Sold for: $43,250

PROVENANCE
Private Collection
Canadian Art, Joyner Fine Art, May 22, 1998, lot 52
Heffel Gallery Limited, Vancouver, 1998
Private Collection, Vancouver

Emily Carr’s early training is not well understood, partially because there are very few works available to study. Doris Shadbolt, in her publication Watercolours and Drawings of Emily Carr, included several remarkable early drawings, notably Portrait of a Child, 1890, which dates from before Carr took any formal training.[1] Her time in San Francisco at the California School of Design, 1890 to 1893, was her first formal training but little work survives from that period.

By 1893, Carr was back in Victoria and began to teach painting classes in her studio. In 1899, Carr left Victoria for a period of study in England, initially at the Westminster School of Art and later in Berkshire and Cornwall. Carr’s time in England was marred by a lengthy period of illness in the early years of the twentieth century.

Carr was finally back in Victoria in the fall of 1904 and began teaching again. She then went to Vancouver to teach in late 1905 or early 1906.[2] Work from this period is rarely dated and, to further complicate the situation, Carr often signed these images in a manner that did not accord with her own name. The present work, like the earlier Portrait of a Child, is signed “M. Carr” rather than Carr’s actual name, Emily Carr. This seems to have been an effort on Carr’s part to distinguish herself from her mother, who was also named Emily.

The present work, which was authenticated by the late Colin Graham, former director of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, is in excellent condition. The freshness of the image suggests that it spent most of the years after Carr executed it unframed and protected from light. This freshness makes the work a useful source of insight into Carr’s early application of paint. The subject is clearly a house in Victoria near the beach. While it is impossible to say for certain, it seems likely that this house was designed by the renowned West Coast architect Samuel Maclure, since the overall structure of the building suggests a connection to Maclure’s work. The bulk of the composition is devoted to a detailed depiction of the house, garden and waterfront; two children play by the shore with their mother (or nanny) to supervise them.

The splendour of the house and the shoreline setting both suggest the wealth of Victoria and securely place the image within Carr’s domestic and professional environs. House in Victoria, a Mother and Children by the Shore is the type of work that Carr’s fellow Victorians welcomed but, of course, it was not satisfactory for Carr herself and, shortly after this image was painted, Carr left Victoria for Vancouver. There she began her exploration of coastal British Columbia and eventually returned to Europe for further study, shifting her style to allow her to more completely capture the landscape of the BC coast. Rare to the market, this early watercolour from a formative period in Carr’s life provides insight into the genesis of her singular artistic vision.

1. Doris Shadbolt, Watercolours and Drawings of Emily Carr (Victoria: Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1977), exhibition catalogue, carbon pencil drawing listed catalogue #1 and reproduced twice, unpaginated.

2. See Edythe Hembroff-Schleicher, Emily Carr: The Untold Story (Saanichton, BC: Hancock House, 1978), 23–26.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars