From Drawing to Visual Culture: A History of Art Education in Canada 9780773560215

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f ro m d r aw i n g to v i s ua l c u lt u r e

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From Drawing to Visual Culture A History of Art Education in Canada

Edited by

harold pearse

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca

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© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2006 isbn-13: 978-0-7735-3070-6 isbn-10: 0-7735-3070-3 Legal deposit fourth quarter 2006 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Funding has also been received from the Canadian Society for Education through Art. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication From drawing to visual culture : a history of art education in Canada / edited by Harold Pearse. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-7735-3070-6 isbn-10: 0-7735-3070-3 1. Art – Study and teaching – Canada – History. I. Pearse, Harold. n331.c33f76 2006

707.1071

Typeset in 10/13 Sabon by True to Type

c2006–903404-4

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Contents

Figures and Tables

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Acknowledgments

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Preface

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Contributors

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1 Introduction 3 harold pearse 2 Learning to Draw at the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute 31 f. graeme chalmers 3 Postsecondary Art Education in Quebec from the 1870s to the 1920s 47 j. craig stirling 4 Postsecondary Art Education in Ontario, 1876–1912 j. craig stirling

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5 The Dawn of the Twentieth Century: Art Education in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia 103 harold pearse 6 Modern Art and Child Art in Quebec: The Symbiotic Relationship between the Art Field and Child Art 120 suzanne lemerise and leah sherman

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7 Social Reconstruction, Visuality, and the Exhibition of Democratic Ideals in Canadian Schools, 1930–1950 147 e. lisa panayotidis 8 More than an Improvement in Drawing: Art Learning in One Vancouver Secondary School, 1920–1950 162 wendy stephenson 9 Art Education in Ontario, 1950–2000: Unlimited Potential and Unfulfilled Promise 200 roger clark 10 The Electronic Era: Radio and Television School Art Broadcasts in Canada 221 bill zuk and robert dalton Afterword 241 harold pearse Notes 243 Bibliography 273 Index 299

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Figures and Tables

figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 4.1 4.2

Walter Smith 7 Arthur Lismer, 1917 16 Charles Dudley Gaitskell 21 Freehand Drawing Class Exhibits, 1890 58 Modelling and Sculpture Class Exhibits, 1890 59 Wood Carving Class Exhibits, 1890 59 Pencil Drawing of a Lily 60 Bronze campq medal, 1925 67 Freehand Drawing Class Exhibits, 1898 68 Modelling Class Exhibits, 1898 69 Students of the Art Association of Montreal School of Fine Art, c.1915 74 Male Nude, 1901, by Clarence Gagnon 78 Nude Figure, signed Wm. Brymner, 1915 80 Reclining Figure, by William Brymner 80 Reclining Nude, by William Brymner 81 Helen McNicoll, 1901, by William Brymner 82 Design for Floor Tile, Ina N. Banting, Hamilton Art School 93 Design for Oil Cloth, Ina N. Banting, Hamilton Art School 94

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4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9

Figures

Life Class, Hamilton Art School 95 Designs for Cushion Covers, Hamilton Art School 96 China Painting and Design, Hamilton Art School 97 Alexander McKay, Supervisor for the Board of School Commissioners, Halifax 105 Jessie P. Semple, Supervisor of Art, Toronto School Board 113 Winifred Gabriel, 1907 116 Jean Paul Lemieux at the School of Fine Arts, Quebec City 129 Cover of the Catalogue for the Exhibition Pictures by Children, 1937–38 132 Arthur Lismer with Children at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, c. 1951 138 Children Make Modernist Art,” March 1949 142 Sketch of Roeddi House, Jericho Beach, by Stephen Ursulescu, 1950 175 Unsigned cartoon depicting Roman chariot driver, Kits yearbook, 1946 179 Sketches of the 1948 Flood in the Fraser Valley by Kits’ Student Hamish Cameron 181 Pen and Ink Sketch by Kits Student Helen Reeve, 1931 182 Caricature of Young Cadet, by Peter Snelgrove, 1942 183 Silkscreen Image of a First Nations Symbol of a Bird, by Stephen Ursulescu, 1950 185 Illustration of the Old Man Who Lived in a Saddleshoe, by Rolph Blakstad, 1947 186 Cartoon by Rolph Blakstad, 1947 188 Chinese Brush Strokes Depicting Bamboo in Watercolour, by Hamish Cameron, 1948 194

tables 3.1 Art Association of Montreal Annual Scholarships 1889– 1921 77 3.2 Art Association of Montreal Additional Fine Art Instructors and Classes 83 10.1 Content Analysis of Radio Art Broadcasts 226 10.2 School Art Television Broadcasts 232

