Paul Kane
Paul Kane (born September 3, 1810 in Mallow , County Cork , Ireland , † February 20, 1871 in Toronto , Canada ) was an influential Canadian painter of Irish origin. Kane became famous for his paintings depicting the life of the North American Indians . To this day, his paintings and especially his drawings are an important source for ethnologists . Kane is considered to be one of the first Canadian artists to make a living from his art.
Kane, who grew up in Toronto, acquired his painting skills mainly during a study trip to Europe, during which he copied paintings by European masters. Two trips took him to the then largely undeveloped area of the Canadian west. He undertook the first in 1845 and took him from Toronto to Sault Ste. Marie and back. The second trip he undertook with the support of the Hudson's Bay Company was from 1846 to 1848. It took him from Toronto across the Rocky Mountains to Fort Vancouver and Fort Victoria in the Oregon Territory and back to Toronto. On both trips, Kane drew and painted North American Indians, documenting their lifestyle along the way. The 120 oil paintings that he painted after his travels based on his drawings and sketches are now part of Canada's cultural heritage.
1859 Kane published a book about the Indians entitled walks an artist among the Indians of North America ( Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America ), which he illustrated with his paintings. This work was a great success and was also published in German, French and Danish translations .
Life
The early years
Kane was born in Mallow , a town in the Irish county of Cork , as the fifth of eight children of Michael Kane and Frances Loach. His father was a member of the British military who came from Preston , Lancashire , England . After finishing his service in the Royal Horse Artillery, he settled in Ireland. Between 1819 and 1822 (the exact time is unknown) the family emigrated to Canada and settled in Toronto, which at that time was still called York. There the father opened a wine and liquor store.
Little is known about Paul Kane's youth in York, which then numbered a few thousand residents. He attended Upper Canada College from 1830, where he received drawing and painting lessons from the art teacher Thomas Drury. In July 1835, Kane exhibited some of his paintings in the first and only exhibition of the Society of Artists and Amateurs in Toronto . His paintings were discussed favorably in the local newspaper.
Kane began his artistic career as a sign and furniture painter in Toronto. In 1834 he moved to Cobourg and worked there in the furniture factory of Freeman Schermerhorn Clench. It was also during this period that portraits of local greats such as the local sheriff and his employer's wife, Mrs. Eliza Clarke Cory Clench, were made.
Kane had already met the American painter James Bowman in Toronto , and in 1836 he left Cobourg and visited him in Detroit . Together with Bowman, Kane had planned a study trip to Europe. For now, however, Kane had to abandon this plan, because Bowman had meanwhile married and did not want to leave his wife alone, and Kane didn't have the money for a trip on his own. For the next five years, Kane toured the American Midwest , making a living as a wandering portrait painter .
In June 1841, Kane had sufficient financial means to undertake the long-planned trip to Europe. After crossing from New Orleans to Marseille , he traveled to Europe for two years and studied the technique of European painters in museums. He could not financially afford a formal study at an art academy .
Until the autumn of 1842 he stayed in Genoa , Milan , Rome , Naples , Florence , Verona and Venice before crossing the Great Saint Bernard Pass on foot to travel to Paris and from there to London. In London he met George Catlin , an American painter who had lived for a time among the North American Plains Indians and whose lives had been recorded in his paintings and drawings. Catlin was in London promoting his book Letters and Notes on the Men, Customs and Conditions of the North American Indians and lectured at the Egyptian Hall on Piccadilly , where he had exhibited some of his paintings. In his book, Catlin pointed out, among other things, that the culture of the North American Indians was in decline and that efforts should be made to document their way of life for posterity. This encounter was decisive for Kane's further life: like Catlin, he wanted to document the life and culture of the Canadian Indian tribes.
Kane returned to North America in early 1843 and settled in Mobile, Alabama . He opened a studio and worked again as a portrait painter until he had earned enough money to repay the debts he had taken on for the trip to Europe. He returned to Toronto in late 1844 or early 1845 and immediately began preparing a trip to western Canada.
First trip to central western Canada
On June 18, 1845, Kane set off on his journey to central western Canada. His path led him to the northern shores of the Great Lakes along, and he visited the Reserve of Saugeen . After spending several weeks there making sketches , he traveled to Sault Ste in the summer of 1845 . Marie continues. His plan was to continue west from there, but John Ballenden, an experienced Hudson's Bay Company representative , warned him of the dangers he would face as a solo traveler in western Canada. In Ballenden's opinion, such a trip was only possible with the support of the Hudson's Bay Company, since the trading house had numerous trading posts in the largely undeveloped area and exercised administrative sovereignty over the entire western part of what is now Canada with the exception of British Columbia via a fur trade monopoly. Ballenden also recommended that he turn to George Simpson , Governor of Rupert's Land for the Hudson's Bay Company, for assistance.
