Emily Carr (1871 – 1945) is recognized as one of Canada’s foremost artists and authors. Art studies led her to San Francisco, England and France, but she was claustrophobic in big cities and longed for the wilds of her west coast home, Victoria. On major sketching trips in 1912 and 1928 to isolated coastal villages Emily bravely battled privation, mosquitoes and rain, determined to produce a body of work that would direct and sustain her creative needs for years. Carr was unconventional, unapologetic, and memorable. She smoked, rode astride a horse, lived with pet rats, parrots, cats, dogs, and a monkey. Stories of her eccentric lifestyle live on, but her powerful artistic and literary interpretations of the coastal landscapes of her home, British Columbia, remain her lasting legacy.
The Royal BC Museum’s Emily Carr collection includes over 100 impressive paintings and a treasure trove of 1000 sketches and handicrafts—diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks, letters and manuscripts—making up the world’s largest collection of Emily Carr materials, one which spans her entire career. Included as well are a wealth of contextual pieces: photographs, research files and sound recordings of interviews and reminiscences. The Royal BC Museum is the proud steward of this exceptional collection, which offers a uniquely holistic view of Carr’s life and work.
Printed in Victoria, British Columbia
Image War Canoes, Alert Bay, 1912 © Audain Art Museum Collection
Emily Carr (1871 – 1945) is recognized as one of Canada’s foremost artists and authors. Art studies led her to San Francisco, England and France, but she was claustrophobic in big cities and longed for the wilds of her west coast home, Victoria. On major sketching trips in 1912 and 1928 to isolated coastal villages Emily bravely battled privation, mosquitoes and rain, determined to produce a body of work that would direct and sustain her creative needs for years. Carr was unconventional, unapologetic, and memorable. She smoked, rode astride a horse, lived with pet rats, parrots, cats, dogs, and a monkey. Stories of her eccentric lifestyle live on, but her powerful artistic and literary interpretations of the coastal landscapes of her home, British Columbia, remain her lasting legacy.
The Royal BC Museum’s Emily Carr collection includes over 100 impressive paintings and a treasure trove of 1000 sketches and handicrafts—diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks, letters and manuscripts—making up the world’s largest collection of Emily Carr materials, one which spans her entire career. Included as well are a wealth of contextual pieces: photographs, research files and sound recordings of interviews and reminiscences. The Royal BC Museum is the proud steward of this exceptional collection, which offers a uniquely holistic view of Carr’s life and work.
Printed in Victoria, British Columbia
Image PDP00634 © Royal BC Museum
Emily Carr (1871 – 1945) is recognized as one of Canada’s foremost artists and authors. Art studies led her to San Francisco, England and France, but she was claustrophobic in big cities and longed for the wilds of her west coast home, Victoria. On major sketching trips in 1912 and 1928 to isolated coastal villages Emily bravely battled privation, mosquitoes and rain, determined to produce a body of work that would direct and sustain her creative needs for years. Carr was unconventional, unapologetic, and memorable. She smoked, rode astride a horse, lived with pet rats, parrots, cats, dogs, and a monkey. Stories of her eccentric lifestyle live on, but her powerful artistic and literary interpretations of the coastal landscapes of her home, British Columbia, remain her lasting legacy.
The Royal BC Museum’s Emily Carr collection includes over 100 impressive paintings and a treasure trove of 1000 sketches and handicrafts—diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks, letters and manuscripts—making up the world’s largest collection of Emily Carr materials, one which spans her entire career. Included as well are a wealth of contextual pieces: photographs, research files and sound recordings of interviews and reminiscences. The Royal BC Museum is the proud steward of this exceptional collection, which offers a uniquely holistic view of Carr’s life and work.
Printed in Victoria, British Columbia
Image PDP00633 © Royal BC Museum
Young, spirited and rebellious, Emily Carr escaped a strict Victorian household to study art in the Paris of Picasso and Matisse. In middle age, she shook the dust of acceptable society from her shoes and began a passionate journey into the wilderness of British Columbia; the power of her genius made her one of the twentieth century’s great painters. Fortunately, she also wrote. In her books, her warmth, her humanity, her sense of fun and the ridiculous combine to present a self-portrait of a remarkable woman and artist. — Mary Pratt
Susan Musgrave is a critically acclaimed, award-winning poet, novelist, columnist, reviewer, editor and non-fiction writer. She has been nominated, and has received awards, for her poetry, fiction, non-fiction, personal essays and children’s writing, as well as for her work as an editor.
Young, spirited and rebellious, Emily Carr escaped a strict Victorian household to study art in the Paris of Picasso and Matisse. In middle age, she shook the dust of acceptable society from her shoes and began a passionate journey into the wilderness of British Columbia; the power of her genius made her one of the twentieth century’s great painters. Fortunately, she also wrote. In her books, her warmth, her humanity, her sense of fun and the ridiculous combine to present a self-portrait of a remarkable woman and artist. — Mary Pratt
Robin Laurence is an award-winning freelance writer, critic and curator based in Vancouver. She has a B.F.A. in studio arts and an M.A. in art history, and was educated at the University of Calgary, the University of Victoria, the Banff School of Fine Arts and the Instituto Allende in Mexico. She has written dozens of essays for local and regional galleries, and her articles on art have appeared in many magazines. Laurence was also visual arts critic for the Georgia Strait and the Vancouver Sun.
Young, spirited and rebellious, Emily Carr escaped a strict Victorian household to study art in the Paris of Picasso and Matisse. In middle age, she shook the dust of acceptable society from her shoes and began a passionate journey into the wilderness of British Columbia; the power of her genius made her one of the twentieth century’s great painters. Fortunately, she also wrote. In her books, her warmth, her humanity, her sense of fun and the ridiculous combine to present a self-portrait of a remarkable woman and artist. — Mary Pratt
Gerta Moray has spent two decades tracing Emily Carr’s career and relationship with the First Nations of British Columbia. Her major monograph, was Unsettling Encounters: First Nations Imagery and the Art of Emily Carr.
Young, spirited and rebellious, Emily Carr escaped a strict Victorian household to study art in the Paris of Picasso and Matisse. In middle age, she shook the dust of acceptable society from her shoes and began a passionate journey into the wilderness of British Columbia; the power of her genius made her one of the twentieth century’s great painters. Fortunately, she also wrote. In her books, her warmth, her humanity, her sense of fun and the ridiculous combine to present a self-portrait of a remarkable woman and artist. — Mary Pratt
Young, spirited and rebellious, Emily Carr escaped a strict Victorian household to study art in the Paris of Picasso and Matisse. In middle age, she shook the dust of acceptable society from her shoes and began a passionate journey into the wilderness of British Columbia; the power of her genius made her one of the twentieth century’s great painters. Fortunately, she also wrote. In her books, her warmth, her humanity, her sense of fun and the ridiculous combine to present a self-portrait of a remarkable woman and artist. — Mary Pratt