Introduction

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Acknowledgments

The editor and authors express their sincere thanks to the many people who contributed to this volume. First there are those who pioneered and nurtured work in the history of art education in Canada: Graeme Chalmers, Suzanne Lemerise, Angela Nairne Grigor, Ron MacGreggor, Leah Sherman, and Don Soucy. There are also the pioneers who have shared their experiences and stories: Phil Thomas, Jim Simpson, Bob Steele, John Emerson, Ray Blackwell, Jim Gray, and Sam Black. We thank in addition various colleagues in Canadian universities, colleges, and schools; archivists and librarians; funding agencies and our publisher; family members; and our students, who are too many to mention by name, but we acknowledge their inspiration.

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Figures

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Preface harold pearse

This book aims at providing a much-needed introduction to the history of visual art education in Canada and the role that it has played in this country’s visual culture. While it cannot claim to be comprehensive or encyclopedic, it presents the evolution of the field in broad strokes while also elaborating some of the important details in depth. The format is a collection of original essays by art education and cultural history scholars with an introduction and an extended bibliography. The essays, many of which are illustrated with photographs and drawings, range from focused surveys of particular eras or regions, to theoretically based analyses of movements or trends, to detailed case studies of art education theory and practice in a specific time and place. Taken as a whole, the book provides a vivid picture of the evolution and influence of art education in its many manifestations throughout Canada. This manuscript is the culmination of almost a decade of writing, research, and consultation. In 1995 I presented a paper titled “Imagining a History of Canadian Art Education” at the Third Penn State International Symposium on the History of Art Education (Pearse 1997a). Observing that the history of art education in this country had yet to be written, I posed questions as to what such a history could include, what constituted its particular character, what were its influences, how it might be organized, and what themes and issues should

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be addressed. The proceedings of the symposium, including my essay, were printed and widely distributed. Following the symposium I attempted to gather the resources to write the history myself and circulated the paper among colleagues to get feedback and gauge interest. As research and discussion progressed, it became clear that among art educators there was a growing consensus that any broad and comprehensive history had to be a collaborative undertaking if it was to address all eras, regions, and provinces and include both public school and secondary levels. During a month-long research trip to the University of British Columbia in February 2000, I met regularly with Dr Graeme Chalmers to discuss the framework for a history of Canadian art education. Agreeing that I should act as editor, we invited a core group of scholars in the field, from diverse disciplinary orientations and theoretical persuasions, to write original essays. Some who were initially contacted had to withdraw later, but others emerged who could contribute to the volume in particular ways. While the book as a whole serves as a history of art education in Canada, the various chapters can be read as individual pieces of research in their spheres.

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Contributors harold pearse

harold pearse was on the faculty of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (nscad) for almost thirty years and is currently an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta and a sessional instructor in the Department of Elementary Education. The focus of his research has been the history of the development of art education in the public schools of Nova Scotia and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. A recent study, “Discovering the first Black Graduate and Rediscovering nscad’s First Art Education Program,” constitutes a chapter in the National Art Education Association publication Remembering Others: Making Invisible Histories of Art Education Visible (2000). One of Dr Pearse’s particular interests has been the work and influence of Arthur Lismer, perhaps best known as a painter and member of the Group of Seven. Lismer provides a unique perspective since as a former principal, he is intimately involved in the history of nscad while also being a major figure in the national and international movement for the recognition of child art education (Robertson 1993; Pearse 1992). The writers of this collection of essays constitute a very impressive team of scholars who have conducted research in the fields of art education history, art history, education history, and visual culture history.

