Paul Kane

paikka: Mallow

Syntynyt: 1810

kuolema: 1871

Elämäkerta:

Paul Kane was an Irish-born Canadian painter, famous for his paintings of First Nations peoples in the Canadian West and other Native Americans in the Columbia District.
A largely self-educated artist, Paul Kane grew up in Toronto (then known as York) and trained himself by copying European masters on a study trip through Europe. He undertook two voyages through the wild Canadian northwest in 1845 and from 1846 to 1848. The first trip took him from Toronto to Sault Ste. Marie and back. Having secured the support of the Hudson's Bay Company, he set out on a second, much longer voyage from Toronto across the Rocky Mountains to Fort Vancouver and Fort Victoria.
On both trips Kane sketched and painted Aboriginal peoples and documented their lives. Upon his return to Toronto, he produced more than one hundred oil paintings from these sketches. Kane's work, particularly his field sketches, are still a valuable resource for ethnologists. The oil paintings he completed in his studio are considered a part of the Canadian heritage, although he often embellished them considerably, departing from the accuracy of his field sketches in favour of more dramatic scenes.
Kane was born in Mallow, County Cork in Ireland, the fifth child of the eight children of Michael Kane and Frances Loach. His father, a soldier from Preston, Lancashire, England, served in the Royal Horse Artillery until his discharge in 1801. The family then settled in Ireland. Sometime between 1819 and 1822, they immigrated to Upper Canada and settled in York, which would later, in March 1834, become Toronto. There, Kane's father operated a shop as a spirits and wine merchant.
Not much is known about Kane's youth in York, which at that time was a small settlement of a few thousand people. He went to school at Upper Canada College, and then received some training in painting by an art teacher named Thomas Drury at the Upper Canada College around 1830. In July 1834, he displayed some of his paintings in the first (and only) exhibition of The Society of Artists and Amateurs in Toronto, gaining a favourable review by a local newspaper, The Patriot.
Kane began a career as a sign and furniture painter at York, moving to Cobourg, Ontario, in 1834. At Cobourg, he took up a job in the furniture factory of Freeman Schermerhorn Clench, but also painted several portraits of the local personalities, including the sheriff and his employer's wife. In 1836 Kane moved to Detroit, Michigan, where the American artist James Bowman was living. The two had met earlier at York. Bowman had persuaded Kane that studying art in Europe was a necessity for an aspiring painter, and they had planned to travel to Europe together. But Kane had to postpone the trip, as he was short of money to pay for the passage to Europe and Bowman had married shortly before and was not inclined to leave his family. For the next five years, Kane toured the American Midwest, working as an itinerant portrait painter, travelling to New Orleans.
In June 1841, Kane left America, sailing from New Orleans aboard a ship bound for Marseilles in France, arriving there about three months later. Unable to afford formal art studies at an art school or with an established master, he toured Europe for the next two years, visiting art museums wherever he could and studying and copying the works of old masters. Until autumn 1842 he stayed in Italy, before trekking across the Great St. Bernard Pass, moving to Paris and from there on to London. In London he met George Catlin, an American painter who had painted Native Americans on the prairies and who now was on a promotion tour for his book, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Conditions of the North American Indians. Catlin lectured at Egyptian Hall at Piccadilly, where he also exhibited some of his paintings. In his book Catlin argued that the culture of the Native Americans was disappearing and should be recorded before passing into oblivion. Kane found the argument compelling and decided to similarly document the Canadian Aboriginal peoples.
Kane returned in early 1843 to Mobile, Alabama, where he set up a studio and worked as a portrait painter until he had paid back the money borrowed for his voyage to Europe. He returned to Toronto late 1844 or early 1845 and immediately began preparing for a trip to the west
Kane set out on his own on June 17, 1845, travelling along the northern shores of the Great Lakes, visiting first the Saugeen reservation. After weeks of sketching, he reached Sault Ste. Marie between Lake Superior and Lake Huron in summer 1845. He had intended to travel further west, but John Ballenden, an experienced officer of the Hudson's Bay Company stationed at Sault Ste. Marie, told him of the many difficulties and perils of travelling alone through the western territories and advised Kane to attempt such a feat only with the support of the company. After the Hudson's Bay Company had taken over its competitor, the North West Company of Montreal, in 1821, the whole territory west of the Great Lakes until the Pacific Ocean and the Oregon Country was Hudson's Bay land, a largely uncharted wilderness with about a hundred isolated outposts of the company along the major fur trade routes. Kane returned to Toronto for the winter, elaborating his field sketches to oil canvases, and in spring of the next year, he went to the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company at Lachine (today part of Montreal) and asked company governor George Simpson for support for his travel plans. Simpson was impressed by Kane's artistic ability, but at the same time worried that Kane might not have the stamina needed to travel with the fur brigades of the company. He granted Kane passage on company canoes only as far as Lake Winnipeg, with the promise of full passage if the artist did well until then. At the same time, he commissioned Kane to do paintings of Indian lifestyle for him, with some very detailed instructions as to the subjects.

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