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Journal ArticleDOI

A Concise History of Canadian Painting

01 Sep 1974-History: Reviews of New Books (Taylor & Francis Group)-Vol. 2, Iss: 10, pp 253-254
About: This article is published in History: Reviews of New Books.The article was published on 1974-09-01. It has received 11 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Painting.
Citations
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Book
28 May 2012
TL;DR: A cautious country as mentioned in this paper has been a cautious country since time immemorial, since 1000-1661, New France, 1661-1763 4. A revolutionary age, 1763-1821 5. Transatlantic communities, 1815-49 6. Making progress, 1885-1914 8. Hanging on, 1914-45 9. Liberalism triumphant, 1945-84 10. Interesting times, 1984-2010.
Abstract: Introduction: a cautious country 1. Since time immemorial 2. Natives and newcomers, 1000-1661 3. New France, 1661-1763 4. A revolutionary age, 1763-1821 5. Transatlantic communities, 1815-49 6. Coming together, 1850-85 7. Making progress, 1885-1914 8. Hanging on, 1914-45 9. Liberalism triumphant, 1945-84 10. Interesting times, 1984-2010.

47 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Mitchell as mentioned in this paper examined a group of late-nineteenth-century landscape paintings that were painted for members of the sportsmen's club movement, who leased salmon rivers in Atlantic Canada for sport fishing.
Abstract: This essay deals with a group of late-nineteenth-century landscape paintings that were painted for members of the sportsmen's club movement, who leased salmon rivers in Atlantic Canada for sport fishing. In Canada, as elsewhere, the removal of Native rights to the animal world, through the introduction of policies and laws restricting hunting and fishing technologies and access, went hand in hand with the aesthetic appropriation of the environment as landscape. For this reason it can be argued that in picturing Atlantic Canada as the recreational landscape of these elite tourists-"a sportsman's paradise"-paintings of the region are also products of the history of Native exclusion from the Atlantic salmon fishery. Thus they provide a point of access to the complex history of Native-settler interaction for public art galleries in Canada currently involved in the incorporation of Native North American material into the existing public narrative of Canadian art. Le present article porte sur un groupe de peintures paysagistes du dernier quart du XIXe siecle qui ont ete realisees par des membres du mouvement des clubs de sportifs qui louaient des rivieres a saumon dans le Canada atlantique pour faire de la peche recreative. Au Canada, comme ailleurs, la suppression resultante des droits autochtones au monde animal-par l'introduction de politiques et lois restreignant les technologies et l'acces a la chasse et a la peche-est allee de pair avec l'affectation esthetique de l'environnement comme paysage. Pour cette raison, on peut avancer qu'en montrant le Canada atlantique comme le paysage recreatif de ces touristes d'elite (un paradis des sportifs), les peintures de cette region sont egalement un produit de l'histoire de l'exclusion autochtone des peches au saumon atlantique. Ces peintures fournissent donc un point d'acces a l'histoire complexe des interactions entre les Autochtones et les colons pour les galeries d'art publiques au Canada qui essaient presentement d'incorporer du materiel autochtone nord-americain dans le recit public actuel de l'art canadien. Landscape as a cultural medium ... has a double role with respect to something like ideology: it naturalizes a social and cultural construction, representing an artificial world as if it were simply given and inevitable, and it also makes that representation operational by interpellating its beholder in some more or less determinate relation to its givenness as sight and site. Thus, landscape (whether urban or rural, artificial or natural) always greets us as a space, as environment, as that within which "we" (figured as "the figures" in the landscape) find-or lose-ourselves. An account of landscape understood in this way therefore ... has to trace the process by which landscape effaces its own readability and naturalizes itself and must understand that process in relation to what might be called "the natural histories" of its own beholders. [It is a question of] what we have done and are doing to our environment, what the environment in turn does to us, how we naturalize what we do to each other, and how these "doings" are enacted in the media of representation we call "landscape." W.J.T. Mitchell (1994, 2) This essay focusses on a significant body of landscape paintings from the last quarter of the nineteenth century that depict, or were painted for, recreational fishermen from central Canada and the northeastern United States who leased salmon rivers in Atlantic Canada for sport fishing. The pictures, which deal with common subject matter, were painted for art patrons and collectors who were active participants in the "sportsmen's club movement" that swept northeastern North America in the mid-1870s. Each reproduces the motivating ideas of the movement, giving visual expression to contemporary notions of wilderness as a therapeutic environment, an antidote to the debilitating effects of urban-industrial civilization. It was in pursuit of this wilderness experience that the movement organized elite tourists into private clubs for the pursuit of sport, which was conceptualized as a form of personal involvement in the rhythms of nature and for the preservation of game, which they saw as threatened by the same urban-industrial capitalism that compelled their periodic retreat to wilderness. …

