Moonlight And Voyage

Today I start out with this shot taken from within the Canadian section of the National Gallery. A good number of paintings surround this traditional First Nations canoe, including some works of The Group of Seven.

The Self Made Man is the title of this 1926 bronze by the Quebec artist Alfred Laliberte. It is both allegory and self portraiture by the artist, figuratively carving himself out of the block, while also serving as a metaphor for the benefits of hard work and determination.

The Canadian artist James Wilson Morrice spent time in the Old World like many artists of his time, and this painting, Notre Dame, Paris, dates back to 1901-02, from a sojourn in France.

Here we have a perspective shot of this particular section.

These are small sketchboard style paintings all belonging to Tom Thomson and the members of the Group of Seven, the artists who captured Canadian scenes in different ways in the first half of the twentieth century. Thomson, who died before the Group's formal founding, influenced their love of nature. These artists would spend time in the wilds of Canada, painting on these small canvases in the field and transferring the ideas in full in their studios. The National Gallery has a great many works by Thomson and the members of the Group.

This one is a Thomson. Moonlight was painted around 1913-14.

Here we have something different. Passing Rain is by Elizabeth Wyn Wood, done in 1928-29. A marble  sculpture, it takes the landscape motif and applies it to sculpture, capturing the energy of a northern storm in a new way.

Here amid works belonging to the Group of Seven and their contemporaries are indigenous works, typical of the Canadian galleries, where a mix of European influenced and First Nations art are grouped together. Such is the case with these two items. Ellen Neel, a member of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nation in British Columbia, carved Model Pole in 1955. Beside it and facing the opposite way is First Man Mask, another carving by Neel, done in the 1960s. Both works feature red cedar.

Another wide view of one of the gallery spaces here. This features display cases with carvings done in particular by Inuit sculptors from the mid-twentieth century onwards, taking traditional methods and applying them in new ways.

This is a painting by Emily Carr, dating to 1912. Memalilaqua, Knight Inlet is an oil painting by the contemporary of the Group of Seven. Carr, a British Columbia artist, had a life long fascination with the Coastal First Nations, and that shows repeatedly in her work.

Today I finish with two views of the same work. Carl Beam, an Anishinaabe artist, created this sculpture, Voyage, out of wood in 1988. It is a 1.5 scale model of the Santa Maria, a response to the arrival of Columbus in the New World, presenting the explorer's mighty ship as eviscerated, in the manner of a whale that's met an untimely death.