Kapwani Kiwanga
Linear Painting #6: Birren Yellow-Grey (RR Donnelley & Sons Chicago, Illinois), 2017
I first encountered Kapwani Kiwanga’s Linear Paintings in a solo exhibition in Berlin in 2017 where they were accompanied by 500 Feet (2017), a 12-minute audio work that permeated the space of the gallery.
In this work, the artist’s voice reads texts from the fields of colour theory and behavioral science in a cerebral, unexpressive tone. Within the mix of seemingly innocuous facts were more telling bits, including a transcript from the 1931 Paris International Conference on Colonial Urbanism that referenced 500 feet as a safe distance to maintain between Indigenous and European areas of a colony. The audio work undermines the apparent neutrality of knowledge; querying how supposedly objective areas of research can be used to reinforce power and authority. It also signaled to me that the resonant monochromatic paintings that hung all around were more than mere exercises in abstract form.
Indeed, Kiwanga’s Linear Paintings examine manifestations of ‘disciplinary architecture’, designed to police the body in institutional environments such as hospitals, factories, prisons or corporate boardrooms. Her research for the series led her to the work of American author and ‘industrial colour consultant’ Faber Birren (1900-1988). Birren’s clients included companies like Monsanto, General Electric, Disney, as well as the U.S. Military who, as the artist explains, employed his findings as early as the 1920s ‘to influence and control conditions of work, productivity, surveillance, healing, and care.’
RR Donnelley & Sons, the basis for Linear Painting #6, is a Chicago-based print company that employed Birren’s help in the mid-20th century to develop a colour palette to enhance worker productivity. The result? A warm and enticing two-tone pattern of yellow and grey that Kiwanga features in her dry-wall painting, and that RR Donnelley & Sons used throughout its building from the rotary press room to the elevators.
Jonathan Shaughnessy
Associate Curator,
Contemporary Art
—
Antoine Plamondon
Father Charles Chiniquy, 1841
After four years of training in Paris, Antoine Plamondon returned to Quebec in 1830 and was quickly recognized for his talent, becoming the most prominent portraitist in the province.
Charles Chiniquy was a Catholic priest who became known as an 'Apostle of Temperance' due to his sermons on the harmful effects of alcohol, which drew huge crowds. He remains the most prestigious model to have posed for Plamondon, and one of the most interesting figures of his time.
René Villeneuve
Associate Curator,
Early Canadian Art
—
Gustav Klimt
Study for Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, c. 1903, 1904-1906
Austrian artist Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) sketched no fewer than 130 drawings in preparation for his sumptuous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, commonly known as The Woman in Gold. Two of these drawings are now in the National Gallery of Canada’s collection after being restituted to Canadian heirs of the works’ original Jewish owners.
The drawings were among a collection of art stolen from the Bloch-Bauer residence in Vienna in 1938, and kept at the Albertina Museum. It wasn’t until the year 2000 that the Austrian government passed a bill allowing family heirs to reclaim their looted treasures.
Four pieces were returned to Francis Gutmann of Montreal, whose great-aunt was the famous Adele. Four others went to Gutmann’s sister in Vancouver, while another grouping went to Gutmann’s aunt in Los Angeles, who famously succeeded in her claim for The Woman in Gold.
The Gallery acquired two drawings from Mr. Gutmann in 2000, joining an earlier study for the portrait purchased in 1965. Together, these three studies in black chalk represent the outstanding quality and experimental diversity for which Klimt’s drawings are known – their cascading curves pay homage to the early Secession period, while a hint of geometric ornamentation signals Klimt’s ‘Golden Period’ to come.
Kirsten Appleyard
Curatorial Assistant,
Prints & Drawings
—
1/3
Gustav Klimt, Study for Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, c. 1903. Purchased 1965, NGC, Ottawa. Photo: NGC
2/3
Gustav Klimt, Study for Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, c. 1904-1906. Purchased 2000, NGC, Ottawa. Photo: NGC
3/3
Gustav Klimt, Study for Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, c. 1904-1906. Purchased 2000, NGC Ottawa. Photo: NGC
Antoine Plamondon
The Last of the Hurons (Zacharie Vincent), 1838
Antoine Plamondon’s exceptional portrait of Zacharie Vincent won a first-class medal in the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec contest in 1838.
It was soon acquired by the Earl of Durham, Governor General of British North America, who brought it with him to England to be displayed on the walls of his family castle. Two years later, the painting inspired historian François-Xavier Garneau to write a poem on the dangers threatening the Huron-Wendat people, who were believed to be doomed to extinction.
The model, Zacharie Vincent, seems to have had a different perception of his nation’s future. Vincent became an artist himself and painted around ten self-portraits, some of which feature him posing with his eldest son.
René Villeneuve
Associate Curator,
Early Canadian Art
—
Emanuel de Witte
A Sermon in the Old Church in Delft, c. 1650-1651
The preacher leans forward, gesturing to emphasize a point, but we can’t hear his words. Instead, Emanuel de Witte asks us to imagine the experience of being in the vast, echoing space of the light-filled church.
At front stands an elegantly dressed man, whose son imitates his fashionable pose; a woman breastfeeds; a girl reads; a young child looks at us, bored or uncomprehending. All of these details strengthen the sense of our shared humanity. The effect is a sense of calm, order and focused attention – of people brought together for a common task.
De Witte partly hid the view of the church by painting a metal rod and green curtain over it. Covering valuable paintings with real curtains was common and the artist made a joke out of it – while also implying that we are his guests, privileged to have the curtain pulled back so that we can see the painting.
