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Urban History Review Revue d'histoire urbaine

The Imagined Cities of Three Canadian Painters Jon Caulfield

Volume 20, Number 1, June 1991 Article abstract The paper argues that cityscapes of painted by John Gillespie in 1844/5, URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1017559ar Robert Gagen in 1914 and Christiane Pflug in 1968-71 each illuminate and are DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1017559ar illuminated by the urban historical periods in which they were created. The paper's conclusion suggests that three frameworks for looking at painters' See table of contents images of cityscape are those of political economy, "sentiment and symbolism", and "discursive" relationship of observer and object.

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Cite this article Caulfield, J. (1991). The Imagined Cities of Three Canadian Painters. Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 20(1), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.7202/1017559ar

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This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ The Imagined Cities of Three Canadian Painters

Jon Caulfield

Abstract The curator of the recent exhibition illustrated in an early-1970s collection of Urban Images: Canadian Painting ob• aerial photographs published by a local The paper argues that city scapes of served that art historians and urban real estate executive that documents the Toronto painted by John Gillespie in scholars may have different interests in replacement of downtown neighbour• 1844/5, Robert Gagen in 1914 and cityscape pictures. Her own goal was an hoods by warrens of highrises, rural pas• Christiane Pflug in 1968-71 each historical overview of various artists' tures by massive subdivisions and malls, illuminate and are illuminated by the styles and perspectives in depicting the and sleepy ravines by expressway urban historical periods in which 5 they were created The paper's city; an urbanist, on the other hand, cloverleafs conclusion suggests that three might want "to illustrate ... specific urban frameworks for looking at painters' principles" in the context of the paint• This paper's concern is the way that images of city scape are those of ings.1 This paper is an effort in the latter urban transition has become visible in political economy, "sentiment and direction. It focuses on images of Toronto the work of cityscape artists who painted symbolism", and "discursive" in painting at different moments of its at these cusps of urban change—mo• relationship of observer and object. urban development: the mercantile, com• ments at which emerging urban realities mercial and industrial phases described have become visual images. In this con• Résumé in Gilbert Stelter's model of Canadian ur• text, the term "image" denotes a depic• banization,2 and the contemporary cor- tion that is both a cognitive perception Selon Vauteur de cet article, les porate/de-industrializing period. and holistic conception of urban socio- peintures que John Gillespie, Robert spatial form, serving not only to organize Gagen et Christiane Pflug firent de Toronto, respectivement en 1844 et Among the strengths of Stelter's typology and interpret this form but literally to cre• 6 1845, en 1914, et entre 1968 et 1971, is an implicit stress on ways that transi• ate it in the minds' eyes of city-dwellers. éclairent les périodes de développe• tions between these kinds of urban his• Further, the term denotes a social con• ment urbain au cours desquelles torical eras are not only abstract matters struction contingent on the triangle of its elles furent créés et, par contrecoup, of political economy but, in their effects creator's biography and relationships to s'en trouvent éclairées. La conclusion on social milieu and built landscapes, "topic" and imagined audience, three ouvre trois perspectives permettant also concrete experiences felt by city- poles that compose the social context of 7 d'apprécier ces paysages urbains : dwellers in the course of their everyday "discourse." Painting, in this framework, l'économie politique, le «sentiment et lives. This experience is reflected in is approached as an institution whose le symbolisme» et la relation respect to the shift from the mercantile to central components (besides materials «discursive» entre l'observateur et of production) include norms of creativity l'objet. the commercial city in the contrast remarked by the painter Paul Kane be• and horizons of expectation arising in tween the village of his boyhood and the specific interactional settings. town he found in 1845 on his return from studies in Europe—"Little York, muddy In respect to each of the three transitions in and dirty, just struggling into existence, Toronto's urban history, the paper seeks to now the City of Toronto bursting forth in identify a painted image that seems some• all its energy and commercial strength, «3 how to capture or typify crucial aspects of and is illustrated in respect to the shift to the city's new meaning. One guideline for the industrial city in the observation of choosing pictures was that they be relative• Barker Fairley (in a 1921 review of ly familiar; hence, each is represented in Lawren Harris's urban paintings) of "a the two most relevant recent compilations vast gulf between the city's present and in the field, Dorothy Farr's catalogue for its immediate but somehow almost Urban Images: Canadian Painting and mysterious past."4 The transition to the Edith Firth's Toronto in Art,8 as well as other corporate city, meanwhile, has been part art-historical or documentary collections. In of the lived experience of many Toronto- pursuing this theme, the paper's perspec• dwellers today, a process whose effects tive is that, on the one hand, urban his• on, for example, built form are strikingly tory may help illuminate pictures