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Contributors

f. graeme chalmers , professor of art education in the Department of Curriculum Studies, Faculty of Education, at the University of British Columbia. For more than twenty-five years his work has explored the cultural, historical, and social foundations of art education. He has published extensively in the history of art education and is presently undertaking a series of case studies of art education at various sites in nineteenth-century Canada. His most recent book is titled A 19th Century Government Drawing Master: The Walter Smith Reader (2000). roger clark , associate professor of art education, Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario. A recent past president of the Canadian Society for Education through Art, Dr Clark has written numerous journal articles and monographs dealing with the historical emergence of art as a school subject, notions of disclosure within artistic activity, and postmodernist influences within art education. His published titles include Art Education: A Canadian Perspective (1994) and Art Education: Issues in Postmodern Pedagogy (1996). robert dalton , associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. His publications include research on multicultural art education, the work of First Nations artists, and the popular arts. He recently coedited (with William Zuk) an anthology titled Student Art Exhibitions: New Ideas and Approaches (2001), published by the National Art Education Association. s u z a n n e l e m e r i s e , professeur associé, département des arts visuels et médiatiques, University of Quebec at Montreal. Dr Lemerise has taught art education and art theory at uqm since 1969 and has written and published on the history of art education in Quebec. e. lisa panayotidis, associate professor, Faculty of Education, University of Calgary. Panayotidis’s ongoing research and published work has addressed the multiple and contingent discursive and visual relations among social reconstruction ideologies, the formation of a federal cultural policy in Canada, and professional artists’ discourse on the historical, social, and cultural function of the arts in schools. She is co-editor of Historical Identities: The Professoriate in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006).

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leah sherman , professor emerita, Art Education, Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University. Professor Sherman was a student of the influential Montreal artist and educator Anne Savage, whose work and influence she has documented. After teaching at Baron Byng High School in Montreal, she joined the faculty at Sir George Williams University (later Concordia), where she initiated the Art Education program and was instrumental in the development of the Faculty of Fine Arts. j. craig stirling, independent scholar and researcher, Montreal. Dr Stirling holds a PhD in the history of art on a Canadian subject from the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of the seminal book on Quebec artist Ozias Leduc (1864–1955) and has published in numerous academic journals, including the British Journal of Canadian Studies and Quebec Studies. A specialist in nineteenth-century Quebec art history, he has presented papers at conferences in Canada, the us, and the uk. His publishing and research interests have focused on the British influence on nineteenth-century Canadian art, architecture, and art education. wendy stephenson, phd graduate from the Department of Curriculum Studies at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Stephenson’s current research focuses on changes in art production in the classrooms of Vancouver public secondary schools from 1920 to 1950 when art programs extended an emphasis on drawing to a wider range of media and activities. Her research for her master’s thesis dealt with an aspect of American art education within the same period. The study in this volume has been supported in part by a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. william zuk, professor in Art Education at the University of Victoria and formerly of the University of Manitoba. His research has focused on multicultural art education and concepts of tradition and innovation in aboriginal societies of North America and the circumpolar world. He has coauthored several books and anthologies with Robert Dalton.

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1 Introduction harold pearse

In the Canadian popular imagination, art education, that is, art as a subject taught in public schools, is something that must have existed in some mythical golden age, or at best, is happening somewhere else. If Canadians think of art education at all they conjure images of young children expressing themselves freely with large brushes and brightly coloured paints or talented adolescents honing their realistic drawing skills. There is a sense that if these images were ever realized, it must have been in some other part of the country, probably before the “cutbacks.” In fact such images are reality. Excellent art programs can be found in all parts of Canada. But they are only a small part of what comprises this history. Art education in Canada has taken a variety of forms. It is undertaken in school and non-school settings and has undergone many changes. For example, the notion of “child art,” so popular at various times during the twentieth century, was not relevant in the 1880s and as a dominant rationale was out of favour by the 1980s. The history of art education is as long as, indeed longer than, the history of free public education in this country. In Nova Scotia, for example, art in public education predated the Free School Act of 1864, which ensured that all children would have access to free schooling through a system of compulsory taxation (Hamilton 1970, 101–2). In his 1850 report, Nova Scotia’s superintendent of education, J.W. Dawson, noted that drawing and music were taught in the common schools of Nova Scotia but not as thoroughly as in the grammar

