q.C.I.
1928, oil on canvas, 51” x 36”, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
Between 1913 and 1927, Carr produced only 20 paintings, as she felt rejected
by the art world. However, in 1927, a turning point occurred in her career. Carr
was invited to exhibit her work in the “Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art –
Native and Modern” at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. It was here
that she was introduced to the Toronto-based “Group of Seven,” artists who
were revolutionizing Canadian art. Their bold, colorful style of painting and
passion for the Canadian landscape melded well with Carrʼs own goals. The
fact that this group accepted her work changed everything. Lawren Harris, one
of the seven artists, said to Carr, “You are one of us.”
Where do you see the
In 1928 Carr began to paint again. She went back to the sketches done
greatest contrast of dark
during her 1912 excursion, but nearly every aspect of her style was
and light colors? !
transformed. Compare this painting from the village of Heina (pronounced
hay na) in the Queen Charlotte Islands, to the prior painting of totem poles
done in 1912. What are the similarities? What are the differences? She has used the same subject
matter, but, influenced by a sort of Cubism, the shapes have become more stylized and bold. The
background landscape is now a mere suggestion of trees and mountains. The forms of the totem poles,
boats and structures are now heavily shaded and more geometrically solid and sculptural.
Colors are deep, rich and bold, and Carrʼs use of dark and light contrasting colors creates a vibrant,
exciting painting. People are no longer in her scene, except possibly two indistinct figures in the middle.
Clearly the emphasis is on the totem sculptures and their unique designs. Her use of a distinct
foreground, middle ground and background gives the viewer a clear sense of space.
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Emily Carr
7. Totem Mother, Kitwancool
1928, oil on canvas, 43” x 27”, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C.
1928 was a productive year for Emily Carr, as she transformed her village
sketches from 1912 and 1913 into monumental paintings in a new, bold style.
“Totem Mother” focuses on one subject, an incredible totem image of a mother and
child. The background is incidental and exists only to let us know that this
sculpture is placed in front of, or inside of, a man made structure, not in nature.
Emily Carrʼs use of color has warmed up, with rich browns used to portray the
main figure. This effect draws our eyes to it, and the cool blues and greens recede,
creating a quiet background. This use of color, along with highlighting and shading,
emphasizes the three dimensional nature of this sculpture, and the baby figure in
the center thus gains importance. Repetition occurs in the rounded shapes of the figuresʼ arms and legs,
as well as in the motherʼs two huge eyes. The motherʼs arms and hands create a circular shape around
the baby to further unify the piece
8. Big Raven
1931, oil on canvas, 34” x 45”, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C.
Emily Carr continued to explore the images she had sketched and seen in
northern British Columbia. About “Big Raven,” probably one of her most
well known paintings, Carr wrote, “I want to bring great loneliness to this
canvas and a haunting broodiness, quiet and powerful.” Another lone
subject, the raven sculpture reflects the rhythms of the land and sky. Its
smooth sculptural shape is echoed in the forms of nature that surround it,
as if both are carved from the same substance. Carr also writes, “…here I
really was sweeping away the unnecessary and adding..…something
bigger.”
Can you find a tree that is
“stylized” in this painting?
Carrʼs use of color is vibrant and rich, with the white area of the sky throwing into profile the distant hill
and the rounded form of the bird. This painting gives an imaginative sense of space, as the raven seems
to appear out of a swirl of green vegetation, looming over the landscape. The emphasis on the sculpture
has been softened by the white beams of sunlight emanating from ominous looking clouds, so we also
are drawn to the rosy hill in the distance. Repetition of swirling, curved shapes in the landscape is
contrasted by the repeated vertical beams of light, and horizontal lines of clouds.
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Emily Carr
9. Indian Church
1929, oil on canvas, 43” x 27”, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Emily Carr gradually began to change her
focus away from native sculptures towards depicting pure nature. “Indian Church”
shows this time of transition; in it she has painted a church she had sketched along
the British Columbia coastline, nestled amid a forest of green. Notice the direction
her trees are taking – becoming less and less realistic and more stylized.
