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Reconsidering Emily Carr.

Article Excerpt
Gerta Moray. Unsettling Encounters: First Nations Imagery in the Art of Emily Cart. Vancouver: UBC Press; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006. 386 pp. Illustrations. Bibliographic essay. Index. $75.00 hc.

Donald Ellis, ed. Tsimshian Treasures: The Remarkable Journey of the Dundas Collection. Dundas, ON: Donald Ellis Gallery; Vancouver: Douglas and McIntryre; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. 144 pp. Illustrations. Bibliography. $55.00 hc.

Charles C. Hill, Johanne Lamoureux, Ian M. Thom, curators. Essays by Jay Steward and Peter Macnair et al. Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2006. 336 pp. Illustrations. Works in the Exhibition. Bibliography. $75.00 hc.

Unsettling Encounters: First Nations Imagery in the Art of Emily Carr evolves out of Gerta Moray's doctoral dissertation, "Northwest Coast Native Culture and the Early Indian Paintings of Emily Carr, 1899-1913" (University of Toronto, 1993). Marcia Crosby, a writer and historian of Tsimshian and Haida ancestry--as well as the grand-daughter of Clara and William Russ, whose portraits Carr painted in 1928--wrote the foreword. The Russes were, as Crosby notes, Cart's "guides in 1912 to some of the Haida villages, the people she fictively named 'Jimmie and Louise,' each story titled by the names of places where they'd taken her to paint: 'Tampp,' 'Skedans,' and 'Cumshewa'" (vi). They were also her hosts sixteen years later when she returned on a second northern expedition to paint in Haida Gwaii (vi). Carr wrote to Marius Barbeau in 1928 about her intended trip, "I want to get back, even if the poles are all gone I want to get the feel of the places again" (291).

The choice of Crosby to write a foreword for Moray's book is symptomatic of our times. It is a respectful response to sentiments, which Crosby voices, that aboriginal memories and perspectives are not foregrounded sufficiently in the telling of Canadian history/art history:

Whether the questions Moray raises in her book will bring its readers closer to listening to First Nations' viewpoints about colonial history or Carr remains to be seen. But through Moray's text, I recognize Cart more clearly in a context I know and understand: race relations and the colonial and patriarchal history of British Columbia and Canada (vi).

Moray herself pays...

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