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schools of Boston, where they were “regular parts of instruction.” Drawing could be found in a few common schools and most private academies. Dawson considered that drawing and writing were closely connected. He conceded, however, that since Nova Scotia teachers knew little about drawing and and using blackboards efficiently, they were unable to make the connection (Dawson 1850). Dawson’s lament over these pedagogical inadequacies, which has resonated throughout the history of art education in Canada, characterizes a subject prescribed by the system but apparently “untaught or “unteachable” by many of its practitioners. The story of art education in Canada can claim some of the more colourful characters in the history of Canada: Anna Leonowens, tutor to the children of the King of Siam and a household name thanks to the movie The King and I; Dr Norman Bethune, the Montreal surgeon and hero of Mao’s Chinese revolution; and Arthur Lismer, a charismatic teacher who was also one of the illustrious Group of Seven. As this volume illustrates, art education, variously described, is an integral aspect of the history of Canada’s public education curricula and visual culture and intersects at various points with the nation’s general historical narrative. While the focus here is the evolution of the teaching of art to children and youth in the nation’s public schools, the story extends to and from non-school sites and the postsecondary level as well. Art education in Canada is a paradox within paradoxes. Education is a provincial rather than a federal jurisdiction, so there is no national education system – each province and territory has its own. While there have always been formal and informal attempts at consultation, coordination, and association on a national level, if there is a Canadian art education, it is the sum of all these parts, and maybe more. While each province has its own curriculum policies and guidelines, including those for art, it is the individual school districts or school boards that are responsible for their implementation; hence the discrepancies one finds from province to province, board to board, city to city – and most significantly, among rural, suburban, and urban schools. At various times in various locales, art has been considered either a basic, essential, and core part of the school curriculum or an optional, elective, extracurricular “frill.” Even when art is prescribed in a particular provincial program of studies as a “core” elementary subject, a school board, a principal, or an individual classroom teacher may choose to interpret the requirement or even to ignore it. Rarely are steps taken,

Introduction

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moreover, to ensure that teachers will be adequately prepared to teach the subject. A survey of provincial curriculum guides and annual reports from provincial departments of education show a continuous presence of art (originally in the form of drawing) in Canadian schools and official endorsement of the currently accepted philosophy and pedagogy. Application of these guidelines, however, has been uneven and sporadic. In Canada advocates for art education (or drawing) in public schools have always promised much, yet what they deliver has often fallen short of expectations or never reached the intended audience.

why a history of canadian art education? The simple answer to this question is such a history has yet to be written and its time has come. Don Soucy made the same observation fifteen years ago in his introductory essay to the anthology Framing the past: Essays on Art Education (1990, 3). There are general histories of art education written from American points of view (Logan 1955; Wygant 1983; Efland 1990; or British (MacDonald 1970). An American graduate student made an early attempt to compile a history of Canadian art education (Saunders 1954). There are provincial and regional histories, usually written as dissertations (Gaitskell 1948; Tait 1957; Soucy 1985; Rogers 1983). The histories from the 1940s and 1950s claimed to be national in scope but were essentially concerned with developments and events in Ontario. It was not until the 1980s and 1990s that Canadian art educators began to examine the development of their field overall. There are institutional histories (McGregor 1979; MacPhee 1990; Soucy and Pearse 1992; O’Brien 1998) and several articles on aspects of the history of art education in Canada (Chalmers 1984, 1985; Soucy 1989; Pearse and Soucy 1987; Pearse 1992). American anthologies contain chapters on Canadian subjects by Canadian authors (Soucy and Stankiewicz 1990; Bolin, Blandy, and Congdon 2000). Roger Clark’s book Art Education: A Canadian Perspective (1994) presents a more complete overview of the periods covered by Gaitskell and Saunders and brings the sketch up to the late twentieth century with a useful compilation of references. Like earlier authors writing about the role of art in Canadian schools, his view is influenced by his experience in the Ontario system. More recent work by the American, Peter Smith (1996) and the Canadian F. Graeme Chalmers (1998) has extended and diversified our knowledge of people, institutions, and issues within the general history of art educa-