The contrast of the bright white color of the church against the lush green
background gives it emphasis. The vertical steeple leads our eye up through the
green forest, and brown tree trunks repeat the vertical shape of the steeple. It has
been suggested that this painting represents Carrʼs desire to meld the man-made
with nature, as neither the church nor the forest overwhelm the other. Spatially,
the forest appears ready to swallow up the church building.
Fun fact: Carrʼs friend, Lawren Harris from the Group of Seven, bought this
painting in 1929 when it was exhibited in Toronto.
Does the darkness
and density of the
forest make the
church seem
large or small?
10. Red Cedar
1931, oil on canvas, 43.5” x 27”, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C.
By 1931, Emily Carrʼs focus had become almost totally directed to the forest, and
toward a goal of depicting the exotic landscape of Vancouver Island. Her paintings
of totems and Indian objects declined, and as soon as the weather permitted, she
moved into the woods for inspiration. Carrʼs sketching trips were usually taken in
an old used trailer van she dubbed “The Elephant.” Her menagerie of animal
friends accompanied her, and human friends often visited too.
This majestic red cedar, set deep in the forest, glows with a mysterious red light.
The warm, rich color of the treeʼs trunk reminds us of the palette Carr used for
“Totem Mother” (image #7). The tree trunk contrasts with the cool greens of the
tree branches and the forest floor. Repetition becomes very linear here: the
swirling lines of green tree branches, vertical lines of the tree trunks, and organic
lines of the forest floor. Without a doubt, the emphasis is on the beautiful cedar
tree. We have a sense of the space in which this tree grows, created by the
diminishing size and overlapping arrangement of the surrounding tree trunks.
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Have you ever
seen a red cedar?
Do you think it
would stand out
in a forest?
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Emily Carr
11. Tree (spiraling upward)
1932-33, oil on paper, 34.5” x 23”, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C.
Emily Carr, like Pablo Picasso, was continually experimenting and changing her
style of art. She began to experiment with a new technique for the use of oil paint.
She writes, “Oil paint thinned with gasoline on paper. It is inexpensive, light to
carry, and allows great freedom of thought and action. Woods and skies out west
are big. You canʼt pin them down.” Compared to the oil painting, “Red Cedar,” this
technique allowed Carr to work quickly and spontaneously, joyfully expressing the
liveliness of the forest.
We can see a shift in Carrʼs decision to include more light and movement in her
work. Colors are lighter and more translucent, a function of her thinning the oil
paint. This painting emphasizes the tree and its swirling shapes. In Carrʼs words,
“The movement shall be so great the picture will rock and sway together, carrying
the artist and after him the looker with it.” The curved brush strokes and repeated
colors do just what she wanted – effectively moving our eye in a circular motion
around the painting.
How does your eye
mover around this
painting? !
12. Wood Interior
1932-35, oil on canvas, 51” x 34”, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C.
The tree trunks in “Wood Interior” have become more stylized and less defined
than in Carrʼs previous works. In this deep rain forest painting, the forest
ceiling arches over us and allows but a glimmer of sunlight in the distance.
Carr wrote, “Sketching in the big woods is wonderful. You go, find a space
wide enough to sit in, spread your campstool, and sit and look around. Donʼt
see much here. Wait, slowly things begin to move, to slip into their places. The
silence is full of sound.”
The artistʼs contrast of warm browns and cool green colors keep this painting
visually exciting. As in previous works, the tree trunks repeat vertically,
contrasting with horizontal wavy brushstrokes depicting the forest floor. Space
is achieved in the same manner, with diminishing sizes of trees, and an illdefined path leading us into the forest. No one tree is emphasized, rather, the
sense of being deep in the forest is apparent.
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Does the forest floor
remind you of anything?
Water or waves? !
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Emily Carr
13. SCANNING: Sombreness Sunlit
1938-40, oil on canvas, 44” x 27”, British Columbia Archives, Royal B.C. Museum,
Victoria, B.C.
Emily Carrʼs technique of thinning her paint is also evident in this painting, as it
was in “Tree (spiraling upward).” The translucency of the paint allows her to
simulate the effect of sunlight streaming into the forest setting. Here we are led
down a path toward a distant bright light, almost as if we have reached the
edge of the forest and are about to emerge into a clearing.
