Document generated on 10/02/2021 4:42 a.m. RACAR : Revue d'art canadienne Canadian Art Review Andrew Brink, Ink and Light : The Influence of Claude Lorrain’s Etchings on England, Montreal & Kingston : McGill-Queen’s University Press for the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, 2013, 164 pp., 60 duotone illustrations, $ 60, ISBN 978-0-7735-4198-6 Christina Smylitopoulos Volume 41, Number 1, 2016 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1037560ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1037560ar See table of contents Publisher(s) UAAC-AAUC (University Art Association of Canada | Association d'art des universités du Canada) ISSN 0315-9906 (print) 1918-4778 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this review Smylitopoulos, C. (2016). Review of [Andrew Brink, Ink and Light : The Influence of Claude Lorrain’s Etchings on England, Montreal & Kingston : McGill-Queen’s University Press for the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, 2013, 164 pp., 60 duotone illustrations, $ 60, ISBN 978-0-7735-4198-6]. RACAR : Revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, 41(1), 94–98. https://doi.org/10.7202/1037560ar Tous droits réservés © UAAC-AAUC (University Art Association of Canada | This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit Association d'art des universités du Canada), 2016 (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ 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/ ⇢ Sarah Milroy and Ian Dejardin, ed. From the Forest to the Sea : Emily Carr in British Columbia Phelan Gibb — which makes it difficult for them to fully explain Carr’s fas- Andrew Brink to understand not only Carr’s change cination with the artistic production Ink and Light : The Influence of Claude of style, subject, and media, but her of First Nations peoples. It would be Lorrain’s Etchings on England work as a whole. While the sketch- worthwhile to investigate Carr’s af- Montreal & Kingston : McGill-Queen’s books on display in the exhibition fective relationship with Native art of University Press for the Macdonald and reproduced in the catalogue show the Northwest Coast of British Colum- Stewart Art Centre, 2013 that drawing was for Carr a means to bia on an international scale. We can 164 pp. 60 duotone illustrations understand her environment, there pick up where the catalogue leaves $ 60 isbn 978-0-7735-4198-6 is no in-depth discussion of her prac- off and imagine new possibilities for tice of copying forms and motifs from thinking about Carr’s highly individ- ethnographic books and collections ual modernism with its specifically Christina Smylitopoulos that can be seen in the sketchbooks. regional content together with the Carr’s 1920s production of potery and discourses of international primitiv- in 1836 the painter and draughtsman rugs in Native designs is missing al- ism. This is essential in order to do John Constable delivered a lecture be- together. Instead, the authors of the justice to an artist whose body of work fore the Royal Institution on “The Ori- catalogue focus on her wider respect shows its full complexity only when gin of Landscape.” He was, in his own for the First Nations peoples of Brit- examined in relation to European words, “anxious that the world should ish Columbia and discover in her work modernism as well as locally. ¶ be inclined to look to painters for in- the atitude that would become indis- formation on painting.” Constable, pensable for a setler culture such as Elisabeth Oto is a PhD candidate in art history at whose anxiety could be read as eager- the Université de Montréal, where she is currently Canada to adopt in order to overcome working on a dissertation on Emily Carr and ness as much as distress, was respond- its colonial past. Gabriele Münter. ing critically to those who privileged From the Forest to the Sea can be cred- — [email protected] the aesthetic opinions of collectors ited with inviting the reader to see 1. Curated by Charles C. Hill, Johanne Lamou- and connoisseurs, many of whom be- Carr as based in a place shared by Na- reux, and Ian M. Thom, Emily Carr : New Perspectives lieved that the only creditable subject tive and setler colonial peoples. The on a National Icon was presented at the National of landscape art was not only found Gallery of Canada (2006) and then travelled to catalogue devotes as much space (in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary. abroad, but also in the past. Still, Con- both text and image) to Native objects 2. For an extensive discussion of the 1927 stable’s goal was also to demonstrate, as to Carr’s works, and the small-scale exhibition and its critical reception, see, for ex- “by tracing the connecting links in Native items (ceremonial as well as ample, Charles