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produced on specific occasions in cities ago.1 The picture has, on the other hand, art15—it may be surmised that he was while, on the other, these pictures may often been used as an informative case of among the city's burgeoning help amplify an historical understanding early Canadian cityscape—besides Farr entrepreneurial middle class and also of cities. and Firth, for example, it is reproduced in that his patronage was mainly among the recent Illustrated History of Canada^3— this class. The Utopian Vision of John Gillespie and it has acquired some status as a — View of King Street familiar visual image of early Toronto. The early and mid-1840s were heady days in Toronto, a time of sanguine John Gillespie is not among Canada's well- Gillespie, who lived and worked in Toron• prosperity wedged between troughs of known painters, mentioned only briefly in to at least during the 1840s, was, like a depression in the late 1830s and 1840s, one of the two principal historical surveys preponderance of the town's residents at that followed hard on the remarkable of Canadian painting,9 not at all in the the time, probably an immigrant. boom of the previous decade. It had other,10 and unrepresented in both the Dic• (Toronto's population grew from fewer been in the years 1825 to 1835 that the tionary of Canadian Artists and two major than 2,000 to more than 30,000 during "small and undistinguished village" of catalogues of early Canadian pictorial the second quarter of the 1800s, mainly Kane's memory, "whose main distinction art.11 The picture with which this paper will as a function of immigration from the was that it was the seat of govern• deal, meanwhile, has often been credited Britain.14) Based on knowledge of his pic• ment,"16 had been transformed to the to another artist, his contemporary Thomas tures and professional activities—portrait germ of a metropolis, a process rooted in Young, a mischance that has occasionally and landscape painter in oils and water- dominance of a rural-agricultural hinter• persisted despite the fact its correct author• colour, commercial illustrator and lithog• land experiencing rapid colonial settle• ship was established nearly two decades rapher, and apparently also a teacher of ment. By the time the provincial

John Gillespie, View of King Street, Toronto, 1844/45, oil on canvas 27.9 x 55-9 cm., Royal Museum.

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government departed (temporarily) in subscription, the second appears to this is not a picture of urban 1841, removing the imperial gentry who have been a book illustration)—typify the demographic diversity (in contrast to, had formerly constituted the town's elite, content and style of picturesque colonial say, of some of James Cockbum's work a new commercial class had already townscape. But he had another vision in Quebec or James Duncan's in entrenched its hegemony in the local too, evident in an 1842 sketch of the view Montreal.)25 Gillespie's people are most• hierarchy, a shift of economic role and from a King Street rooftop; although the ly middle class members of the town's power-structure that are the essence of landscape to the north is properly pic• new entrepreneurial order. the transition to the commercial urban turesque, the street itself is clearly a com• period. mercial thoroughfare of shops and The picture was no doubt viewed with shoppers22 The picture augured his pride by the artist's social peers (who But the new city did not yet have an 1844/5 View of King Street. might have seen it at his Richmond image—or not, at any rate, in the eyes of Street studio or the local exhibits where its painters. Toronto's principal cityscape View of King Street attends painstakingly he showed his work). The renovation of artists of the 1830s, Young and John to physical detail, recalling a second King Street—the town's commercial Howard, generally remained faithful to common school of colonial painting (be• hub—had been a key focus of civic the picturesque impressions of village• sides the picturesque), the topographic boosterism in the 1830s and 1840s, to like settings and social life that had char• style, derived from the work of military which the painting bears witness. Be• acterized urban imagery of the personnel trained to create accurate sides portraying two important public colonial/mercantile period. Howard's renderings of landscape in the era edifices constructed the previous Toronto Bay (1835), for example, is an before the camera. One art historian, on decade—St Lawrence Market and St idyll of winter leisure on the harbour the other hand, has described the pic• James Cathedral (both replacements of ice,17 while a bucolic 1836 view of the ture as an early precursor of a popular earlier, cruder versions of the same waterfront by Young features no buildings)—it also depicted more contemporary style, high realism. workingmen gone fishing and a recent improvements: the "Market Either way, it is probably a fairly faithful windmill.18 In each picture, the town is Block," an early-1840s municipal project record of urban form; an 1850 just a row of distant buildings. When they to redevelop older, shabbier structures newspaper item observed of a picture by approached for a closer look at the city, beside the market with a row of more im• Gillespie that "not a building nor a chim- their themes again echoed the imagery posing brick buildings (some of which ney will be found out of place." of Colonial Canada. Howard's Parliament remain today), and the lately-installed Buildings (1834)—-seat and symbol of The small oil is twice as wide as it is gas streetlamps along King Street.26 the imperial presence—stood alone at high, opening up the vista of a broad, But, more than any particular feature of the town's edge, suggesting nothing yery almost metropolitan streetscape. streetscape, it is the picture's modern urban, while the picture's human anec• (Gillespie's sense of accuracy may mood that must have stirred Gillespie's dote recalls not city life but small-town have faltered here; the street's breadth immediate audience—the town is clearly diversion.19 is inconsistent with other views of the a city here—and it is not contentious to same period—the dimensions of describe the painting as an emphatic Young, meanwhile, did come downtown, Young's King Street, for example, are ideological document. In this vein, the but the dominant features of his serene measurably more modest.) Homage is dean of Canadian art historians has ob• King Street East (1835), where the local paid the town's former imperial function served that View of King Street "exulted gentry promenade, are the town's by the presence of two soldiers in in progress;"27 nothing disturbs the im• Anglican cathedral and courthouse (with dress uniform in the foreground. But pression of prosperous urbanity. a farmer's oxcart in the foreground).20 like the two natives and two workingmen nearby, they are incidental Gillespie's Toronto shatters earlier im• Gillespie created similar pictures. His ornament to the main motif of commer• ages of the town as a frontier village, and drawings of the parliament buildings cial and civic prosperity spelled out by we may speculate that the viewers he in• 21 (1844) and Fort York (1845) —impres- merchants' shop-signs along well-or• tended for the picture were not only the sions made for the commercial market dered architectural facades; and burghers of his own era, given a reflec• (the first was lithographed for popular despite the presence of these figures, tion of their ambitions and dreams, but