Kane returned to Toronto before winter set in. He used the next few months to process some of his sketches into oil paintings. In the spring of 1846 he turned to the Hudson's Bay Company headquarters in Lachine to ask Simpson for assistance with his travel plans. He was impressed by Kane's artistic abilities, but doubted that Kane had sufficient stamina for a trip with the fur traders of the trading house. He eventually allowed Kane to prove himself on a canoe trip to Lake Winnipeg before deciding whether to continue. After all, Simpson commissioned Kane to produce some paintings about the life of the Canadian Indians .
Second trip to the west: to Victoria and Tacoma
On May 9, 1846, Kane left Toronto on a steamboat for Sault Ste. Marie, where he wanted to join a group of trappers traveling west from Lachine. The journey there was marked by a number of mishaps: After an overnight stop, Kane missed the departure of his steamship, which left the anchorage earlier than announced. He followed the steamship in a canoe. One day after the steamer in Sault Ste. Marie arrived, the trappers had already left the place. On board a cargo schooner , he followed them to Fort William . There he borrowed a canoe again and finally managed to catch up with the trappers after another 35 miles on the Kaministiquia River .
On June 4th, Kane reached Fort Frances , where Simpson's permission to travel westward had already been deposited. His next stop was the Red River Settlement , a branch near what is now Winnipeg . From there he went on a three-day expedition to accompany a large group of Métis who were hunting buffalo in the Sioux areas in Dakota. On June 26, 1846, Kane took part in one of the last great buffalo hunts. By the 1880s, the population of these animals was so depleted that they were close to extinction. After his return he traveled by canoes and sailboats to Norway House , Grand Rapids and from there up the Saskatchewan River towards Fort Carlton . From Fort Carlton he traveled on horseback to Fort Edmonton and witnessed a great buffalo hunt by the Cree on the way .
On October 6, 1846, Kane left Edmonton behind to continue towards Fort Assiniboine . In November, his squad crossed the snow-covered Athabasca Pass in the Rocky Mountains , after which they again traveled down the Columbia in canoes .
Kane spent the winter in Fort Vancouver , the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company in the Oregon Territory, which he had reached on December 8th. There he made sketches and tried several excursions to get to know the Chinook and other tribes in the area better. The longest took him through the Willamette Valley for three weeks . Otherwise he took part in social life in Fort Vancouver, in whose port at that time the British ship Modeste was moored , and befriended the trapper and explorer Peter Skene Ogden .
On March 25, 1847, Kane set out by canoe to Fort Victoria (in present-day Victoria ). Fort Victoria had recently been established and was to become the new headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, as the Oregon Compromise of 1846 called for the Fort Vancouver post to be closed. Kane traveled up the Cowlitz and stayed with the Indian peoples who lived near Mount St. Helens for a week before traveling on horseback to Nisqually, now Tacoma . From Tacoma he went on to Fort Victoria by canoe.
He stayed in the vicinity of Fort Victoria for another two months to tour Vancouver Island , the Juan de Fuca Strait and the Strait of Georgia with Indians . He returned to Fort Vancouver in mid-June and began his return journey to eastern Canada on July 1, 1847.
The second crossing of the Rocky Mountains
In mid-July, Kane arrived at Fort Walla Walla . From there he made a detour to visit the Whitman Mission, which was to take place a few months later the Whitman massacre of the missionaries there. Together with Marcus Whitman he visited the Cayuse people who lived in this region. He even drew a portrait of To-ma-kus - Kane noted, “Dr. Whitman took me to the lodge of an Indian called To-ma-kus [...] His appearance was the most savage I ever beheld. "- which was later made responsible for the murder of the Whitmans. According to Kane's notes, relations between the Cayuse and the settlers in the mission were already tense.
Together with a guide, he traveled on horseback through the Grande Coulée to Fort Colville . He stayed there for six weeks to make further sketches of the members of the numerous tribes that set up camp at Kettle Falls each year to catch salmon. On September 22, 1847, Kane took command of several canoes and traveled with this up the Columbia; Kane spent the winter in Fort Edmonton.
Kane used the winter stay in Fort Edmonton to study the habits of the Plains Cree more intensively. In January he went on an excursion to Fort Pitt , which was about 320 km further south on the Saskatchewan River .