Christopher Etheridge, PhD
Associate Curator,
European and American Art
—
Lynne Cohen
Canadian Legion before a Hallowe’en Party, Perth, Ontario, 1973
In her work, Lynne Cohen examines domestic and institutional interiors, such as these examples of community meeting spaces. What are usually places of boisterous joy, these scenes captured by Cohen are devoid of people – yet still identify the presence of humanity. As we practice social distancing and self-isolation, these images could have been taken four days ago, not four decades.
Lynne Cohen came to Canada from the U.S. in the 1970s and taught for years at the University of Ottawa. Her retrospective, ‘No Man's Land’, was presented at the National Gallery of Canada in 2002, and she received the inaugural Scotiabank Photography Award in 2011.
Lynne was a friend and mentor until her passing in 2014. She left an indelible mark on many, and her voice continues to guide my curatorial work. She reminds me of the difference between looking and seeing when reading a photograph; one may approach her images through their formal elements while, at the same time, be confronted by their emotional and political undertones.
Christopher Davidson
Curatorial Assistant,
Canadian Art
—
Ian Wallace
At Work 1983, 1983
As I sit at home working on my computer, researching and writing, I am reminded of Ian Wallace’s seminal performance and subsequent installation At Work (1983–84) in which he aims to question our understanding of what the ‘work’ of an artist consists of. We might imagine a painter in his messy studio, for example; here Wallace proposes an alternative kind of creative activity, that of thinking and research.
Ian Wallace is a leading artist, art historian, teacher and critic associated with the Vancouver School of conceptual photography. For over six decades he has created work focused on three pivotal sites: the street, the museum and the studio.
In 1983, Wallace combined these interests in At Work, a performance during which he transformed a gallery into his studio for two weeks, exhibiting himself ‘working’ as an artist. The newly opened Or Gallery in Vancouver was the stage for this event, which was only visible at night through the gallery’s large, street-level window. Seated at a simple work table, Wallace was seen at work, reading, writing and thinking, his performance becoming a living image or tableau vivant. The remaining installation includes photographs and a film of the performance, as well as drawings and studies documenting the moment.
Since then, the artist has continued to examine the often invisible role of the studio as a site of production and focuses our attention on the kinds of activities, including research and reflection, that occur behind-the-scenes in what is usually the private space of the artist.
Josée Drouin-Brisebois
Senior Curator,
Contemporary Art
—
Laurent Amiot
Cup Presented to George Taylor, 1827
On May 14th, 1827, at the foot of the Côte de la Canoterie in Quebec City’s Lower Town, the Kingfisher was unveiled – a brig weighing 221 tonnes and armed with 16 canons. Lord Dalhousie, Captain General and Governor-in-Chief of Upper and Lower Canada, managed the ship’s launch.
To mark the occasion, he ordered this cup from a silversmith in the capital, which he presented, filled with champagne, to George Taylor, owner of the shipyard. Surprised upon receiving the cup, George declared that 'he would not exchange the cup for the ship!’. It remained with his descendants until it entered the national collection in 2000.
This spectacular work unveiled a new field in the already prolific career of the artist, Laurent Amiot, and the birth of presentation pieces being made by silversmiths in the country.
Watch the video “Cup Presented to George Taylor: Laurent Amiot” to learn more about this work of art:
René Villeneuve
Associate Curator,
Early Canadian Art
—
Steve McQueen
still from Once Upon a Time, 2002
In 2005, I experienced a work of art that challenged me in a way no other artwork ever had. As I sat alone in a dark gallery, I struggled to make sense of the multitude of images of our galaxy, anatomical drawings, mathematical units, people from different cultures, flora, fauna, industrialization and so on, that were projected onto a large screen, each image slowly dissolving and morphing into the next.
I would soon find out that this work, titled Once Upon a Time (2002), is by British artist and film director Steve McQueen. The artist was inspired by the Voyager Golden Records, carried aboard the 1977 spacecrafts Voyager 1 and 2, which were intended as a bottle to the sea, sent to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. At that moment I understood that my experience was that of an alien’s.
McQueen appropriated the 116 archival images that go through major themes of human existence, culminating with the representation of a violin and score, to demonstrate that humans are an advanced creative species who express themselves through art.
For Once Upon a Time, the artist didn’t alter the images, but replaced the original soundtrack of natural sounds, violin and spoken greetings with a recording of people ‘speaking in tongues’. This phenomenon, also known as glossolalia, is an indecipherable language often associated with religious ecstasy, present in many cultures, when human beings make unconscious sounds while in an altered state.
According to McQueen, ‘the images on the Golden Record are all about our so-called knowledge. It’s all about what we apparently know. With the sound, it’s all about what we don’t know, or ‘nothing’… To put the two together leaves an ingredient missing. Though the images were planted in 1977, they have to do with the past, the present and the future… We’re not living in the past, we’re not living in the future; we’re living in between… So limbo is what I’m interested in.’
As we experience Once Upon a Time, the important omissions of disease, war, religion, poverty and conflict become increasingly apparent. In their excitement about future discovery and communication with other worlds, the NASA committee, chaired by Carl Sagan, overlooked or chose to omit the negative dimensions of human beings. In this way the story becomes a manufactured, fantastical or even utopian look at the Earth and those who inhabit it.
Josée Drouin-Brisebois
Senior Curator,
Contemporary Art
—
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
—
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
—
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
—
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
—
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
—
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
—
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
—