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' -'

King Street East, Yonge to Church Streets, 1835- Thomas Young, lithograph, 30.2 x 45.5 cm., Metropolitan Toronto Reference library, Baldwin Room, JRR 2612.

also ourselves—that, as a work of topog• The Uncertain Vision of Robert of Victorian urbanity on King Street,29 a raphy, View of King Street was partly Gagen — Temples of Commerce scene J. R. Harper observes "might meant as an historical record. In this on readily be mistaken for... London respect, it shares the mythological charac• The industrial era was visible in the work (and an image it is interesting to com• ter of many historical records, refracting of Toronto artists well before Robert pare with Young's and Gillespie's earlier reality through the eyes of interest, reveal• Gagen painted Temples of Commerce in views of the street.) Toronto's industrial ing as much by what is unsaid as is said. 1914. William Armstrong created a com• era was long underway by the close of In a very real sense, Gillespie's vision is an pelling image of factory labour in the mid- 31 pQ the century. Thus, Gagen's picture imagined city, early commercial Canada's 1860s (the first picture of its type); and must be located in what Stelter terms urban Utopia made tangible. little is reminiscent of commercial Toronto qp in Frederick Bell-Smith's 1894 impression "the second phase of industrialism," an era of centripetal corporate force when 6 Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol. XX, No. 1 (June 1991) The Imagined Cities of Three Canadian Painters

Robert E. Gagen, Temples of Commerce, 1914. oil on canvas, 68.3 x 101.4 cm. MTLT 30583

economic power was coalescing. In Nor is Gagen's picture an image of in• ample, as the cover-plate of Firth's book, respect to Toronto's internal economy, dustrial landscape in the manner Harris's and one of two Toronto pictures of its some numbers help illustrate this Eaton Manufacturing Building ( 1911 )35 or period selected for Urban Images: process: in 1891, the city had 26,000 fac• J. E. H. MacDonald's highly regarded Canadian Painting (the other was a Har• tory workers employed in 2,400 firms; by Tracks and Traffic (1912).36 And arguab• ris house-portrait) 38 1991, 65,000 workers were employed by ly it may be better read as an augur of only 1,100 firms.33 The Ontario economy, corporate urbanism than an icon of the in• In contrast to the anecdotal character of meanwhile, was increasingly rationalized dustrial era; Firth describes its cityscape the pictures by Armstrong, Bell-Smith, in the yoke of metropolitan corporations as a "harbinger."37 Still, it has become Harris and MacDonald—each a view of a and institutions 34 an established image of Toronto in the specific aspect of the city—Gagen (like early years of the century—used, for ex• Gillespie) grasped at the core of the mat-

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ter. What is critical here is not the matic use of city real estate; but, by the of the most (in)famous Canadian com• secularization of the city, a theme implied turn of the century, it had also become pany, Canadian Pacific. Patricia McHugh by the picture's title but a long-settled his• the architectural symbol of the new describes the nearest of them, the torical fact by the early 1900s, but the economic era, the most explicit urban Trader's Bank (built in 1905), as concentration of financial power it con• embodiment of what Guy Debord later "Toronto's first real skyscraper."40 Be• notes. (As a matter of record, on the named spectacle: "capital to such a de• hind it, the recently-completed CP Build• other hand, office buildings did supplant gree of accumulation that it becomes as ing (1912) and Royal Bank (1914) each steeples as the punctuation of the image. rose to new heights and was billed for a Toronto's skyline by the early 1900s.) time as the British Empire's tallest build• Bom in Chicago, embraced by New Three of Gagen's temples were banks ing. The fourth was the Dominion Bank York, the skyscraper was a highly prag• and the fourth, the Toronto headquarters (1913). (All remain today, dwarfed by

William Armstrong, Toronto Rolling Mills, 1864. pastel 73.2 x 103.2 cm. MTLJRR T10914