The return to the east
On May 25, 1848, Kane left Fort Edmonton to travel east with a group of 130 people and 23 canoes led by John Edward Harriott . On June 1, they encountered a large group of around 1,500 Blackfoot Indians who were on the warpath against the Cree and Assiniboine . On this occasion, Kane also met the Blackfoot tribal leader Omoxesisixany (Big Snake), whom he later captured in an oil painting. The trappers stayed as short as possible near the Indians in order not to get involved in the clashes. They arrived at Norway House on June 18th. Kane stayed there for a month to wait for the annual meeting of the Hudson's Bay Company's chief dealers to find a group with whom he could travel further east. He ultimately joined a group led by Major McKenzie with whom he left on July 24th. The group traveled along the east bank of Lake Winnipeg to Fort Alexander. From there, Kane followed the same route he had traveled west two years earlier. Sault Ste. He reached Marie on October 1, 1848. From there he traveled by steamship to Toronto, which he reached on October 13.
Life in toronto
Kane settled permanently in Toronto in 1848. He only traveled west once more when a British expedition group recruited him as a guide and translator in 1849. The group only traveled as far as the Red River Settlement .
In November 1848, Kane had shown 240 of his sketches in an exhibition with great success. At a second exhibition in September 1852 he presented eight oil paintings, which were also praised by critics. George William Allan then became its main sponsor. He commissioned him to do 100 oil paintings, for which Kane received a total of $ 20,000. This sum allowed him to live from his painting. In 1851, Kane persuaded Parliament to order twelve oil paintings from him. For the contract, which he fulfilled towards the end of 1856, he received the sum of 500 British pounds .
In 1853, Kane married Harriet Clench, the daughter of his previous employer in Cobourg. It is said that she was also a talented painter and also active as a writer. The couple had two daughters and two sons.
By 1857, Kane had completed all of his oil painting assignments. Between his return in 1848 and 1857, more than 120 oil paintings were created. Some of his works were shown at the Paris World Exhibition (Exposition Universelle) in 1855 , where they were also very well received. Several paintings were even sent to London to be displayed to Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace .
Like George Catlin before, Kane had written down his travel impressions and sent them to a London publisher. Receiving no answer, he traveled to London himself and, with the support of the influential George Simpson, got his book published. In 1859 it was published under the title Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America from Canada to Vancouver's Island and Oregon through the Hudson's Bay Company's Territory and Back Again , provided with numerous lithographs based on his sketches and paintings. Kane dedicated the book to his early patron George William Allan , which offended Simpson so much that he broke off contact with Kane. The book became an instant hit and it was published in French , Danish and German translations by 1863 .
In the 1860s, Kane's eyesight deteriorated so rapidly that he soon had to give up painting entirely. Frederick Arthur Verner was one of the friends in the last years of his life, and Kane had a major influence on his artistic development. Like Kane, Verner became an artist of the American West . Among other things, Verner painted three portraits of the aging Paul Kane - one of which is now in the Royal Ontario Museum .
Kane died unexpectedly one winter morning in February 1871 after returning home from his morning walk. He was buried in St. James Cemetery in Toronto.
The work
Kane's way of working
|
|
| Two sketches by Paul Kane |
Kane's work includes more than 700 sketches that he made on his two trips to the American West. Following these trips, he created more than 120 oil paintings based on these sketches, which he executed in his studio in Toronto. Nothing is known about the number of his portrait paintings that he made in Canada and the USA before his trip to Europe, as well as the copies that he made of European paintings - most of them are considered lost. At least the early portraits before the trip to Europe are considered simple in their execution; the art historian J. Russell Harper, however, attests to them a certain charm in the way they are presented and the choice of colors.
Kane's artistic fame is based solely on his portrayal of the life of North American Indians. His sketches are an important source for ethnology to this day , because they depict the way of life of various Indian peoples in great detail. The sketches are made in pencil, as watercolor or in oil paint on paper and demonstrate both his great talent for drawing and his ability to grasp situations with drawings.
In addition to his sketches, Kane also brought back a number of artifacts from his travels . These include Indian masks, pipes and other handicrafts. Together with his sketches, they formed the basis for his oil paintings executed in the studio. On the one hand, these are characterized by great attention to detail, on the other hand, however, Kane often combined individual sketches in such a way that they do not correspond to the actual geographical, historical or ethnographic conditions. One of the best-known examples of this working method is Kane's oil painting Flachkopffindianerin mit Kind , in the execution of which he draws on a sketch of a Chinook toddler whose forehead is flattened. To portray his mother, he used a later sketch of a Cowlitz Indian who lived in another region. Another example is the pictured Indian camp on Lake Huron , which is based on a sketch that Kane made in the summer of 1845 on his first trip to Sault Ste. Marie drew. Through the execution of the clouds and the lighting, which is reminiscent of Dutch landscape painting , he gives the painting a romantic flair. The depicted life in the Indian camp, on the other hand, is reminiscent of the idealized depiction of peasant life, as it was popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The same applies to the oil painting Indian camp in front of Fort Colville shown above .
