The Phantom Hunter
William Blair Bruce , 1888
151.1 × 192.1 cm
Oil on canvas
Art Gallery of Hamilton , Hamilton (Ontario)
The Phantom Hunter (German title: Phantomjäger or Schneephantom ) is a painting by the Canadian painter William Blair Bruce from 1888. The picture, painted in oil on canvas, has the dimensions 151.1 × 192.1 cm. It shows a hunter in a snowy landscape to whom a ghost appears. The poem Walker of the Snow by the writer Charles Dawson Shanly served as a literary model . Bruce tried to convince the public and the critics with this typically Canadian theme at the annual Paris Salon . Today the picture is his best known work. The painting belongs to the collection of the Art Gallery of Hamilton .
Image description
The painting The Phantom Hunter shows a night winter landscape with two figures. The light of the moon shines on the snowy landscape from above on the left, which is indicated by a shadow on the right. Despite the hour at night, the snow is shining bright and has a surface with a color spectrum ranging from white to pink to blue-gray. Hilly snow formations rise towards the horizon, which could be snow-covered hills or snow drifts . Overhangs, ridges and small cuts can be seen in the snow. At the top of the picture, a night-blue sky contrasts with the snow formations, and despite the light haze, individual stars can be seen.
A little to the right of the center of the picture, a man in gray-brown clothes can be seen in the foreground, who is shown from the front. The figure is executed in the style of realism and shows numerous details. These include, for example, various seams and straps on clothing, a knife handle, a reddish shoulder bag with colorful patterns and the snowshoes strapped to the back with their wooden frames and striking wickerwork. His overall appearance marks him as a trapper , a North American hunter. He has assumed a half-kneeling and half-crouching position with the right knee and lower leg in the snow. The left leg is bent and supported on the front of the foot. The man's upper body is tilted sharply to the right, which could indicate a fall. He may be holding a stick behind him with his right hand, which is not visible in the picture. His left arm is stretched forward and points with the gloved hand at the second figure standing to his left. The arm covers parts of his face, especially the mouth area. The man's eyes cannot be seen either, as they are in the shadow of a hood pulled over his head. Since only the area of the nose and left cheek are clearly illuminated, a facial expression can hardly be made out.
In the left half of the picture there are footprints in the snow, which extend from the lower edge in an arc towards the hunter. Next to these traces an upright figure can be seen on the snow, which seems to be moving away from the crouching hunter towards the left edge of the picture. He wears clothes similar to those of the hunter crouching in the snow. This second person can only be recognized as a sketchy bluish-gray drawing. She appears like a ghost. Various authors see the trapper himself in the standing figure, given the resemblance to the fallen man. Accordingly, the mysterious situation describes the moment of death in which the hunter's soul leaves the body. Bruce combined different stylistic devices in the picture with the realistic execution of the hunter and the sketchy appearance of the ghost and combined two pictorial forms that characterize his work in the painting with portrayal of people and landscape. The picture is signed "BLAIR BRUCE" lower right.
A Canadian image
William Blair Bruce painted The Phantom Hunter in France in 1888, where he had been for several years. An American friend had lent him a book there that contained the poem The Walker of the Snow published in 1867 . Bruce used the poem as a model for his painting The Phantom Hunter. The story of the now largely forgotten writer Charles Dawson Shanly (1811-1875) is set in northern Canada and possibly goes back to mythological traditions of the Ojibwa or the Cree . Shanly describes in this poem with 16 stanzas how a hunter alone crosses an unreal snow landscape, gets into an emergency situation and meets death. In the picture Bruce records the situation as it is described in verse 13:
(Original of the 13th verse)
Then the fear-chill gathered o'er me,
Like a shroud around me cast,
As I sank upon the snow-drift
Where the Shadow Hunter passed.
(analogous translation)
Then the cold of fear seized me,
surrounded me like a shroud,
as I sank onto the snowdrift, the
shadowhunter walked past.
With a typically Canadian theme (Canadiana) , Bruce wanted to convince the jury of the annual Paris Salon and the critics of his work. In addition, with the motif he complied with the patriotic demands of the Canadian press that the country's artists should deal with topics from their homeland. Bruce had his parents send him the necessary props such as the snowshoes and the hunter's clothes from Canada. He initially named the picture The Phantom of the Snow (Canadian Legend), as evidenced by a letter to his father. In the catalog of the Paris Salon of 1888 it was shown in abbreviated form as Phantom of the Snow . Despite the exotic theme for the European audience, the painting received little attention in Europe. In Canada, however, the picture was praised by the press. The Evenening Times , published in Hamilton, wrote under the title “A Candian Artist Abroad” that the painting was “well spoken of by the art jury” (meaning: well discussed by the jury ). In 1890 a full-page reproduction of the painting appeared in the Canadian newspaper The Dominion Illustrated, which also contained a reprint of Shanly's poem The Walker of the Snow . In the following years the painting The Phantom Hunter got an iconic meaning in the Canadian self-discovery as "Canada-as-North", as a nation in the north of America.
Provenance
The Phantom Hunter remained in the painter's possession until the death of Willam Blair Bruce in 1906. Afterwards, his widow Carolina Benedicks-Bruce inherited the painting along with her husband's entire artistic estate. She donated The Phantom Hunter along with 28 other paintings by her husband to his hometown of Hamilton in the Canadian province of Ontario . This Bruce Collection formed the basis of today's Art Gallery of Hamilton .
literature
- Ross Fox: Bruce, William Blair . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 14, Saur, Munich a. a. 1996, ISBN 3-598-22754-X , p. 456.
- Tobi Bruce: Lasting impressions, celebrated works from the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton 2005, ISBN 0-919153-84-4 .
- Sherrill Grace: Canada and the idea of north. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal 2001, ISBN 0-7735-2247-6 .
- Joan Murray (Ed.): Letters home, 1859-1906. The letters of William Blair Bruce. Penumbra Press, Moonbeam, ISBN 0-920806-36-8 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Most of the literature on the painting was published in English. The German picture titles come from the entry on William Blair Bruce in the Allgemeine Künstlerlexikon, Volume 14, p. 456.
- ^ A b c Sherrill Grace: Canada and the idea of north. P. 3.
- ↑ Arelne Gehmacher: The Phantom Hunter in Tobi Bruce: Lasting impressions, celebrated works from the Art Gallery of Hamilton. P. 68.
- ↑ a b c d Tobi Bruce: Lasting impressions. P. 68.
- ↑ Sherrill Grace: Canada and the idea of north. P. 4.
- ↑ The full poem is available online: Charles Dawson Shanly: The Walker of the Snow in Edmund Clarence Stedman: A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895.
- ↑ See letter from William Blair Bruce to his father dated March 24, 1888 in Joan Murray: Letters home. P. 192.
- ↑ See The Dominion Illustrated. Vol. 4, No. 93 of April 12, 1890.
- ↑ See Sherril E. Grace: Canada and the Idea of North. Pp. 104-120.