Details

Provenance

Private Collection, Toronto

Literature

John O'Brian, Gasoline , Oil and Paper, The 1930's Oil-On-Paper Paintings of Emily Carr, Mendel Art Gallery, 1995, p. 11 Catalogue Note In the latter part of the 1930s, Emily Carr discovered a technique that allowed her to paint the scenes she chose more quickly and responsively: she mixed her oils with kerosene, instead of linseed oil or turpentine, to produce a runnier, more liquid pigment. This mixture she could apply not only instantly, but with great sweeps of her brush, just as one might with watercolour. She also found that paper worked better than canvas and that it was also much less costly. She chose a relatively inexpensive butcher-type paper that originally had a much lighter, almost silvery colour, according to Jack Shadbolt, who saw the paintings shortly after they were done. The paper also had a high acid content and the result is that over time it has turned to a mellow, golden brown. Carr's subjects in this remarkable series of pictures were both greatly varied and poetic. She painted seashores, coastal inlets and mountain ranges; she painted cliffs and skies and trees both young and old; she travelled from the deepest part of old growth rain forests to clear-cut vistas that had been denuded by lumber companies. In this painting, she records her reaction to this human intrusion and to the slaughter of trees, not without ambivalence, perhaps, but certainly with a steady eye on the facts before her. She has also surely caught the shimmering light and the sense of teeming growth and constant, nervous life that the rain forest held for her. In writing about these paintings, John O'Brian noted that "the fluid rush of Carr's paint across the wide surface of her paper gives the impression that sky and trees are in ecstatic motion above the spinning curvature of the earth's surface."

Catalog summary

Emily Carr Forest Interior signed lower left M E CARR oil on paper, mounted on board 57.2 by 88.9 cm. 22 ½ by 35 in. Provenance Private Collection, Toronto Literature John O'Brian, Gasoline , Oil and Paper, The 1930's Oil-On-Paper Paintings of Emily Carr, Mendel Art Gallery, 1995, p. 11 Catalogue Note In the latter part of the 1930s, Emily Carr discovered a technique that allowed her to paint the scenes she chose more quickly and responsively: she mixed her oils with kerosene, instead of linseed oil or turpentine, to produce a runnier, more liquid pigment. This mixture she could apply not only instantly, but with great sweeps of her brush, just as one might with watercolour. She also found that paper worked better than canvas and that it was also much less costly. She chose a relatively inexpensive butcher-type paper that originally had a much lighter, almost silvery colour, according to Jack Shadbolt, who saw the paintings shortly after they were done. The paper also had a high acid content and the result is that over time it has turned to a mellow, golden brown. Carr's subjects in this remarkable series of pictures were both greatly varied and poetic. She painted seashores, coastal inlets and mountain ranges; she painted cliffs and skies and trees both young and old; she travelled from the deepest part of old growth rain forests to clear-cut vistas that had been denuded by lumber companies. In this painting, she records her reaction to this human intrusion and to the slaughter of trees, not without ambivalence, perhaps, but certainly with a steady eye on the facts before her. She has also surely caught the shimmering light and the sense of teeming growth and constant, nervous life that the rain forest held for her. In writing about these paintings, John O'Brian noted that "the fluid rush of Carr's paint across the wide surface of her paper gives the impression that sky and trees are in ecstatic motion above the spinning curvature of the earth's surface."