Curator's Choice

We asked National Gallery of Canada curators to share some of their favourite works from the national art collection, as well as what the works mean to them.

Virtual NGC

Osuitok Ipeelee (Canadian (Inuit), 1922-2005), Walrus-Spirit, c. 1977, dark-green stone and antler. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: NGC

Osuitok Ipeelee
Walrus-Spirit, c. 1977

Osuitok Ipeelee had an amazing talent to make stone do the impossible. Working mostly with hand tools, Osuitok made the locally quarried Kinngait stone seem fluid, capturing the dynamic motion of the female shaman transforming into a powerful walrus spirit.

Known as a restless creator, Osuitok once told art-historian Dorothy Eber, "I have so many carvings in my mind that I want to make, so many ideas and plans that in some ways it’s hopeless." Walrus-Spirit is one of my favourite masterworks in the National Gallery collection, one that I admire and enjoy selecting often to share with others. Osuitok’s ceaseless drive has resulted in a rich legacy of production.

 

Christine Lalonde
Associate Curator,
Indigenous Art
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John Smart, Anna Maria Smart, the Artist’s Daughter, 1785, watercolour and gouache on ivory, 3.1 cm high. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: NGC

John Smart
Anna Maria Smart, the Artist’s Daughter, 1785

John Smart was one of the most talented painters of portrait miniatures, a challenging art form. This is the first example of his work in the national collection.

Portrait miniatures are among the most intimate of art works, meant to be held and examined closely. They tell us of their sitters’ lives and hopes. In 1785, Smart and his nineteen-year-old daughter Anna Maria left London to sail to Chennai, India, where they would live for about a decade. This miniature was painted within the first few months of their arrival, perhaps for Anna Maria’s suitor, whom she would marry the next year. It remained with her descendants until donated to NGC in 2019, and is the first work by Smart in our collection.

Interested in reading more about portrait miniatures? We’ve gathered some common questions and answers regarding these cherished objects.

What are portrait miniatures?
Portrait miniatures are intimate keepsakes of spouses, family, friends or lovers. They were commissioned to serve as mementos of absent sitters, or to mark some personal event, such as marriage. And they were portable – sometimes worn as jewellery, sometimes carried. At the time of this portrait miniature by Smart, they were not much larger than 8 cm high at maximum – around the size of a credit card!

What is demanding about painting miniatures?
Size alone makes them difficult to paint; this example is only 3 cm high – slightly bigger than a toonie! Think about the control and precision needed to work on this scale, with every slight movement of the painter’s brush at issue. As well, watercolour can be difficult to manipulate and the ivory support also poses problems – yet, talented artists could create luminous, subtle and delicate works.

Learn more about this artwork in the NGC Magazine article.

 

Christopher Etheridge, PhD
Associate Curator,
European and American Art
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Yinka Shonibare CBE, Mr. and Mrs. Andrews without their Heads, 1998, wax-print cotton costumes on mannequins, dog mannequin, painted metal bench, and rifle. 39849.1-5. © Yinka Shonibare CBE / SOCAN (2020)

Yinka Shonibare CBE
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews without their Heads, 1998

Yinka Shonibare CBE’s 1998 work Mr. and Mrs. Andrews Without their Heads has always been a favourite of mine, and we recently installed it in the contemporary galleries. It’s a work I had first seen very early on in my career. I remember being totally blown away by the work then, it has a real presence in person.

This sculpture is based on Thomas Gainsborough’s well-known painting Mr. and Mrs. Andrews (c. 1750), which hangs in the National Gallery, London. Here, Shonibare takes the two-dimensional painting and turns it into a life-sized sculpture, complete with the two figures, their dog, and a bench. The Gainsborough painting shows a wealthy British couple on the grounds of their estate, and Shonibare replaces the two sitters with headless figures clothed in African wax print fabric. Through this intervention, the artist draws connections between the status of the landowners in the original portrait and networks of colonial exploitation and exchange. The wax print fabric has a long and complex history, and speaks to systems of trade, cross-cultural influence, and even current global networks of textile production and distribution.