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tion. Still, no publication focuses on the history of art education in this country, whether from the perspective of a specialized discipline or as part of the nation’s visual culture. This volume attempts to fill that void.

from drawing to art education (19850s to early 1900s) One way to organize a history is by periods, the approach taken by Tait (1956). The periods he outlines are the “practical-vocational” (1845 to 1900); the period of the “adult artist” (1900 to 1937); and the period of “child art” (1937 to 1956). Tait’s periods and descriptors are still useful, although contemporary art education historians usually begin earlier. During the colonial period in what are now Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes, the apprenticeship system whereby a master artist or craftsman would train or mentor a young student in exchange for labour could be seen as a kind of art education. In fields such as church decoration, wood carving, cabinet making, silver and tin smithing, and decorative ironwork, the apprenticeship system served to preserve traditions and styles imported from Europe while establishing local conventions and practices. In the early eighteenth century, informal and private instruction, usually of young ladies as “a polite accomplishment,” was offered for a fee by local or itinerant artists (Soucy 1987) or in convent schools (MacPhee 1990). Ryan observes that “a young lady seeking an education in Halifax in 1830 might peruse the daily paper, the Nova Scotian, and select from several advertisements the school of her choice”(Ryan 1985, 42). Such private “schools,” run by educated males or enterprising matrons, often in partnership with their daughters, offered instruction in English grammar and geography as well as decorative handiwork for the home including plain and fancy needlework and embroidery, singing, speaking, and dancing skills along with drawing and painting. Drawing would be landscape or botanical drawing and painting would be watercolours, offered as “disciplines of cultural refinement” (Soucy 1987b, 2). Such pursuits were seen as suitable for middle and upperclass ladies. From its beginnings in Canada art education has gender and cultural associations. Practical and linear drawing was the domain of young males and this mix of moral and skill education was the approach to drawing advocated in the mid-nineteenth century by the mechanics’ institutes, described in rich detail by Chalmers in chapter 2.

Introduction

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1.1 Walter Smith, Detail of a painting by George Bartlett (location unknown). (Photograph in the collection of Graeme Chalmers, Vancouver, British Columbia)

Through an examination of the workings of the Mechanics’ Institute in Barrie Ontario, he presents a fascinating picture of one institute’s struggle to provide a practical and morally upright education for workingclass men through, among other things, courses in mechanical drawing and industrial art. Chalmers questions the motivations of this and other nineteenth-century benevolent and self-improvement movements in Canada and Britain as he frames the phenomenon in terms of social control. The art education narrative firmly takes hold in the mid to late nineteenth century with the introduction of linear drawing for vocational goals in state-sponsored schools. Egerton Ryerson is credited with having introduced linear drawing into the schools of Ontario, then Upper Canada, in the mid-1850s and with forming an “Education Museum for Upper Canada in 1856” (Gaitskell 1948, 2). The inspiration was the South Kensington School in Britain, the centre of that

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nation’s system of art and design schools. Like South Kensington, Ryerson’s museum came to house a full collection of plaster casts. Connected with the Department of Education, its purpose was the promotion of the arts, sciences, literature, and school architecture. In the 1880s instruction manuals written and marketed by the ubiquitous Walter Smith, a South Kensington alumnus, were adopted for school use by provincial governments in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia. Smith’s influence was “considerable,” claims Chalmers (1998, 55) adding that in “Quebec especially, his drawing manuals were viewed as catechisms” (p. 55). In chapters 3 and 4 Stirling describes how the South Kensington system and Smith’s influence permeated postsecondary art and design education in both Quebec and Ontario during this period and how the systems in each province evolved in different ways. These chapters give insight into the ways and extent that political, economic, and cultural factors, artistic biases and predilections, and postsecondary pedagogical practices can lay the groundwork for public school curricula. Although the assumption that drawing was a useful industrial skill justified its inclusion as a school subject, there was also a prevalent Victorian belief that drawing in its academic form and the study of art (preferably classical and renaissance art) would lead to “cultural refinement” and “moral elevation.” These values are reflected vividly in an 1879 letter written by Halifax civil engineer Emil Vossnack to the Nova Scotia Council of Public Instruction and the City of Halifax School Commissioners: The moral elevation which results from familiarity with beauty and grace in nature and art is also a considerable element in (drawing) instruction, not to be under-valued, but the most hopeful immediate consequences are to be looked for in the improved efficiency of Canadian artisans – a life question for them – whose field of opportunity will be enlarged in proportion as their fingers are trained to deftly execute the commands of an observing eye; eye and hand being especially educated in drawing. (Vossnack 1879, 3)

