PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Roberts Gallery, Toronto, circa 1960
The Art Emporium, Vancouver, 1974
Private Collection, Vancouver

LITERATURE
Doris Shadbolt, The Art of Emily Carr, 1979, reproduced page 141 and listed page 211

EXHIBITED
Women's Art Association of Canada, Toronto, 1935, then moved to Hart House in 1936
Vancouver Art Gallery, Emily Carr: A Room of Her Own, September 30, 2023 – September 8, 2024, the related 1935 canvas

This work is the study for one of Emily Carr’s most important canvases, Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky. The canvas, part of the Emily Carr Trust collection selected by Lawren Harris, has been part of the Vancouver Art Gallery collection since the early 1940s.

Like almost all of Carr’s oil on paper works, Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky was executed outdoors, on location, in front of the motif. Although we are uncertain exactly where Carr painted this study, it was likely painted west of Victoria, in the Metchosin area. From the early 1930s, Carr began to paint with thinned oils on manila paper, a light, inexpensive support that allowed her to work quickly and directly from her motif.

The subject, two extremely slender trees, left in place after the logging of the larger trees, is one of the most important expressions of Carr’s growing understanding that the exploitation of the timber resources had somewhat negative impacts on the BC landscape. That being said, Carr’s choice of title for the work suggests a degree of determined defiance and her joy in the actuality of nature, despite the ongoing logging operations present on Vancouver Island.

The sketch is remarkable for Carr’s rapid handling of the subject—two thin trees rising up, against an active sky, towards the heavens, with the landscape in the foreground treated directly. The two foreground trees are seen against a quickly painted sky, which begins to act as an aureole around the trees. Carr’s sky, however, is still somewhat unsettled when compared to the final canvas. There the disparate clouds seen in the sketch are reconfigured into a more insistent pattern behind the trees, acting as a halo for the dominant tree.

Carr made a number of changes to the composition when she painted the final canvas. The most notable of these changes are the sky, as mentioned, and the landscape in the lower section of the composition. In the sketch, Carr depicted what was actually there—a bare foreground, with limited vegetation in the middle ground and a low range of hills in the background. In the final canvas, Carr has changed both the sky and foreground. The distant hill is reduced in size and the horizon is lowered. The smaller trees, at both left and right, are strengthened in their form when compared to the sketch, but they play a minor, supportive role in the composition. The most dramatic change is the incorporation of a series of cut stumps in the lower section of the canvas. The presence of these stumps—not seen, except in the right foreground, in the oil on paper—emphasizes the fact that this is a logged over landscape. These now three spiky trees, too small to be useful as timber and therefore “scorned,” are embraced by the majesty of the sky.

Carr’s compositional decisions, to consolidate the cloud forms of the sky and enhance the trees in both the foreground and the background, all contribute to making the message of the image more forceful. The most important elements of the oil on paper sketch—the dramatic sky, the slim, slightly acentral tree, and the secondary evergreen to the left—have all been enhanced and strengthened in the final canvas.

The oil on paper sketch Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky is a remarkable image vividly evoking the landscape of British Columbia and, by implication, the relationship between men, landscape and industry. The sketch is the source for one of Carr’s greatest images, the oil on canvas of the same title.

A comparison of the two images provides us with the supreme example of the essential role of the on-the-spot oil on paper sketch in creating the final image. A close examination of the two paintings suggests that Carr carefully refined the lively brushwork and sense of immediacy felt in the sketch to create the timeless and monumental image of the final canvas.

Although this oil on paper work has been rarely seen in the past 50 years, Doris Shadbolt’s inclusion of the work in her major study The Art of Emily Carr hints at its importance. The sketch and the final canvas provide one of the most potent demonstrations of Carr’s method as a mature painter and the integral role of the study in creating the final image. Both the oil on paper and the final canvas are demonstrations of Carr working at her peak, and each is a work of genius.

We thank Ian M. Thom, Senior Curator—Historical at the Vancouver Art Gallery from 1988 to 2018, for contributing the above essay.

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