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Paul Kane: Land Study, Studio View opens August 5, 2000

A major collection of over 105 sketches, oil paintings, artifacts, and archival pieces resulting from Paul Kane's celebrated journey across mid-nineteenth century Canada is on display at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) from August 5, 2000 until January 7, 2001. Paul Kane: Land Study, Studio View draws extensively from the ROM's own collections of Paul Kane's art, showcasing rarely seen pieces collected from his travels. The exhibition will be displayed in the ROM's new Hydro One Canadiana Exhibition Gallery to be dedicated on August 3, 2000.

Hailed as a founding father of Canadian art, Paul Kane (1810-1871) made two journeys across Canada determined to sketch, in his words, "pictures of the principal chiefs, and their original costumes, to illustrate their manners and customs, and to represent the scenery of an almost unknown country." From 1845 to 1848, Kane sketched hundreds of drawings of the First Peoples and scenes of the country's unspoiled wilderness. Back in Toronto, he then worked these sketches into more than 100 formal, romanticized oil paintings. As one of the first Canadian artists to portray the northwest, Kane provided invaluable pre-photographic records of fur-trading posts, travel by canoe and dog team, Native customs, and one of the last great buffalo hunts.

"The Royal Ontario Museum is fortunate to house the G.W. Allan collection of Paul Kane's work, Canada's foremost collection of Paul Kane sketches and oil paintings", says Kenneth Lister, ROM curator and Acting Head of the Anthropology Department. "This exhibit presents a Canadian national treasure. Kane's contribution to Canadian art continues to resonate in our own time, and the exhibition Paul Kane: Land Study, Studio View pays homage to his invaluable legacy."

Even among his contemporaries, Kane's contribution to both the documentation of Canada's cultural and natural heritage and to the development of Canadian art was well recognized. His first exhibition in 1848 received acclaim as a hallmark occasion that introduced the Toronto public to the rugged lands of Western Canada and led to an increased appreciation for Canadian art. In 1852, Kane again received high praise for the eight oil paintings he displayed at the Provincial Exhibition held in Toronto. He went on to complete even more work, including several lectures, articles, and a highly regarded book entitled "Wanderings of an Artist." In the 1860s, Paul Kane battled blindness, and could no longer paint. He died in 1871, a legend in his own time.

Paul Kane's collection was housed for almost half a century in Moss Park, the estate of Kane's patron The Hon. G.W. Allan, and the ROM is proud to display many of the sketches and oil paintings from the Allan collection in this exhibition. These paintings include: Falls at Colville, which portrays a number of Native fishing methods; Métis Encampment, depicting an encampment of buffalo hunters and their families during one of the last great buffalo hunts; Oregon City, on the Willamette River, a composition based upon two sketches Kane made during his visit there in January 1847; and Ojibbeway Camp, based upon a July 1845 sketch, illustrative of Kane's mission to depict Native Peoples within the Canadian landscape.

In addition to subjects pertaining to Native Peoples and landscape, the exhibition includes six of Kane's pencil-on-paper drawings made during his 1841-1843 trip to study the great art of renowned European cities such as Rome, Florence, and London.

In November 1998, the ROM celebrated the 150th anniversary of the opening of Paul Kane's first solo exhibition with an exhibit titled Wilderness to Studio: Four Views of Paul Kane. The fourth "view" included in the first exhibition displayed Kane's field sketches along with the formal studio paintings they inspired. This year's new exhibit, Paul Kane: Land Study, Studio View, further advances this theme and shows that Kane left the field as an artist ethnographer and entered the studio as a Romantic painter.

Paul Kane: Land Study, Studio View is presented in the ROM's newly dedicated Hydro One Canadiana Exhibition Gallery. Located in the Sigmund Samuel Canadiana Gallery, this newly dedicated space comes on the heels of an unique donation to the ROM from Hydro One Inc., a company operating subsidiaries in electricity transmission and distribution, telecom and energy services. Hydro One has generously sponsored two new Canadian exhibitions on the history of electricity in Ontario, a traveling exhibition titled Electricity in Action, and Power For The People: Electricity Transforms Ontario, which will be on view at the ROM from December 10, 2000 to March 20, 2001. These important new Canadiana initiatives help to fulfill the ROM's and Hydro One's shared goal to help Canadians better understand our common heritage.

The Royal Ontario Museum thanks the National Gallery of Canada and the owners of private collections for loaning artifacts and archival documents for this exhibition.

 

 

Issue date:
July 17, 2000

For more information:
Media Relations
Tel.: 416.586.5547
Fax: 416.586.8022
E-mail: media@rom.on.ca

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