Chalmers notes that “where ‘beauty’ and ‘grace’ were included in drawing curricula, these concepts followed learning to draw straight lines, curved lines and vases with ‘subtlety of proportion’” (1998, 50). Indeed, the first lesson was usually to draw and then dissect a series of straight lines, probably the source of that hackneyed excuse for lack of ability or interest in art “I can’t draw a straight line!” Drawing instruc-

Introduction

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tion was rule-bound, governed by the approved drawing manual and overseen by drawing masters, preferably with credentials from the British South Kensington art and design school system. Conformity was valued over individuality. An exemplar of the coexistence of industrial drawing and “fine art,” or “academic,” drawing in the late nineteenth century was Halifax’s Victoria School of Art and Design (vsad).1 Founded in 1887 during Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee year, its mandate was to ”provide technical instruction and art culture to persons employed in the various trades and manufactures” and to “open up new and remunerative employment for women.” In addition it aimed to “prepare the teachers of the province for the teaching of industrial drawing in the Public Schools and to educate public taste by establishing exhibitions and classes in the fine arts as far as possible.”2 In other words, its dual goals were to sharpen the skills of industrial designers and to provide instruction in the fine and decorative arts. A cofounder and one of the directors of the school was Anna Leonowens, who lived in Halifax from 1876 to 1897, and who had taught at the court of the king of Siam from 1862to 1867. Leonowens embodied the Victorian ideal of education for social improvement. In 1887 she brought her international experience and perspective to a fundraising campaign that included her lectures to community groups, an art loan exhibition and a formal Jubilee Ball. Another founder and director of the school was Alexander McKay, its long-standing secretary and supervisor for the Board of School Commissioners for the City of Halifax. Much of the impetus for introducing drawing in the public schools and maintaining the art school came from this eloquent bureaucrat, and not from the artist and South Kensington graduate Principal George Harvey. McKay’s contributions and influence, along with those of other latenineteenth and early-twentieth-century educator-administrators in the Maritimes, Ontario, and British Columbia, are described in chapter 5. Chalmers (1993) also points out that the South Kensington trained artist-draughtsmen were not the only ones responsible for initiating drawing programs in Canada. He suggests that much of the credit for instituting Ryerson’s South Kensington-like project in Ontario should go to S. Passmore May, the superintendent of Ontario Art Schools, Mechanics’ Institutes, and public libraries, who was responsible for, among other things, the Educational Museum, the Canadian contribution to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876 and from 1880 to 1905.

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emulating the adult artist: 1 9 0 0 to t h e 1 9 3 0 s In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the practical and manipulative arts and active learning for children and youth were receiving attention. The idea that it was “not natural for a child to learn only from books” and that valuable learning occurred through the senses and physical activity was inherent in the educational philosophies of Rousseau, Pestolozi, and Froebel and was in turn adopted by the Child Study Movement (Johnson 1968, 86). Manual training was therefore advocated as a necessary element in the curriculum.3 The surge of interest in manual training courses and schools (which included crafts such as woodworking, pottery, and textile work) served to confuse the role in schools of drawing and art, which shared common roots and justifications, in particular those of the British Arts and Crafts movement and William Morris and John Ruskin’s aesthetic and social philosophies. In chapter 5 I discuss this uneasy relationship. There is a gentle irony in the observation that practical and activitybased education was disseminated through books. By the turn of the century drawing books had found their ways into most elementary school classrooms. Essentially copybooks with printed exemplars and blank spaces for the pupils’ work, drawing books were being written by Canadian authors and printed by Canadian publishers, replacing the British and American imports. The earlier practice of printing foreign works in Canadian cities, as with Smith’s 1887 Teachers’ Manual for Freehand Drawing printed in St John, New Brunswick, by the MacMillan Company, gave way to publishing homegrown products. For example, McFaul’s Public School Drawing Course and Casselman’s High School Drawing Course were both published in the 1880s in Toronto and authorized for school use in British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Ontario. Nevertheless, Boston-based Prang kept its niche in the Canadian market with Prang’s new graded course: Drawing for Canadian Schools, published in Toronto by W.J. Gage in 1901. This book, like the 1914 edition of Prang’s Graphic Drawing Books, was authorized in schools in Saskatchewan (Messer 1973) Alberta, and Nova Scotia, and probably other provinces. Tait calls the era from 1900 to 1937 the “adult artist period.” He describes that period in Ontario as one in which the province left pioneering days behind and began, rather self-consciously, to take an interest in culture. At the turn of the century “drawing” in schools