20 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article used model averaging and dimension reduction to incorporate information from a potentially large number of predictor variables and found that individual age-valuation profiles can differ substantially from general pooled profiles, suggesting that methods that are more responsive to the unique features of individual artists may provide better predictions of art valuations at auction.
Abstract: In hedonic regression models of the valuation of works of art, the age at which an artist produces a particular work, or an indicator variable for periods in his or her artistic career, is often found to have highly significant predictive value. Most existing results are based on regressions that pool large groups of painters. Although it is of interest to estimate such regressions for individual artists, the sample sizes are often inadequate for a model that would also include the large number of other relevant variables. We address this problem of inadequate degrees of freedom in individual artist regressions by using two statistical methods (model averaging and dimension reduction) to incorporate information from a potentially large number of predictor variables, allowing us to work with relatively small samples. We find that individual age-valuation profiles can differ substantially from general pooled profiles, suggesting that methods that are more responsive to the unique features of individual artists may provide better predictions of art valuations at auction.

17 citations


Cites background from "A Concise History of Canadian Paint..."

  • ...However, art historical considerations (see Reid (1988) for a survey of Canadian art history with some detail on the careers of the better known of the artists considered here), along with the usual variations in individual character, suggest that individual profiles may differ considerably from…...

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the presence and nature of such time series dependence econometrically, both in terms of long-term trends as reflected in the cointegrating relationship between Canadian and the international market, and in short-run co-movements as represented in correlations.
Abstract: Although the market for Canadian paintings is now of substantial magnitude, with several works having recently been sold for well over a million dollars, it remains true that with very few exceptions, the works of Canadian painters are bought and sold only in Canada and seem to be held only by Canadian collectors. This market can thus be viewed as largely local, and it is therefore not clear whether there should be any linkage between price movements for Canadian art and those for the mainstream international market in old master, impressionist, and modern art. This article investigates the presence and nature of such time series dependence econometrically, both in terms of long-term trends as reflected in the co-integrating relationship between Canadian and the international market, and in terms of short-run co-movements as represented in correlations. The possibility that the local market “follows” the international one is also considered through an analysis of Granger causality. For Canadian art prices, we use a new hedonic index that has been computed using an updated version of the dataset of Hodgson and Vorkink (Can J Econ 37:629–655, 2004), while for the international prices, we use an index provided by Mei and Moses (Am Econ Rev 92:1656–1668, 2002).

13 citations


Cites background from "A Concise History of Canadian Paint..."

  • ...Our data set includes results on sales for painters judged to be of significant interest from the standpoint of Canadian art history, this criterion being satisfied if a painter is mentioned in one of the major histories of Canadian art written by Harper (1977) or Reid (1973, 1988)2....

    [...]

  • ...This result is not surprising since he is considered to be the most important painter in developing an original national style of Canadian landscape that inspired the Group of Seven, whose members are mostly in the top 25 list.8 The top list also includes old masters such as 7 See Velthius (2005), p.99....

    [...]

  • ...5 See Reid (1979)....

    [...]

  • ...This result is discussed by Hodgson and Vorkink 6 See Hodgson and Vorkink (2004) for a detailed description of this method....

    [...]