C. Hill, “Backgrounds in Canadian the history of landscape painting, Art : The 1927 Exhibition of Canadian West Coast domestic), enlarged and set against Art : Native and Modern,” Emily Carr: New Perspec- that no great painter was ever self- black or white backgrounds, some- tives on a Canadian Icon, exh. cat. (Otawa and Van- taught.” Among Constable’s influen- times surpass in their expressiveness couver, 2006), 92–121 ; and Leslie Dawn, “North- ces, including painters from the Dutch west Coast Art and Canadian National Identity, even Carr’s monumental red cedars, 1900–50,” in Native Art of the Northwest Coast : A landscape tradition (the subjects of totem and house poles, canoes, History of Changing Ideas, ed. Charlote Townsend- which were unapologetically domes- and other figures. (In the exhibition Gault, Jennifer Kramer and Ki-ke-in (Vancouver, tic) and compatriots Thomas Gains- 2013), 304–12. ˙ ˙ spaces, in contrast, these objects were 3. See Gerta Moray, “Exhibiting Carr: The borough, Richard Wilson, and the tra- grouped together in display cases and Making and Remaking of a Canadian Icon” (259– gically short-lived Thomas Girtin, was placed centrally in the rooms; and 79), and Charles C. Hill, “Backgrounds in Can- the seventeenth-century French art- adian Art,” both in Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a spectators, turning their backs to the Canadian Icon, ed. Hill, Lamoureux, and Thom. The ist Claude Lorrain. Scholars of Con- showcases to study the paintings, 1990 retrospective was guest-curated by Doris stable’s work point to an early en- risked overlooking them, although Shadbolt and coordinated by Charles Hill. counter with Claude’s Hagar and the 4. Marcia Crosby, “Construction of the Im- those who used the audio guides in aginary Indian,” in Vancouver Anthology : The Institu- Angel (1646) — a work owned and treas- the exhibition would have learned tional Politics of Art, ed. Stan Douglas (Vancouver, ured by Constable’s friend, the ama- more about them.) 1991), 268, 276–78. teur painter Sir George Beaumont — as In the evident concern for what 5. Gerta Moray, “Wilderness, Modernity a formative moment in the artist’s de- and Aboriginality in the Paintings of Emily Carr,” the two organizing institutions called Journal of Canadian Studies 33, 2 (1998) : 43–65 ; and velopment. Like other British land- “cultural diplomacy” between Can- “Emily Carr and The Traffic in Native Images,” scape painters, including his rival ada and England, the artists’ artist in Antimodernism and Artistic Experience : Policing the J.M.W. Turner, who was said to have Boundaries of Modernity, ed. Lynda Jessup (Toronto, Emily Carr threatens, at moments, 2001), 71–94. wept when he first beheld a Claude to disappear. The curators skim painting, Constable’s study of the over the impact on Carr of her years “inimitable Claude” taught him about abroad — particularly her studies in framing devices, the benefits of close Paris and Britany in 1910 with Harry atention to nature, and, crucially, 94 Reviews Recensions existing “Christian humanist” trad- and Poussin’s pupil and brother-in- ition and were responding to chan- law Gaspard Dughet — through his ges stimulated by the early stages of unique treatment of light. This fas- the Industrial Revolution, to adopt cination with light occupied a prin- a deeper contemplative relation- cipal position in Claude’s work and ship with landscape (5). To Brink, was inspired by the studies he con- Claude’s celebrated ability to capture ducted during his frequent wander- sunlight was articulated as agreeably ings in the Roman countryside. In his in etching as it was in paint or pen paintings, luminosity was technically washes, and the imagined warmth it achieved through layers of thin, near- brought was a welcome respite for a ly pellucid applications of oil-based climate — physical and artistic — with pigment. In his drawings, his chiaro- gloomy prospects. Recent exhibitions scuro was accomplished through pen, “his peculiar atribute, brightness.”¹ and their related scholarly catalogues, brush, and ink in wet washes that cre- Constable was passionate about land- including Claude Lorrain : The Enchant- ated and emphasized the transitions scape. He championed the genre in ed Landscape (October 6, 2011–Janu- between tonal differences. In his etch- an artistic community dominated by ary 8, 2012 ; Ashmolean Museum, Ox- ings, described by Brink as “an art mid- Academicians intent upon advancing ford), Claude Lorrain (September 29, way between drawing and painting,” British history painting and a market 2011–January 8, 2012 ; Teylers Museum the artist achieved dappling, glowing, led by connoisseurs who favoured old and the Musée du Louvre), and Turn- and reflective effects of light through masters over modern artists.