Occasionally, Kane turned his sketches into completely fictional paintings. His oil painting Eruption of Mount St. Helens shows a large and dramatic eruption of the volcano. However, his diaries and sketches show that the volcano only emitted smoke when Kane was in the region; the last major outbreak had occurred three years earlier. In other paintings, Kane combined sketches of river landscapes created in different places, creating landscapes that had no counterpart in reality. His painting The Death of Chief Snake is also purely fictional. The depicted tribal leader - the black-footed Indian Omoxesisixany (English name: Big Snake) - did not die until 1858, two years after the painting was completed. The painter Kane's artistic freedom restricts the use of these paintings as ethnological visual documents.
Kane's Europeanized image of Northwest America
Kane's patrons were unwilling to purchase unmodified versions of his field sketches in oil. For this reason alone, Kane, who made a living by selling his pictures, orientated himself clearly on the imagery that he had got to know during his trip to Europe. This “Europeanized” representation can easily be seen in his painting Assiniboine on the Buffalo Hunt , which was one of the 12 paintings that the Canadian Parliament acquired. The painting shows horses that are more reminiscent of Arabs than Indian horse breeds. The composition of the image also corresponds to that of an Italian graphic from 1816 showing two Romans hunting bulls. This discrepancy was criticized by Canadian art critics as early as 1877, who accused Kane of the depicted landscape appearing European. Lawrence Burpee also pointed out in his introduction to the new edition of Kane's travel records in 1925 that the sketches were a more faithful representation of the American West and should therefore be accorded greater value. Both judgments certainly reflect the desire to see a genuinely Canadian artist in Kane. Art historians of the late twentieth century allow Kane greater artistic freedom and rate the drawings more highly than the paintings, mainly in documentary terms.
The reception desk today
Kane is considered one of the most important Canadian painters today. In 1955, eleven of the paintings Kane created for the Canadian Parliament were given to the National Gallery of Canada. After George William Allan's death, his extensive collection was bought by Edmund Boyd Osler in 1903 and donated to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. A descendant of Kanes sold 229 of the sketches to the Stark Museum of Art in Orange, Texas, in 1957 for a little over $ 100,000 .
Kane's paintings fetch high prices today. On February 25, 2002, the Sotheby’s auction house in Toronto auctioned the painting The Surveyor: Portrait of Captain John Henry Lefroy (around 1845). The bid went to Canadian billionaire Kenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet , at a price of 5,062,500 Canadian dollars . Thomson subsequently donated the painting to the Art Gallery of Ontario (the Glenbow Museum in Calgary has a copy of this painting, which is attributed to Kane's wife, Harriet Clench).
Not all sales of Kane paintings are so successful, however. The Encampment, Winnipeg River painting was sold on November 22, 2004 when no bidder was willing to pay more than $ 1.7 million for the painting. A sales price of 2 to 2.5 million Canadian dollars was expected in advance.
Kane's travelogues
Kane's description of his two expeditions to the west of the North American continent was an instant hit when it appeared in London. Even in the 20th century, his travelogue saw several editions.
The art historian Heather Dawkins criticized Kane in 1986 on the basis of his published travelogues and because of the “European nature” of his paintings as racist and imperialist. However, this view could not prevail in the art history discussion. IS MacLaren, for example, defended the painter by pointing out that Kane's travel diary, which was the basis for the published travel story, showed an unbiased view of the life of the North American Indians. There is also a great difference in style between the text published in 1859 and the diary. MacLaren therefore considers it likely that the book was heavily edited by a strange hand before it was published in order to make it a typical Victorian travel story. MacLaren therefore considers the accusation of racism to be dubious.
Aftermath
Kane's travels inspired a number of other artists to undertake similar ventures. A direct artistic influence is particularly evident in the case of Frederick Arthur Verner, whose mentor Kane was in his later years. The early works of Lucius O'Brien are also considered to be influenced by Kane. Kane's exhibition in 1848, at which he showed 155 watercolors and 85 oil sketches, established these art techniques among the Canadian public. He thus paved the way for his compatriots William Cresswell and Daniel Fowler , who both specialized in the watercolor technique and were able to make a living from the sale of their watercolors.