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megastructures of the corporate era.) Canadian National Exhibition (1912-26), of Seven, Toronto's art market was by Thus, three of Gagen's towers were less president of the Arts and Letters Club and large uninterested in cityscape. But than two years old when he painted (1919-20). (His connection to the city's while this is generally true, other city pic• them; they were a very new landscape. arts world was partly a matter of birth; his tures—house portraits, impressions of father had been a member of John wintry neighbourhoods, anecdotal street In making their picture, Gagen took Howard's architectural firm.) scenes—did occasionally find markedly license with nature and perspective. more commercial success than Gagen's. Toronto's sky is never this colour (lima- When it was shown at a 1914 Royal A second hypothesis is that the picture bean green), nor its lakeside buildings Academy exhibition, one critic seems to displayed the city as its art customers ever cast in so much shadow (particular• have been unsure what to make of the preferred not to see it, a difficulty not al• ly not if the sun is where it seems to be). picture: "(Gagen) strikes a new note in leviated by simply altering the title. Early And the rotunda in the right foreground, Temples of Commerce, being an up-to- 1900s Toronto was unenthusiastic about atop the Board of Trade Building (now date study of part of Toronto's waterfront, skyscrapers (a mood reflected by the demolished), is too low and should seem with the skyscrapers piling up into a cre• second critic); the Trader's Bank, for ex• taller—or the skyscrapers short; some• scendo, the whole scene bathed in a ample, was designed to "hide the upper• thing is badly out of scale (in part, be• beautiful, if somewhat exaggerated, rosy most floors behind a deep cornice, 47 cause Gagen has elongated the attic sunset glow."44 diminishing any visual sense of height." capitals of the towers to the rear.)41 A cityscape in which Brobdingnagian There is a lot of smoke in the picture, Another was less at sea: "Quite the most buildings were the organizing theme may grey, white, red, yellow (some from chim• interesting work that one has seen from have been foredoomed to obscurity. But neys, some from a tug, some just am• the brush of (Gagen) is his Temples of there is also a third possibility; the pic• bient with no apparent source), whose Commerce, in which he shows that he ture may be altogether too unclear in the main function seems decorative; it is can bring the same felicity of handling to treatment of its theme. One writer 48 reminiscent of Monet's smoke at Argen- the treatment of our monstrous describes it as "full of pride," but this teuil about which T. J. Clark wrote, skyscrapers that he has also shown in seems to ignore the ambiguities of a title "(T)here was nothing that could not be subjects nearer to nature. In fact, he al• that—at least for Eaton's—was found un• made part of a picture—of a picture's most makes the skyscrapers beautiful."45 comfortable. The new middle class who fragile unity—if the painter confined him• composed the art market of Toronto's in• self to appearances and put aside ques• The public, meanwhile, appears not to dustrial period may have been uncertain 42 tions of meaning or use." Still, smoke have embraced the picture. Following whether the picture was to be taken was a key part of the new cityscape of the R.C.A. exhibit, where it was unsold, it seriously or might not be a kind of bur• the industrial city, and Gagen inserts came into possession of the C.N.E. (of lesque made at their expense by an art• plenty of it. which, it will be recalled, Gagen was ist who usually applied his skills to Commissioner of Fine Arts) who lent it in• triumphal mountainscapes. It is not evi• The picture was a departure from definitely to the Art Gallery of Toronto. dent that Gagen was sure either, nor Gagen's usual wilderness themes of Here, it was among pictures shown at a whom he had in mind as the picture's Rocky Mountains and Maritime sea• 1926 memorial exhibit after the artist's audience; if it was the city's mainstream scapes.43 Like MacDonald, whose death; a newspaper story at the time en• art market, he miscalculated. Tracks and Traffic was his sole serious tirely missed the point, describing it as venture into the city, Gagen left no body the portrayal of "a cluster of manufactur• "Full of pride" does describe Gillespie's of urban work, only one anomalous can• ing buildings." The following year, it was picture with its too-wide King Street. But vas. He was 67 when he painted it, near sold at a show at Eaton's department Temples of Commerce with its too-tall the close of a career in which he had store under the less troublesome title In towers is harder to read. It is also a vision been a central figure in Toronto's estab• Toronto Harbour snô fetched $45, "al• of an imagined city, but the artist—a lished arts community—a founder of the most the cheapest painting in sale."46 sexagenarian who had lived through Ontario Society of Artists (1872), charter Fairley's "vast gulf between the city's member of the Royal Canadian Academy One hypothesis about the picture's tepid present and its immediate but somehow (1880), Commissioner of Fine Arts for the reception is that, in the era of the Group 4Q mysterious past —seems to have been

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Christiane Pflug, Cottingham School in Winter (1968) . oil on canvas, 110.5 x 100.5 cm., National Gallery of Canada. Gift of Dr. Michael Pflug, Toronto, 1982.

