An exhibition of Emily Carr’s landscapes will open at the Vancouver Art Gallery this month. That Green Ideal: Emily Carr and the Idea of Nature will feature work primarily from the museum’s collection, which is the most comprehensive collection of her work in the world.
“That Green Ideal”
Born in Victoria in 1871, Carr studied art in both San Francisco and London before later spending time in France developing her style. In 1912, Carr undertook a sketching trip to the Haida Gwaii islands, which are located off the coast of British Columbia, where she created a significant body of watercolours and canvases.
After a subsequent exhibition was met with mixed reception, Carr set aside painting for almost 15 years. Then, in 1927, her art was professionally resurrected through its inclusion in the Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art: Native and Modern at the National Gallery of Canada and recognition from the Group of Seven, a Canadian collective of landscape painters.
Carr “was both a careful observer and someone who sought spiritual transcendence in communion with nature”, according to a press statement. The artist once termed it “that green ideal”, which inspired the show’s title. Carr also wrote about this process in her journals, excerpts of which will be featured in the exhibition.
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The Vancouver show will also include key works from a period when Carr was developing a new approach after meeting the Group of Seven.
“One of the challenges of Carr’s mature practice is how many important works are on paper and have to be limited in their exposure to light,” stated Richard Hill, Smith Jarislowsky Senior Curator of Canadian Art, who curated a small exhibition on the artist last year. “In particular, we have an amazing collection of charcoal drawings that we don’t often get to show, and over the course of the exhibition we’ll get almost all of them on display.”
To limit light exposure, the gallery will change the display halfway through the run of the exhibition.
“They are stunning,” Hill added. “Likewise, the very expressive paintings on paper she did later in her career, mixing oil paint with gasoline to create a very fluid style.”
That Green Ideal: Emily Carr and the Idea of Nature, Vancouver Art Gallery, February 6-November 8.