The artistʼs palette includes many browns and greens, as before, but our eye is
drawn to the bright yellow color of the sunlight in the distance, which is also
the emphasis of the painting. Repetition of diagonal brushstrokes creates an
impression of the forest ceiling, while one dark green, bushy tree hugs the left
side of the composition. Space is created via brush strokes leading us towards
the light, and by smaller, less defined tree trunks in the distance. Carrʼs recently found love of light is
blended with her love of the forest in this piece. This painting is a good example of why Carrʼs work was
described as “luminous.”
Fun Fact: Sombreness means dull and gloomy. The title of “Sombreness Sunlit” perhaps indicates her
hope for an end to the gloom.
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Emily Carr
Scanning Questions
Sombreness Sunlit
1938-40, oil on canvas, 44 x 27”, British Columbia Archives, Victoria, B.C.
Art Elements: What you see.
Color
• What colors do you see? (yellow, green brown, white)
• What colors are used to create the brightest areas? (yellow and
white)
Space
• Point out the largest area of open space. (identify foreground, middle
ground, background)
• How is a sense of space achieved? (direction of brushstrokes; diminishing perspective, atmospheric
perspective and overlapping of trees)
Art Principles: How the elements are arranged.
Emphasis
• Where is the emphasis in this painting? (yellow light in distance)
• How is this achieved? (the yellow is the brightest part of the painting, which draws our eye to it))
Repetition/Rhythm
• What colors are repeated? (browns on the ground and the tree trunks, green trees, green and yellow
overhead)
• What lines and shapes are repeated? (diagonal lines overhead and on the forest floor, tree trunks, lines
detailing tree trunks)
Technical Properties: How it was made.
• Do you think the artist used thick or thin paint? (thin)
• How large do you think it is? (44 x 27 inches)
Expressive Properties: How it makes you feel.
• What is the mood of this painting? (hopeful? uplifting?)
• How do you think the artist felt while creating this piece? (note the title: the piece doesnʼt feel somber,
but perhaps “sombreness sunlit” means what used to be somber is now sunlit…)
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Emily Carr
14. Skidegate Pole
1942, oil on canvas, 34” x 30”, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C.
Among Emily Carrʼs last works of art, “Skidegate Pole” returns us to her love
of native sculptures and totem poles. In contrast to the narrow format and thick
textural application of paint in her earlier works, however, here she uses an
almost square format, creating a sense of balance between the carving and
the landscape. Nature is full of light and movement. The Haida “shark pole”
shown here was among the many sculptures Carr had seen during her 1912
expedition to the northern Canadian coast. She continued to paint from these
sketches of native images even in her final years.
The undulating greenness of the land is echoed by the feathered softness of
Why do you think this is
called a shark pole?
the sky. This use of color is different from all her previous paintings, even
though the subject matter is familiar. Even the soft green and brown colors of
the carving mirror the colors of the land. The landscape is more stylized than in her previous work, but
the repeating short brushstrokes are back, depicting the sky.
15. Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky
1935, oil on canvas, 44” x 27”, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, B.C.
This painting, one of Carrʼs most famous, brings her love of light back together with
her love of trees; she has also returned to portraying a single subject matter. The
towering tree has been rejected as a source of lumber, unlike the less fortunate
stumps around it.
The painting brings back her stylized tree shapes and colorful landscape in the
foreground, but the emphasis is on the top of the lonely tree amidst bright white
clouds and light. The cloud shapes emanate out in a radius, and her brushstrokes
repeat in a circular motion. Colors are rich along the ground, trees and distant
hills. We sense the vastness of the sky and even the landscape, giving us an idea
of space.
Can you see the
Carrʼs subject matter serves to tell us that she admired nature, and deplored the
stumps?
vast cutting down of trees in Canada. Some also see this painting as a portrait of
Carr herself. Not unlike “a lone old tree with no others round to strengthen it”
(Carrʼs words), she was always making her own way as an artist, forging on alone in the world.
Fun fact: Emily Carr referred to tree stumps as “screamers.”
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