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unsettled about the nature of his vision bodied in downtown. But in an era of vanguard of its partisans. Nor are pic• and has left us an image of industrial "non-place urban realm,"54 "city" has be• tures of the latter type merely beguiling Canada that is a riddle, not readily come a moot concept, perhaps mainly of ruses. Although they may mask the Dis- transparent. historical interest. Certainly, the job of neyfying of the city59 (and inflexible com• adequately depicting the shift to the cor• modity logic that often seems to underlie The Kaleidoscopic Vision of porate metropolis is not satisfied by the contemporary urban form), they reflect a Christiane Plfug - Cottingham School stratagem of some artists of simply paint• strong popular affection for traditional ur• ing bigger downtown office towers (even banism that is not simply reducible to 60 Toronto's corporate/industrial period is if they do at times threaten to blot out the clever marketing as well as the quiet not encompassed in Stelter's model but, sky.)55 Like Howard's Parliament Build• truth that the city centre still does hold according to his criteria, is a distinct ings, these are icons of a former era— some of its seminal role as a locale of car• 61 urban historical moment. Its features in• simulations of stable place in the milieu nival But, for the most part, these clude the diminishing importance of the of a highly mobile economy that does not dominant recent modes of cityscape do nation-state and increasing linkage of need a stable place. not confront the emergent urban environ• cities in a global economic grid, a ment on its own terms. An artist like John pronounced shift in employment patterns Many other recent painters' visions of Ward, one of the few who has ventured toward office and service work (and a dis• Toronto, as well, seem to have an to the suburbs (or, rather, to the zone appearance of industrial landscape), a anachronistic feel—a quality that in part that used to be the suburbs before the growing dominance of transnational in• derives from artists' general habit of word lost much of its meaning), is highly stitutions in shaping urban form, and a remaining downtown, where the city conspicuous; his pictures include a new decentring and polynucleation of used to be. Some of the images they subdivision, the view from a car on a sub• metropolitan space (among whose key have created have the character of urban expressway, and a suburban high- 62 components are the replacement of sub• epitaph—treatments of older built forms rise urbs by "technoburbs"50 and a re- in which the break-up of traditional urban gentrifying of the inner city.)51 Amid fabric is often implicit (such as Albert Another painter whose vision of the con• these processes of complex change, the Franck's portraits of old houses that temporary city is distinct from the once-naturalized and stable meanings of "barked like a dog at... urban mainstream of much recent work 56 many elements of urban place have be• renewal") or juxtapositions of old and produced is Christiane Pflug—in par• come confused and problematic. new forms that make the transience of ticular, a series of pictures done between the historical city apparent (like Hugh 1968 and 1971 that each look toward We cannot forecast what image an ob• MacKenzie's Survivor ( 1966), in which a downtown across the roof of a midtown server several decades hence will solitary old downtown building is partly school. Pflug was a contemporary artist 57 deploy as emblematic of this era or even obscured by an expressway ramp). in the prototypical sense, an whether this quest will be found meaning• Other styles are less critical of the city's idiosyncratic and somewhat bohemian ful; the search for a "transcendent refashioning—for example, a kind of figure who talked of her work in highly image"52 is, afterall, a modernist preoc• painterly analogue of gentrification that personal terms (and contrasts with, say, cupation. Such an image may, on the fetishizes traditional urban forms (Vic• an entrepreneur/businessman like Gil• other hand, not become readily available torian houses, old streetcars, ethnic vil• lespie). Her imagined audience in Toron• insofar as the social and spatial nature of lages) and an approach to corporate to included her husband, who sought to contemporary urbanism may defy holistic downtown landscape that uses happy help shape her painting, and the local legibility53 An attenuation of meaning colours, diminishes its scale and softens gallery market that exhibited and pur• may be a quality of the object perceived its angles, and often populates its public chased her pictures.63 Her variations on (the decomposing city), not just a foible places with cheerful folk.58 the view across the school roof are of "postmodern" apprehension. Although familiar images of the current-day city, Gillespie's King Street and Gagen's To be sure, pictures like Franck's are not represented in Firth, Farr and a number skyscrapers are mythologies, they were simply quixotic; traditional urban fabric of other anthologies and exhibitions.64 at least derived from a fixed and consen- remains bitterly contested ground in sually perceived locus—the city, em• Toronto and artists frequently among the The eight pictures are similar in many