 

Nicole Burisch
Assistant Curator
Contemporary Art
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Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Abraham and the Three Angels, c. 1670-1674 oil on canvas. Purchased 1948. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: NGC

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Abraham and the Three Angels, c. 1670-1674

This is one of a series of paintings illustrating the Acts of Mercy found in the Hospital de la Caridad in Seville which was dedicated to caring for the poor including those suffering from the plague.

“The biblical scene represents the compassion of sheltering strangers in need. A kneeling Abraham beseeches three angels to receive his hospitality, as they appear as humble travellers on the roadside. The angels have come to announce the miracle that Isaac, a long-awaited son, will be born to Abraham and his wife Sarah who are both in their nineties!

It can be challenging for modern viewers to feel the emotional power of religious works of art created in a different time. But in of a world under lock-down with heroic frontline workers protecting us all, it’s easier to see Murillo’s painting as a reminder of our shared humanity and our duty to act upon it.”

 

Erika Dolphin
Associate Curator
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Richard Wilson, Rome from the Villa Madama, c. 1765, oil on canvas, 100.3 x 135.5 cm. Purchased 1948, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: NGC

Richard Wilson
Rome from the Villa Madama, c. 1765

Sitting in the foreground, an artist sketches the view that sweeps from the Villa Madama, sheltered in the hill at right, out across the city to the distant mountains. In 18th-century Europe, Rome was the centre of the imagination – famed for its ancient history, its monuments and art. Yet, while every tower and dome of the city’s buildings can be seen, these are off in the distance, insignificant. The grandest monument, St. Peter’s church, is invisible, hidden behind the hill at right. Instead, Richard Wilson is interested in the experience of being there, the sense of atmosphere and place. We sense the warm light of the afternoon sun, the heat, the weight of the air.

Wilson lived in Italy for six years before returning to England, where he painted this, copying an earlier picture he had made in Rome. Fellow artists prized his work, but his career ended in failure, his work ignored by collectors. The next generation of British artists saw in his life the story of a genius betrayed, but who had revitalized landscape painting in England.

 

Christopher Etheridge, PhD
Associate Curator,
European and American Art
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Vincenzo Camuccini, The Invention of Painting, c. 1816-1820, black and brown chalk with stump on laid paper, 61.2 x 53.3 cm, purchased 2014 with the support of the Friends of the Print Room Trust, National Gallery of Canada Foundation, in honour of Mimi Cazort, Curator of Prints and Drawings from 1970 to 1997, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa Photo: NGC

Vincenzo Camuccini
The Invention of Painting, c. 1816-1820

Ever wondered how and why the art of drawing was invented? The ancient Roman author Pliny the Elder recounts that Kora of Sicyon, desiring a memento of her close friend before he went away, proceeded to outline his silhouette as it projected on a wall.

Traditionally this myth is thought to relate the origin of painting, but Italian neoclassical artist Vincenzo Camuccini here subtly and elegantly celebrates the art of drawing in this large, highly finished composition executed on paper, entirely in black chalk.

Be like Kora, take your pencils and chalks out, and draw your loved ones (though perhaps not on your walls) as you practice social distancing.

 

Sonia Del Re, PhD
Senior Curator,
Prints and Drawings
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David B. Milne, Window on Main Street, November-December 1940, watercolour over graphite on wove paper, 37.9 x 50.8 cm. Gift from the Douglas M. Duncan Collection, 1970. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa Photo: NGC

David B. Milne
Window on Main Street, November-December, 1940

David Milne, like many artists before and after him, often drew scenes framed by a window. A convenient way to structure a composition, here the gridded panes of glass divide his view of the street below, as seen from Milne’s third-floor studio on Brock Street West, in Uxbridge, Ontario.

One evening shortly after he rented the studio, his wife Kathleen brought over a picnic dinner, which the two ate sitting on boxes, their food spread on sheets of newspaper; he later wrote in his diary that "I saw a couple of painting subjects, one from the window."

Although he had lived in New York from 1903 to 1916, and visited England, France, and Belgium after the First World War, the changing scene from his window provided Milne with a subject equally as captivating as any found during his travels.

 

Adam Welch, PhD
Associate Curator,
Canadian Art
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