  • ...3 See Reid (1973)....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors address public funding, free markets, and contemporary art in Canada as shaped by forces integral to the formation of Canada as a nation state and its continual development.
Abstract: This article address public funding, free markets, and contemporary art in Canada as shaped by forces integral to the formation of Canada as a nation state and its continual development. Canada has a network of publicly funded institutions in support of contemporary art. Public funding for the arts is direct and plural: it operates at three levels of government – federal, provincial and municipal – and is distributed by government departments and arts councils. Canadian institutions in receipt of public funding relevant to contemporary art include art schools, artist-run centres, non-collecting exhibition venues and art museums. A perception that this creates and maintains a circular system for contemporary art that is co-ordinated via state funding is reconsidered. In addition, it is misleading to consider a boundary divide, with state and not-for-profit sector organizations separated from private and commercial ones. The role of art market intermediaries, namely contemporary art dealers (or gallerists),...

12 citations

References
More filters
Book
28 May 2012
TL;DR: A cautious country as mentioned in this paper has been a cautious country since time immemorial, since 1000-1661, New France, 1661-1763 4. A revolutionary age, 1763-1821 5. Transatlantic communities, 1815-49 6. Making progress, 1885-1914 8. Hanging on, 1914-45 9. Liberalism triumphant, 1945-84 10. Interesting times, 1984-2010.
Abstract: Introduction: a cautious country 1. Since time immemorial 2. Natives and newcomers, 1000-1661 3. New France, 1661-1763 4. A revolutionary age, 1763-1821 5. Transatlantic communities, 1815-49 6. Coming together, 1850-85 7. Making progress, 1885-1914 8. Hanging on, 1914-45 9. Liberalism triumphant, 1945-84 10. Interesting times, 1984-2010.

47 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Mitchell as mentioned in this paper examined a group of late-nineteenth-century landscape paintings that were painted for members of the sportsmen's club movement, who leased salmon rivers in Atlantic Canada for sport fishing.
Abstract: This essay deals with a group of late-nineteenth-century landscape paintings that were painted for members of the sportsmen's club movement, who leased salmon rivers in Atlantic Canada for sport fishing. In Canada, as elsewhere, the removal of Native rights to the animal world, through the introduction of policies and laws restricting hunting and fishing technologies and access, went hand in hand with the aesthetic appropriation of the environment as landscape. For this reason it can be argued that in picturing Atlantic Canada as the recreational landscape of these elite tourists-"a sportsman's paradise"-paintings of the region are also products of the history of Native exclusion from the Atlantic salmon fishery. Thus they provide a point of access to the complex history of Native-settler interaction for public art galleries in Canada currently involved in the incorporation of Native North American material into the existing public narrative of Canadian art. Le present article porte sur un groupe de peintures paysagistes du dernier quart du XIXe siecle qui ont ete realisees par des membres du mouvement des clubs de sportifs qui louaient des rivieres a saumon dans le Canada atlantique pour faire de la peche recreative. Au Canada, comme ailleurs, la suppression resultante des droits autochtones au monde animal-par l'introduction de politiques et lois restreignant les technologies et l'acces a la chasse et a la peche-est allee de pair avec l'affectation esthetique de l'environnement comme paysage. Pour cette raison, on peut avancer qu'en montrant le Canada atlantique comme le paysage recreatif de ces touristes d'elite (un paradis des sportifs), les peintures de cette region sont egalement un produit de l'histoire de l'exclusion autochtone des peches au saumon atlantique. Ces peintures fournissent donc un point d'acces a l'histoire complexe des interactions entre les Autochtones et les colons pour les galeries d'art publiques au Canada qui essaient presentement d'incorporer du materiel autochtone nord-americain dans le recit public actuel de l'art canadien. Landscape as a cultural medium ... has a double role with respect to something like ideology: it naturalizes a social and cultural construction, representing an artificial world as if it were simply given and inevitable, and it also makes that representation operational by interpellating its beholder in some more or less determinate relation to its givenness as sight and site. Thus, landscape (whether urban or rural, artificial or natural) always greets us as a space, as environment, as that within which "we" (figured as "the figures" in the landscape) find-or lose-ourselves. An account of landscape understood in this way therefore ... has to trace the process by which landscape effaces its own readability and naturalizes itself and must understand that process in relation to what might be called "the natural histories" of its own beholders. [It is a question of] what we have done and are doing to our environment, what the environment in turn does to us, how we naturalize what we do to each other, and how these "doings" are enacted in the media of representation we call "landscape." W.J.T. Mitchell (1994, 2) This essay focusses on a significant body of landscape paintings from the last quarter of the nineteenth century that depict, or were painted for, recreational fishermen from central Canada and the northeastern United States who leased salmon rivers in Atlantic Canada for sport fishing. The pictures, which deal with common subject matter, were painted for art patrons and collectors who were active participants in the "sportsmen's club movement" that swept northeastern North America in the mid-1870s. Each reproduces the motivating ideas of the movement, giving visual expression to contemporary notions of wilderness as a therapeutic environment, an antidote to the debilitating effects of urban-industrial civilization. It was in pursuit of this wilderness experience that the movement organized elite tourists into private clubs for the pursuit of sport, which was conceptualized as a form of personal involvement in the rhythms of nature and for the preservation of game, which they saw as threatened by the same urban-industrial capitalism that compelled their periodic retreat to wilderness. …