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ways. The school is always in the buildings ... were seen looming ... but these objectives (so long, as Jim Burant foreground; behind it are some old not as a menace, rather as part of a har• has pointed out, as we are careful to con• houses on one or two nearby streets moniously growing city;" "Christiane was sider pictorial records in their specific so• and, beyond the houses, one or two mas• conscious of a(n)... almost engulfing cial contexts).72 As well—and the sive hydro pylons and highrise buildings. city."69 These are the voices of her com• concern of this paper—artists' pictures But each picture is also unique. This is mentators, not Pflug. can be helpful to the urban historical ob• partly a matter of compositional ele• jective of seeking to understand urban ments. In some versions, for example, Her vision was not of cityscape itself but meanings: the significance of city places the whole facade of the school is visible, of the individual's unstable relationship for people.73 in others only part of the roof. In pictures with cityscape ... with the visible—in done in summer, the trees have leaves; which "(r)eality is construed differently by Urban meanings, and painters' visions of others, painted in winter, have bare different people and perhaps differently the city, are clearly social constructions. trees; one has no trees at all. The at different times by the same person."70 One context in which they may be school's flagpole and a Canadian flag The paintings remind us of a key tenet of viewed is that of political economy and are in most of the pictures, but the flag modern thought, that observer and ob• class analysis suggested by Mark Got- changes colour, sometimes its usual red, served are inseparable, and it is the tdiener: "Each social group possesses now yellow, now black. But the more strik• clear echo of this axiom that entitles us to its own conception of urban space just ing difference among the pictures arises locate the pictures collectively (in the sin• as different interests in the city compete from their shifting moods (for which some gular) as a distinctly contemporary view with each other over control of the social writers have sought to find words, one of the city. No transcendent image is surplus,"74 a framework that seems described as "benign" or "happy", others sought—feature of the pictures that, to relevant to Gillespie's vision; an artist as "menacing" or "eerie"65). In this be sure, reflects "postmodern" urbanism with another social interest, more scepti• respect, no two are alike. in which "apprehension (is said) to em• cal of the commercial city, might have phasize (an) inherent instability of mean• painted a quite different view of King A notable feature of the pictures is their ing, our ability to invert signs and Street. A second context—perhaps ger• declarative attitude toward cityscape. symbols, to recycle them ... and trans• mane to Gagen's Toronto—is that of "sen• 71 Pflug was an artist who "painted what form their reference." But, as well, the timent and symbolism" suggested by she saw," "the objects directly in front of pictures offer one route of approach to Walter Fiery in which landscape is her"66—in this case, the view immedi• an urban field that has altered from viewed in the framework of "cultural ately visible from a window of her home. focused place ("city") to abstract values that... become associated with a 75 As well, she was an immigrant, in metropolitan space, an unstable grid of certain spatial area;" a painter with a Canada less than a decade when she simulated places in which landscape in less uncertain attitude toward the started the series; while she appears to any traditional sense—locale endowed downtown's new skyscrapers might have have recognized the challenge of the with enduring social meaning—may per• seen different towers than Gagen. Final• new urban landscape—"all these things, haps only be fabricated. ly, Pflug's pictures of a polysemantic as they now are , have never been cityscape suggest a third context, the painted before"67—her vision of the city At the time of her death in 1972, Pflug discursive relationship of view and was unaffected by any strong sense of was at work on still a ninth version, with "topic" in specified social settings, with what Toronto might have looked like or purple flag, of the view over the school attention to characteristic modes of per• felt like before the upheaval of its roof. ception (and conception) and the per• landscape in the 1950s and 1960s 68 ceived ontological nature of objects. The fragmentation of the old city is evi• Conclusion dent in the pictures but undramatized; it Notes is just there. And, try as one may, one Among the main concerns of urban his• simply cannot find in the pictures the tory are the built forms (or settings) and 1. Dorothy Part, Urban Images/Canadian Painting statements they are sometimes said to functions (or activities) that have charac• (Kingston: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 1990), xvi. make: "High rise(s)... mingle uneasily terized cities. The work of painters is with older Toronto houses;" "apartment sometimes useful visual evidence toward 2. "The city-building process in Canada" in Gilbert

12 Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol. XX, No. 1 (June 1991) The Imagined Cities of Three Canadian Painters