Both the exhibition of his sketches in 1848 and the exhibition of some oil paintings that followed in 1852 were a great success and received positive reviews from the press. This made Kane one of the most famous painters in Canada. At other exhibitions, his paintings have won a number of awards. He dominated the art scene in Canada throughout the 1850s so much that the jury of the Upper Canada Agricultural Society nearly apologized for failing to award him a prize at the 1852 annual exhibition. However, Kane won the award in all subsequent years up to 1859.
Kane can also be considered one of the first, if not the first, tourist to travel to western Canada and the northwestern Pacific region for no commercial reason. Thanks to his sketches and paintings, as well as his travel stories, the Canadian public received a comprehensive visual impression of this previously little-known region and its people. His idealized oil paintings, however, contributed to the fact that the indigenous peoples of North America were increasingly perceived by the Canadian and British public as "noble savages". The more truthful field sketches were only "rediscovered" in the course of the 20th century and their artistic value was appreciated by a larger audience.
literature
- Paul Kane: Wanderings of an artist among the Indians of North America. From Canada to Vancouver's Island and Oregon through the Hudson's Bay Company's territory and back again, 1845, 1846-1848 . Dover Publ., Mineola, NY 1996, ISBN 0-486-29031-X (unaltered reprint of Toronto 1859 edition).
- German translation: Wanderings of an artist among the Indians of North America from Canada to Vancouver's Island and to Oregon through the Hudson Bay Society area and back. Publishing house for American studies, Wyk auf Foehr 1992, ISBN 3-924696-69-1 (unaltered reprint Leipzig 1862).
- Mela Constantinidi (ed.): Canadian painting, 19th and 20th centuries. Joseph Légaré, Paul Kane, Lucius O'Brien, Ozias Leduc, James Wilson Morrice, Tom Thomson, Emily Carr , LeMoine FitzGerald, Goodridge Roberts, Paul-Émile Borduas , Jack Bush. An exhibition by the Institute for Foreign Relations, Stuttgart, in cooperation with the Canada Council, the Canadian Department of External Affairs, the Canadian Embassy, Bonn and the Academy of the Arts, Berlin . Forum for cultural exchange February 9 to March 13, 1983. Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Stuttgart 1983.
- Bruce Haig: Paul Kane, artist (Following historic trails). Detselig, Calgary, Alb. 1984, ISBN 0-920490-36-0 .
- Diane Eaton, Sheila Urbanek: Paul Kane's Great Nor-West. UBC Press, Vancouver 1995, ISBN 0-7748-0538-2 .
- John Russell Harper (Ed.): Paul Kane's Frontier. Including "Wanderings of an artist among the Indians of North America" . University of Texas Press, Austin 1971, ISBN 0-292-70110-1 .
- Ian S. MacLaren: I came to rite thare portraits. Paul Kane's Journal of his Western Travels, 1846-1848. In: The American Art Journal , Volume 21 (1989), Issue 2, pp. 6-21, ISSN 0002-7359 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lawrence J. Burpee: Introduction. In: Paul Kane. Wanderings of an Artist Among the Indians of North America , Courier Corporation, 1996, pp. Xi – xxxvii, here: pp. Xvii.
- ↑ Not to be confused with Walla Walla ( Lewis & Clark's Columbia River - "200 Years Later". "Wallula, Washington" , archive.org, October 21, 2007).
- ↑ Quoted from Diane Eaton, Sheila Urbanek: Paul Kane's Great Nor-West , UBC Press, 1996, p. 118.
- ^ Diane Eaton, Sheila Urbanek: Paul Kane's Great Nor-West , UBC Press, 1996, p. 89.
- ^ New edition of the catalog section Historical Painting Canada by: Robert H. Stacey (Ed.): Okanada . Akademie der Künste, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-88331-924-4 (catalog of the exhibition of the same name, December 5, 1982 to January 30, 1983).
Web links
- Literature by and about Paul Kane in the catalog of the German National Library
- Paul Kane ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .
- Paul Kane . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
- Visions from the Wilderness: The Art of Paul Kane , online documentation by CineFocus Canada ( bibliography )
- Sketches by Paul Kane in the Stark Museum of Art
- Paintings and sketches by Paul Kane at Cybermuse, the National Gallery of Canada's online gallery
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kane, Paul |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Canadian painter of Irish descent |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 3, 1810 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mallow |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 20, 1871 |
| Place of death | Toronto |