Introduction

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became “art” and professional artists were looked to for leadership in art education. The task of the student was to emulate the skills of an adult artist. The embodiment of official art education in this period is the Ontario Teachers’ Manuals, Art (1916), a volume of 335 pages, a few in colour. Authorized by the Ontario Minister of Education and distributed throughout Canada by the T. Eaton Company, best known as a national department store chain and for its profusely illustrated catalogues, it epitomized the technical and adult approach to art education, reflecting the thought and practice of the professional artist. It nurtured the stereotype of art as a series of isolated skills and presented the task of the student as an emulator of the accomplished adult artist. While prescribed for Saskatchewan schools (among others), its use “was not frequent because it meant the activities prescribed for forms, junior and senior, did not fit the grade system used on the prairies. It had to be translated to the American system. It was of little or no use to the busy teacher in a rural school who had no time to study the application of single grades compared with forms for all grades. What is worse, most of those teachers had never had any help in building up the competence of themselves or the children” (Messer 1985, 5). The goals enshrined in the Ontario manual and provincial curriculum material were seldom (if ever) achieved. Rogers notes the discrepancy between “what was advised and achieved”: “The bc official curriculum, after 1924, was wedded to school art education notions that had been current in Britain at the turn of the century. That in Ontario owed more to American theory, while New Brunswick remained in the iron clutches of the outmoded copy book. Nevertheless, what went on in their schools probably had much more in common than did those provinces’ diverse curricula” (Rogers 1990, 153). It is interesting to note that when Alberta became a province in 1905 and established a provincial department of education, its public school curriculum included a full-blown drawing program. From 1885 to the late 1890s, when Alberta, along with Saskatchewan and Manitoba, was part of the Northwest Territory, the Walter Smith drawing books and manuals were the approved texts.4 Like the programs in effect in Ontario and British Columbia, those in the new province of Alberta “were to be taught as ‘added means of expression’ in which pupils were to draw in their blank books after observing solids and objects” (Charles 1958, 54). As was the case in Ontario at the time, the program consisted of six courses, or “standards,” the first four of which dealt with “the teaching of geometric forms from the type solids

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From Drawing to Visual Culture

and objects” – i.e., triangle, square rectangle, from sphere, cylinder, and cube and their variations: spheroid, ellipsoid, cone, pyramid, etc. (ibid., 7–8). Standards five and six were “designed as courses in representation, construction and decoration” and were “obligatory subjects and terminated by Departmental examination” (ibid., 8). In each of the standards “pupils did illustrative sketching in connection with nature study” (ibid., 8). The Prang New Graded Course for Drawing in Canadian Schools was the approved text. Forbes notes that “the program did not change a great deal in the years immediately following 1906” (Forbes 1951, 56). The 1912 annual report for the provincial department of education showed that drawing was still included in all grades from one to eight and in the high school in grades nine and ten. The report included a description of “Manual Training and Household Science” courses, which Forbes regards as “in effect a recognition of the fact that work in three-dimensional media had some value for the school child” (ibid., 57). While it seems that the drawing courses still emphasized skill over expression, Forbes saw in the report “indications that a new type of thinking was influencing those responsible for the art or drawing course.” Thus he quotes: “The object of the course is to develop ideas in masses, lines and colours, to increase the capacity of the pupils for the enjoyment of art, and of nature through art; and to develop taste and accuracy in industrial work” (Alberta 1912, 115, cited in Forbes, 1951, 57). The second annual Summer School for Teachers in Alberta held in 1914 provided several courses related to art and its teaching, recognizing the need for more and better training in this field (Alberta 1914, 58). One of the courses, Art Methods ii, used as a text the American Arthur Wesley Dow’s Theory and Practice of Teaching Art (Forbes, 1951, 60). Dow’s teaching and writing, in particular his book Composition (1913), revolutionized art education by presenting art in terms of structure and design, as opposed to copying and representation. It was not until 1936, however, that Dow’s book was approved as a teacher reference and 1938 as a text for the grade ten level (Alberta School Curriculum Historical Bibliography 1885–1985). The 1918 summer school included seven art courses (two levels each of art methods, design, drawing, and painting, along with mechanical drawing) and awarded a “Special Certificate” in Elementary Art (Forbes 1951, 61). These courses as well as Dow’s influence indicate a change of orientation in Alberta’s approach to art education and a valuing of trained art teachers.