Stelter and Alan Artibise (eds.), Shaping the 14. Frederick Armstrong, A City in the Making: 31. Kealey, "Toronto Industrial Revolution" in Michael Urban Landscape: Aspects of the Canadian City- Progress, People and Perils in Victorian Toronto Cross and Kealey (eds.), Canada's Age of In• Building Process (Ottawa: Carleton University (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1988), 16. dustry (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982), Press, 1981), 1-29. 20-61. 15. Mary Allodi, Printmaking in Canada: The Earliest 3. J. Russell Harper, Paul Kane's Frontier (Austin: Views and Portraits (Toronto: Royal Ontario 32. Stelter, 19. University of Texas Press, 1971), 51. Museum, 1980), 201, 205; Harper, Early Painters and Engravers in Canada (Toronto: University of 33. J.M.S. Careless, Toronto to 1918: An Illustrated 4. "Some Canadian painters: Lawren Harris," Toronto Press, 1970), 128-9; Harper, (1977) 413. History (Toronto: Lorimer, 1984), 200. Canadian Forum, June 1921, 276. 16. Edith Firth, The Town of York, 1815-1834: A Further 34. Cf. Leo Johnson, "Ideology and political 5. Donald Kirkup, Boomtown Metropolitan Toronto: Collection of Documents of Early Toronto (Toronto: economy in urban growth: Guelph, 1827-1927" in A Photographic Record of Two Decades of University of Toronto Press, 1966), xviii, xxxiv. Stelter and Artibise, 30-64. Growth (Toronto: D. Kirkup/Lockwood Survey Corporation Limited, n.d. (c. 1972). 17. Repro. in Firth (1983), 18. 35. Repro. in Rosemary Donegan, Industrial Images (Hamilton: Art Gallery of Hamilton, 1987), 46; 6. Mark Gottdiener and Alexandras Lagopoulos, "In• 18. General View of the City of Toronto repro. in Firth Jeremy Adamson, Lawren S. Harris: Urban troduction", and Gottdiener, "Culture, ideology (1983), 12-13. Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes, 1906-1930 and the sign of the city" in Gottdiener and (Toronto: , 1978); Firth Lagopoulos (eds., The City and the Sign: An In• 19. Repro. in Firth (1983), 15. (1983), 114 (cf. Glen Norcliffe), "In a hard land: troduction to Urban Semiotics (New York: Colum• the geographical context of Canadian industrial 20. Repro. in Brown, 263. bia University Press, 1986), 1-22, 202-18. landscape painting" in Paul Simpson-Housley 21. Parliament Buildings from Queens Wharf and . and Norcliffe (eds.), No Vacant Eden: Literary 7. Mikhail Bakhtin (V. N. Volosinov), "Discourse in The Garrison, Toronto repro. in Allodi (1980), and Artistic Impressions of Canadian life and discourse in art" in Freudianism: A Mar• 200, 206. Landscapes (Toronto: University of Toronto xist Critique (New York: Academic Press, 1973), Press, forthcoming). 93-116 (cf. Caulfield, "A note on three art histori• 22. West View of the City of Toronto repro. in Firth cal monographs (Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogical tri• (1983), 17. 36. Repro. in Duval, The Tangled Garden: The Art of angle)," Social Science Journal, Division of Social J.E.H. MacDonald(Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, Science, Faculty of Arts, York University (copy 23. Paul Duval, High Realism in Canada (Toronto: 1978), plate 31; Donegan, 47; Firth (1983), 107. available from author). Clarke Irwin, 1974), 12. 37. (1983), dust jacket. 8. Edith Firth, Toronto in Art: 150 Years through 24. Firth (1983), 16. Artists'Eyes (Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 38. Firth (1983), also 94-5; Farr, 69. 25. Cf. Caulfield, "Three confederation painters of 1983). the Canadian city, 1 : James Cockburn" and "2: 39. Society of the Spectacle (Detroit: Black and Red, 9. J. Russell Harper, Painting in Canada: A History James Duncan," Urban History Review XVI :1 1983), 34 (cf. Gunter Gad and Deryck (Second Edition) (Toronto: University of Toronto (1987), 69-74 and XVI:2 (1987), 190-5. Holdsworth, "Building for city, region and nation: Press, 1977), 110. office development in Toronto, 1834-1984" in Vic• 26. Armstrong 25, 42; Patricia McHugh, Toronto Ar• tor Russell (éd.), Forging a Consensus: Historical 10. Dennis Reid, A Concise History of Canadian chitecture: A City Guide (Toronto: Mercury Essays on Toronto (Toronto: University of Toronto Painting (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1973). Books, 1985), 31. Press, 1984), 300.

11. Colin MacDonald, Dictionary of Canadian Artists 27. Harper (1977), 110 (italic in original). 40. McHugh, 87. (Ottawa: Canadian Paperbacks, 1967-74); Mary Allodi, Canadian Watercolours and Drawings in 28. Toronto Rolling Mills (1864) repro. in Henry 41. A 1917 photograph of Toronto's downtown in the (Toronto: Royal On• Campbell, Early Days on the Great Lakes: The Careless, 199, indicated the relative size of tario Museum, 1974); W. Martha Cooke, W. H. Art of William Armstrong (Toronto: McClelland Board of Trade Building compared with Gagen's Coverdale Collection ofCanadiana: Paintings, and Stewart, 1971), 46-7; Firth (1983), 49 (cf. towers. Watercolours and Drawings (Ottawa: Public Ar• Gregory Kealey, "Toronto Rolling Mills," 42. The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of chives of Canada, 1983). Canadian Labour History [Newsletter of the Com• mittee on Canadian Labour History] 7 (1975), 2. Manet and His Followers (Princeton: Princeton 12. E.G., Farr, 48-9; Craig Brown (éd.), The Il• University Press, 1984), 180-1. lustrated History of Canada (Toronto: Lester & 29. Lights of a City Street repro. in Roger Boulet, 43. Re Gagen's biography cf. MacDonald (Vol. 2), Orpen Dennys, 1987), plate opp. 321. Gillespie Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith (1846-1923) (Victoria: 242-3; Harper (1970), 123-4, and (1977), 413; was identified as the picture's painter during its Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1977), 24; Harper Dennis Reid, Our Own Country Canada: An Ac• cleaning at the Royal Ontario Museum in the (1977), plate 77; Firth (1983), 66; Peter Mellen, count of the National Aspirations of Principal early 1970s (telephone interview w. Barbara Landmarks of Canadian Art (Toronto: McClelland Landscape Artists in Montreal and Toronto, 1860- Chisholm, Sigmund Samuel Collection, Royal On• and Stewart, 1978), 137. (The dating used here 1890 (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1979), tario Museum, Dec. 12,1990). for the picture is Boulet's, author of the primary monograph on Bell-Smith.) passim. 13. Farr, op. cit.; Firth, 19; Brown, op. cit.; also Har• per (1977), plate 55. 30. (1977), 191. 44. Globe (Toronto), Nov. 20, 1914.

