The publication is a collection of facts, digitally presented with web-based
technology, about B.C. Artists who exhibited artwork in Vancouver between
1890 and 1950. It is primarily based on original exhibition catalogues, with
additional historical and contemporary information included to create a more
useful and interesting compilation. The project is not intended as a
critical review.
CHALLENGE
The history of art in Vancouver is relatively short - and the destruction
and loss of information about early arts groups and artists is extensive.
Groups like the Vancouver Art Association and the Vancouver Sketch Club have
almost completely disappeared from current memory, along with their records.
Fire, water, accident, World War II paper drives, dispersal, and neglect have
all taken their toll on our art history. Information that has not been destroyed
or lost is scattered in collections across Canada and around the world, as
Tippett and Cole plaintively noted in Art in British Columbia - The Historical
Sources, B.C. Studies, No. 23, 1974. Thirty-four years later, although there
have been many new works published and more historical information has come
to light, we have also suffered many more losses, in particular the death of
most of the artists active in the first half of the 20th century, and further
loss and dispersal of collections and material. Research into this period
remains difficult and time consuming.
PROCESS
The project began inadvertently in 1996 when I purchased a painting by early
Vancouver artist Maud Rees Sherman (1900 - 1976), and went to "look her up".
There was little easily available reference material on her, and I am still
"looking for Maud" twelve years later. As I hunted for information, I
experienced the same problems noted by Tippett and Cole in 1974, and decided
to assemble the information into a work that would be a finding aid and
biographical index. The selected format of the project - web pages - allows
for continuous input of information without the overhead and expense of
publishing a book. Hypertext links give the reader immediate access to a
huge range of information. A single "click" on one of these web pages instantly
provides facts to the reader that originally took me hours, days, or years
of research to find. Much of this information is otherwise difficult and
time-consuming to find, some is available nowhere else. Thousands of documents
were either collected by the author or researched at the Vancouver Art Gallery
Library, Vancouver City Archives, UBC Special Collections, Vancouver Public
Library Northwest Room & Fine Arts, and other collections. These, plus
information gleaned from personal artist interviews and correspondence,
are referenced into the many hundreds of files comprising the project.
CONCLUSION
As I pieced together the information, like a giant jigsaw puzzle for which
the resulting picture is unknown and from which many pieces are missing,
hundreds of early artists were slowly delineated. Full names, vital
statistics, memberships, exhibitions, painting titles - each piece of
information slowly sketched the artists and their work as they once painted
Vancouver and B.C. The result is an extensive finding aid and resource, as
well as a place to add information as it is re-discovered or becomes available.
The project thus continues, but is already a work of importance to the art
history of Vancouver, to those who will now find their own research easier
to start or complete, and to everyone who is interested in our early artists
and the past that they painted.
This project is dedicated with appreciation to the artists of Vancouver.