20 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article used model averaging and dimension reduction to incorporate information from a potentially large number of predictor variables and found that individual age-valuation profiles can differ substantially from general pooled profiles, suggesting that methods that are more responsive to the unique features of individual artists may provide better predictions of art valuations at auction.
Abstract: In hedonic regression models of the valuation of works of art, the age at which an artist produces a particular work, or an indicator variable for periods in his or her artistic career, is often found to have highly significant predictive value. Most existing results are based on regressions that pool large groups of painters. Although it is of interest to estimate such regressions for individual artists, the sample sizes are often inadequate for a model that would also include the large number of other relevant variables. We address this problem of inadequate degrees of freedom in individual artist regressions by using two statistical methods (model averaging and dimension reduction) to incorporate information from a potentially large number of predictor variables, allowing us to work with relatively small samples. We find that individual age-valuation profiles can differ substantially from general pooled profiles, suggesting that methods that are more responsive to the unique features of individual artists may provide better predictions of art valuations at auction.

17 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the presence and nature of such time series dependence econometrically, both in terms of long-term trends as reflected in the cointegrating relationship between Canadian and the international market, and in short-run co-movements as represented in correlations.
Abstract: Although the market for Canadian paintings is now of substantial magnitude, with several works having recently been sold for well over a million dollars, it remains true that with very few exceptions, the works of Canadian painters are bought and sold only in Canada and seem to be held only by Canadian collectors. This market can thus be viewed as largely local, and it is therefore not clear whether there should be any linkage between price movements for Canadian art and those for the mainstream international market in old master, impressionist, and modern art. This article investigates the presence and nature of such time series dependence econometrically, both in terms of long-term trends as reflected in the co-integrating relationship between Canadian and the international market, and in terms of short-run co-movements as represented in correlations. The possibility that the local market “follows” the international one is also considered through an analysis of Granger causality. For Canadian art prices, we use a new hedonic index that has been computed using an updated version of the dataset of Hodgson and Vorkink (Can J Econ 37:629–655, 2004), while for the international prices, we use an index provided by Mei and Moses (Am Econ Rev 92:1656–1668, 2002).

13 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors address public funding, free markets, and contemporary art in Canada as shaped by forces integral to the formation of Canada as a nation state and its continual development.
Abstract: This article address public funding, free markets, and contemporary art in Canada as shaped by forces integral to the formation of Canada as a nation state and its continual development. Canada has a network of publicly funded institutions in support of contemporary art. Public funding for the arts is direct and plural: it operates at three levels of government – federal, provincial and municipal – and is distributed by government departments and arts councils. Canadian institutions in receipt of public funding relevant to contemporary art include art schools, artist-run centres, non-collecting exhibition venues and art museums. A perception that this creates and maintains a circular system for contemporary art that is co-ordinated via state funding is reconsidered. In addition, it is misleading to consider a boundary divide, with state and not-for-profit sector organizations separated from private and commercial ones. The role of art market intermediaries, namely contemporary art dealers (or gallerists),...

12 citations