Once a month, The duty launches to history buffs the challenge of deciphering a theme news from a comparison with an event or a historical figure.
Criticized by art historian Gérard Morisset for having offered a caricatural vision of Canadians, admired by anthropologist Marius Barbeau for the precision of his vision of rural life, Cornelius Krieghoff (1815-1872), born in Amsterdam and who grew up in Germany, was active in Montreal and Quebec between 1846 and 1863. He is unquestionably one of the most famous artists of this period for having multiplied portraits, genre scenes and landscapes in a style still unpublished here. If his career takes place partly in Toronto and in the United States, it is the paintings painted during these twenty years that ensure his popularity and his fame.
The art market never failed him and his compositions were imitated during his lifetime. His work celebrates and perpetuates certain conceptions of the traditional lifestyles of Canada East (Quebec). The retrospective prepared by Dennis Reid made it possible, following the work of Johan Russel Harper, to reassess its place in the history of art in Quebec and Canada. Not only is he a very prolific artist (he is granted a catalog of nearly 1,500 works), but he played a decisive role through his dynamism and the originality of the subjects he treated.
Krieghoff updated contemporary dissemination strategies. He was also instrumental in structuring the artistic community in Montreal and Quebec. He multiplies his presence in exhibitions and public sales both in Canada and in the United States. He uses newspapers to make himself known to the public and distributes his production through prints and photography.
Throughout his career, Krieghoff mingled with various social and sports clubs. His obituary recalls that he spoke several languages and that his interests covered music, numismatics, natural sciences and sciences. In short, the man and his work left memorable traces wherever he stayed.
Exoticism
Among Krieghoff’s subjects, scenes depicting Native Americans alone or in common activity figure prominently (Harper estimates it at one-third of his output). What knowledge does the artist have of indigenous communities and how does he show them? His curiosity, his search for exoticism and his desire to serve a clientele eager for subjects of colonial inspiration will make him notice these communities that live near the city.
As early as 1846, on the occasion of an order from the physician AA Staunton, Krieghoff familiarized himself with objects of Amerindian culture collected by soldiers and travelers passing through Montreal. The office of a officer in Montreal shows the importance of a market of artefacts made up of magnificent beaded bags, snowshoes, a miniature canoe and weapons, all objects presented as so many trophies that sit enthroned with the collection of paintings. Boots, moccasins and a train complete the objects brought together in this cabinet of curiosities.
It is the women of Kahnawake that Krieghoff depicts as sellers of these artefacts: wickerwork baskets, beaded bags and moccasins. In Red-skinned woman outdoors from the artist’s studio (circa 1849), Krieghoff shows an Amerindian woman in charge of leatherwork in front of the house-studio he shares with his colleague, the English painter Martin Somerville. The figure, seen full-length, is framed by the names of the two artists displayed on the walls. The production of the young woman is thus presented as being just as important as that of the two painters of whom she is the source of inspiration.
The men, for their part, are depicted as snowshoers and hunters. Krieghoff likes two seasons: autumn and winter, still too rarely the subject of painters’ attention. An Aboriginal man, rifle on the shoulder, advances towards the woods in the lush colors of October or on snowshoes in the gray white of the snow. The painter multiplies these generic portraits, sold in pairs (the merchant and the hunter), of isolated Aboriginal figures who seem to easily find buyers.
The Amerindians are rarely presented in groups, they are at most three or four people who constitute a family or friendly unit. The artist spreads stereotypical images of Aboriginal people by creating genre scenes where we see them hunting, canoeing, braving or skirting the rapids, or even as a family, gathered in a camp near a fire. A few artifacts—backpack, baby carrier, bark container filled with wild fruits—furnish the scene and add to the local color. They are works of the imagination or drawn from distant observations that do not involve encounters with members of these communities.
The subject of the encounter is however a frequent theme in Krieghoff’s work, where we see inhabitants who have stopped their car, who come across a passer-by and who take the opportunity to chat. Sociability, the pleasure of conversation, of exchanging news, this interests the artist, who is said to be a fine conversationalist. It is this motif that he depicts in one of his first paintings representing four Amerindians, Indians and squaws of Lower Canada (1848). The work, which includes three women and a man, is reproduced in lithography. The subject of this meeting seems to be the demonstration of the sartorial originality of the characters seen in a wintry setting. They are defined by their hybrid costume (hood, top hat, blanket, wild boots) while the baby carrier, loafers for sale, and snowshoes add specific elements to this somewhat dummy group.
The print is a way to make yourself known and to make your work more accessible. Krieghoff is among the most active artists to use this medium to expand his market. Among the first prints published in 1848 and 1849, three offer Native American subjects. This shows the interest of amateurs, who are not only interested in scenes of rural and urban life, but who are looking for genre scenes of local character.
In 1854, Krieghoff went to Quebec to join her lover, the merchant-auctioneer John Budden. He then came to know the Huron-Wendats of Lorette better. He developed a friendship with painter Zacharie Vincent, who served as an occasional guide for the painter and his friends, Budden and businessman James Gibb. Krieghoff’s works do not reveal scenes of a familiar and personal character like those of Vincent, which were however little known at the time.
One of Krieghoff’s major compositions brings together four men: Vincent, Budden, Gibb and, seen from behind, Krieghoff holding a drawing tablet, in two canoes on the shores of Lake Saint-Charles (The strangulation of Lake Saint-Charles, 1859). The autumn scene is grandiose and adds a note of serenity to this fishing trip with friends. The painting can be read as a tribute to Gibb, who died in October 1858, and as an allegory of the pleasure of living and the privileges of the dominant social class in harmony with nature and those who know its secrets.
The three accomplices, Gibb, Budden and Krieghoff, are again present in the landscape The death of the moose at sunset, Lac Famine, south of Quebec (1859), which associates them this time with two native guides who assist them in bringing back their loot. The glow of the sun accentuates the dramatic effect of the animal lying and bleeding. The subject is taken up in On Lake Laurent (1863). Aboriginal guides are presented as essential in these scenes of fishing and hunting, sports practiced by white people. The Huron-Wendat assist the wealthiest in their leisure activities, scenes that celebrate the experience and know-how of the Aboriginal peoples.
The Web moose death will be disseminated through another mechanical technique, photography. It is reproduced in the album Notman’s Photographic Selections published in 1865 and which brings together seven works by Krieghoff.
As Dennis Reid points out, during the 1860s Krieghoff gave more and more importance to the landscape, situating scenes of traditional life in it. These subjects inscribed in the bright colors of autumn show the characters integrated into the immensity of nature. The actions are always very detailed. Thus, the characters are not drowned in space, and their meticulously described gestures seem in harmony in this protected natural environment.
During the twenty or so years that he spent in Quebec, Krieghoff offered different representations of Aboriginal people. Are his own experiences and relationships with the Huron-Wendat consistent with the perceptions of the amateurs for whom his paintings were intended? From the mid-1850s, the stereotyped images, which were limited to a few close-up views, were enriched with more varied subjects. Individualized characters evolve in symbiosis with the grandiose decors.
By the quality, the number of paintings and the repetition of his subjects, Krieghoff contributes to the recognition of the craftsmanship of Aboriginal women and participates in the knowledge of the ancestral ways of life of the Amerindians. His subjects, which boil down to a few scenes, forge and reduce Native American culture to representations that still nourish our imagination.
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