A National Gallery of Canada exhibition touring Europe is rewriting art history by ensuring female artists from this country get more recognition as pioneers of Impressionism.
Consider the case of Frances Jones, a Halifax artist who worked in Paris in the late 1800s. Research published in the National Gallery’s catalogue for Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons (Arnoldsche Art Publishers), says Jones deserves the title of Canada’s first Impressionist, in part due to her sustained commitment to the genre and her participation in coveted French Salons.
In the past, William Blair Bruce from Hamilton, Ont., was considered Canada’s first Impressionist painter. Bruce moved to France in 1882 and five years later settled in Giverny, the home of Claude Monet, one of the great Impressionist artists. Now, Bruce has been brought down a peg.
Frances Jones, "In the Conservatory," 1883
oil on canvas, 25" x 31" (courtesy of the Nova Scotia Archives, Halifax)
“The title of ‘first’ belongs, rather, to Frances Jones and her early career in Paris,” Tobi Bruce, senior curator at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, writes in the catalogue.
“Insofar as we are able to align a known work and image with early Salon works, her painting In the Conservatory, 1883, was the first Impressionist canvas by a Canadian artist to be exhibited at the Salon de la Société des artistes français – and likely the first painted Canadian subject to be viewed by the Salon’s international audience.”
Jones’ painting shows a woman reading while seated in a plant-filled room in a Halifax home.
Jones is hardly a household name in Canada. Her career can perhaps be summed up best by an exhibition that opened at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in 2006. Titled Two Artists Time Forgot, it featured work by Jones and fellow Halifax artist Margaret Campbell MacPherson.
The National Gallery owns no paintings by Jones. It borrowed In the Conservatory from the Nova Scotia Archives for the exhibition, which has toured to the Kunsthalle München in Munich, Germany. It opens Jan. 24 at the Fondation de l'Hermitage in Lausanne, Switzerland, before heading to the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, France.
Sophie Pemberton, "Little Boy Blue," 1897
oil on canvas, 30" x 20" (courtesy of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria)
The story is similar for Sophie Pemberton, the Victoria artist who dazzled France in the 1890s, becoming the first woman from any country to win the Prix Julian, a major French portrait prize, with her 1897 painting, Little Boy Blue. It shows a pensive child posed outdoors. The National Gallery borrowed it from the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria as it owns none of Pemberton’s work.
Helen McNicoll, a Montreal artist, has six works in the show. All were borrowed, although the National Gallery owns two of her paintings. Other female artists in the exhibition include Mary Bell, H. Mabel May, Kathleen Moir Morris, Florence Carlyle and Laura Muntz. The gallery owns works by them all.
Helen McNicoll, "Sunny September," 1913
oil on canvas, 36" x 42" (collection of Pierre Lassonde)
The Canadian iteration of the exhibition will open in Ottawa in the fall, after the European tour, and continue into 2021. Just 19 of its 130 paintings are by women. And only two of those 19 works, one by Emily Carr and another by Prudence Heward, are owned by the National Gallery. Both artists may have been influenced by Impressionism but, even in their early days, do not fit neatly into that pigeonhole.
Generally, the exhibition shines a spotlight on women who dared to shed the Victorian restraints of their era by travelling abroad, usually to France, often painting scenes of the “new woman” in progressive settings.
Even at home, Canadian Impressionism, whether by male or female artists, has not been given its due in art history, the catalogue argues. “Not surprisingly, the standard accounts of Canadian art treat Impressionism as a false step before the Group of Seven took the fully national leap forward,” Adam Gopnik, journalist and critic, writes in one of the catalogue’s essays.
Laura Muntz, "The Pink Dress," 1897
oil on canvas, 13" x 18" (private collection, Toronto)
The traveling exhibition was organized by the National Gallery’s senior Canadian curator, Katerina Atanassova. While she gives more prominence to female artists than one usually sees in an Impressionist show, the men still dominate.
Most attention is lavished on more familiar names – Maurice Cullen, James Wilson Morrice, Paul Peel, Henri Beau, Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, Clarence Gagnon, Franklin Brownell and various members of the Group of Seven who experimented with Impressionism before adopting their mature style. The catalogue's cover features a detail from Gagnon's circa 1912 oil painting, Old Houses, Baie-Saint-Paul.
Impressionism, like early works from the Group of Seven, did not always find favour with Canadian art critics. Montreal critic S. Molyneux Jones wrote about Impressionist work by Toronto’s George Reid in Art in Canada in 1896: “To see a man who can do such solid, sane work, go off on purple trees and fences, bright chrome grass and other such atrocities that constitute the leading features of the so-called Impressionists school, makes this critic too angry to be coherent.” ■
Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons by the National Gallery of Canada: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart, 2019.
PS: Worried you missed something? See previous Galleries West stories here or sign up for our free biweekly newsletter.
