Emily Carr: Is It? Or Isn't It?

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Emily Carr, "Self-Portrait," circa 1899

(Library and Archives Canada; e006078795; purchased with the generous assistance of the Friends of Library and Archives Canada)

Calgary’s Glenbow Museum is exhibiting a self-portrait of a bare-shouldered Emily Carr. But are those bare shoulders really Carr’s?

The drawing is owned by Library and Archives Canada. At the time of the drawing’s purchase in 2006, officials within the federal institution held conflicting views on the drawing’s authenticity. Outside experts also had differing views.

Back in 2006, Montreal art historian Johanne Lamoureux summed up the Carr debate this way: "There are those who believe this is a Carr self-portrait; those who believe it is a portrait by Carr but not a portrait of herself; and those who believe it is not by Carr."

The Glenbow is alerting visitors about that debate among art scholars in a text panel to be placed in the exhibition.

“There is some debate if this is a self-portrait or a portrait of someone else,” the text panel says. “The sitter appears to be nude, and Emily Carr was notoriously prudish. However, the portrait strongly resembles photographs of Carr from that era.”

Art historian Ian Thom, senior curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery, is quoted on the panel, saying he believes the drawing is by Emily Carr although all parts of the woman pictured may not be Carr.

“Carr may have created the self-portrait by amalgamating her own face, drawn from life, with a generic body, perhaps borrowed from another portrait or painting,” Thom is quoted as saying. “The self-portrait, ‘marries an observed head with an unobserved body’…"

Library and Archives curator Madeleine Trudeau says there is evidence the drawing is a self-portrait but “it may never be possible to definitively declare this drawing to be a self-portrait.”

One of the prominent doubters in 2006, Charles Hill, now retired from his position as curator of Canadian art at the National Gallery of Canada, is still not totally convinced this is a Carr self-portrait.

“I would like to see the justification for the identification,” Hill said in a recent interview. “I think it is by Carr (though I have never seen it in the flesh) but am not sure it is a self-portrait. It might be, but again, I would like to see the justification.”

Another leading Canadian art historian, who requested anonymity, was more definitive in an interview just as the Glenbow exhibition opened: “Emily Carr would never have posed semi-clad, even in a self-portrait.”

The Carr drawing is included in an exhibition organized by Library and Archives Canada called The Artist’s Mirror: Self Portraits, which runs until January. It's part of a five-year collaboration for a series of exhibitions at the Glenbow drawn from the extensive portrait collection at Library and Archives Canada.

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Yousuf Karsh, "Self-Portrait," 1956

(Library and Archives Canada; a212245)

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Alma Duncan, "Self-Portrait with Braids," 1940

(Library and Archives Canada; e011092186)

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Floyd Kuptana, "Self-Portrait," 2007

(Library and Archives Canada; e010751990)

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Raymonde April, "Autoportrait au Rideau," 1991

(Library and Archives Canada; e008438965)

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The inaugural exhibition features 25 self-portraits by the likes of Norval Morrisseau, Yousuf Karsh, Alma Duncan, Ghitta Caiserman, Gary Olson, William G.R. Hind and Floyd Kuptana.

The Carr drawing was purchased for $109,250 at a Heffel art auction in Vancouver. Since 2006, the drawing, which measures almost 23 inches by 16 inches, has been largely hidden from public view. The Glenbow show is not expected to tour.

The Carr drawing is dated 1899 when the artist was 28 and studying art in London. The woman pictured has a bare back and shoulders. It’s unclear whether the woman is wearing clothes at all.

The pose is particularly risqué for this Victorian-era artist. As a young woman, Carr was too modest to attend life-drawing classes with nude models. Years later, she fretted over how to portray on canvas anatomically correct figures on First Nations’ totem poles.

“Though Carr was notoriously prudish,” Trudeau explains, “it’s quite possible that a ‘semi-nude’ art school drawing would have been created by marrying an actual facial self-portrait with a torso borrowed from a classical sculpture or painting in the art-school studio. This would also help to explain the slightly awkward pose, and the angle of the neck, which looks (as many self-portraits do) as though it may have been created with the use of a mirror.”

According to Heffel, the drawing was initially held by Carr’s great-niece, Elizabeth Loran, who passed it along to Exposition Galleries in Vancouver. It was then sold to a private collector. That unnamed collector supplied the drawing for the 2006 Heffel auction. ■

The Artist’s Mirror: Self Portraits is on view from March 10, 2018 to Jan. 16, 2019 at the Glenbow Museum.

This story was updated Monday, March 19, 2018, to reflect information about a text panel to be placed in the Glenbow's exhibition.