13 Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XX, No. 1 Qune 1991) The Imagined Cities of Three Canadian Painters

45. H. Charlesworth, Saturday Night, Nov. 28, 1914, repro. in Firth (1983), 2, and several pictures by in David, plates 65, 68, 70; Allodi (1973/3), 46, 4. Chris Temple shown at the exhibition "Urbanus, 47). Urbs, Urbis," Bau-Xi Gallery, Toronto, Nov., 1986. 46. Files of the Metropolitan Toronto Reference 65. Farr, 118; Davis, 11. Library. 56. Harold Town, Albert Franck: Keeper of the Lanes (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974), 28 (cf. 66. Allodi (1972/3), 42; Davis, 13. 47. McHugh, 87. Caulfield, "Augurs of 'gentrification': city houses 67. Allodi (1972/3), 42. of four Canadian painters" in Simpson-Housley 48. Farr, 68. and Norcliffe). 68. A similar argument might be made about Gil• 49. Cf. note 5. lespie. 57. Repro. in Firth (1983), 178, 50. Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise 69. Firth (1983), 170; Michael Pflug in Farr, 118; 58. For example, Arto Yuzbasiyan's Houses, Ken• and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, Davis 11. sington Market, Rod Prouse's Santa Clause 1987), 17,182-207. Parade, Carlos Marchiori's Bloor Street West and 70. Douglas Pocock and Ray Hudson, Images of the 51. The prefix "re" is meant to denote the recurrence Rayka Kupesic's Winter in Nathan Phillips Square Urban Environment (London: MacMillan, 1978), 1. of an historical pattern (cf. David Ley, "Inner-city repro. in Firth (1983), 180, 190, 191, 194. revitalization: A Vancouver case study" in John 71. Stephen Daniels and Denis Cosgrove, "Introduc• 59. Edward Relph, The Modern Urban Landscape Palen and Bruce London (eds.), Gentrification, tion: iconography and landscape" in Cosgrove (John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 1987), Displacement and Neighbourhood Revitalization and Daniels (eds.), The Iconography of 129-30; Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (New York: (Albany: University of New York Press, 1984), Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Semiotext(e), 1983), 23-6. 201). Près, 1988), 7. 60. Jon Caulfield, "Gentrification and desire", 52. Ian Jeffrey, "Concerning images of the 72. "Visual records and urban development", Urban Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology metropolis" in Jeffrey and David Mellor (eds.), History ReviewXW: 3 (1984), 57-62 (cf. Sylvia An- 26:4 (1989), 617-32. City scape, 1910-1930: Urban Themes in toniou et al., The Painted Past: Selected Paint• ings from the Picture Division of the Public American, German and British Art (Sheffield: Arts 61. Louis Mumford, The City in History (Hew York: Archives of Canada (Ottawa: Public Archives of Council of Great Britain, 1978), 9. Brace and World, 1961), 8. Canada, 1984). 53. William Sharpe and Leonard Wallock, "From 62. New Houses ( 1980), Passing Through ( 1980), 73. Relph, Place and Placelessness (London: Pion, 'great town' to 'nonplace urban realm': reading High Rise (19789) repro. in John Ward, A 1976), 47 (cf. Manuel Castells, The City and the the modern city" in Sharpe and Wallock (eds.), Painter's City (Toronto: Blue Sky Press, 1980). Visions of the Modern City: Essays in History, Art Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban So• and Literature (Baltimore: John Hopkins Univer• 63. Re Pflug's biography cf. Ann Davis, Christiane cial Movements (Berkeley: University of California sity Press, 1987), 1-50. Pflug, 1936-1972(Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gal• Press, 1983), 303). lery, 1974); Allodi, "Christiane Plfug", ArtsCanada 74. Gottdiener, 206. 54. Melvin Webber, "The urban place and the non- 174-5 (Dec. 1972/Jan. 1973), 42-7; Duval 1974, place urban realm" in Webber et al. (eds.), Ex• 132-41 ; Farr and Natalie Luckyj, From Women's 75. "Sentiment and symbolism as ecological vari• plorations in Urban Structure (Philadelphia: Eyes: Women Painters in Canada (Kingston: ables," American Sociological Review 10 (1945), University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), cited in Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 1976), 69-70. 141. Sharpe and Wallock. 64. Repro. in Firth (1983), 170; Farr, 119; Duval 55. For example, George Boyer, Downtown ( 1983) (1974), 138, 139; Farr and Luckyj, 70 (also repro.

14 Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XX, No. 1 Qune 1991)