Introduction

13

By 1922, among the technical and special courses available to Albertan students, art was the most popular. A survey of fifty town and city schools that year “showed that 3,873 students took art as a subject in the three grades 9 [compulsory] 10, 11” (ibid., 62). Physical education was a close second. At the time art and manual training were recognized as requirements for high-school students entering Normal School. The 1924 high-school program included sections on colour theory, appreciation of fine art and architecture, and picture study. Forbes points out that “in the 1927 Programme creativeness was regarded as one of the prime aims in the art course, but it was last on the list which included things such as skills and knowledge” (ibid., 63). In the 1920s in Newfoundland, which was still a British colony, art was generally still referred to as “Drawing and Art.” While singing and drawing had been taught in some schools as part of the regular school curriculum since the 1880s, few teachers outside of St John’s would have been qualified to teach art. By 1902 the government, under the Council of Higher Education, was providing guidelines for an art curriculum in the schools that was similar to the South Kensington system and subject to government examination. By 1927–28 art was included at the senior matriculation level. The syllabus required students in their final exam to show competence in drawing a group of models or common objects in light and shade; drawing of plant forms from memory; elementary design; and drawing a still-life group in watercolour (Newfoundland 1927–1928). Unlike those for Alberta, the Newfoundland guidelines made no mention of “creativity.” As “drawing” in schools became “art” at the turn of the century, professional artists were looked to for leadership in art education. As Stirling describes in chapter 3, art schools flourished in Ontario from 1875 to 1900. At the peak there were eight, but by 1906 there were two, one in Toronto, the Central Ontario School of Art and Industrial Art (now the Ontario College of Art and Design) and the other in Hamilton. Gaitskell (1948) credits the increased attention given to drawing in public schools as the reason for this decline, or rather consolidation. More directly, Clark (1994, 4) sites the steady growth of technically oriented “Ontario flagship art departments” prior to World War ii, which were located in large technical secondary schools in Toronto (Central, Danforth, Northern, and Western), Hamilton (Central), and London (Beal). It is during the 1900–37 period that the other Canadian art schools were founded: the Winnipeg School of Art in 1913, the Écoles des

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From Drawing to Visual Culture

Beaux Arts in Montreal and Quebec in 1922, the Vancouver School of Art in 1925, and Calgary’s Alberta College of Art in 1926. A parallel development could be traced in the history of the country’s Normal Schools, founded in the mid-nineteenth century. Most had their name changed to “teachers’ college” by the late 1950s and had disappeared by the 1970s, having been transformed into (or swallowed by) university faculties of education. The last, and one of the first, was the Nova Scotia Teachers College; founded in 1855, it closed in 1997. Art was always part of the Normal School curriculum. The Nova Scotia Normal School offered art instruction from 1860 onwards (Soucy 1985). The British Columbia Normal School had its first art master in 1900 brought out, like most, from Britain. After the First World War when Saskatchewan opened its Normal School in Saskatoon, the art instructor, Miss E.E. Rankin, a primary teacher transferred from Regina, “had a beautifully appointed art room” (Messer 1985, 3). Summer schools for teachers were another important factor in the preparation of teachers for the changing art curricula. Particularly popular were courses offered by Bill Weston, art master at the Vancouver Normal School from 1914 to 1946 (Rogers 1990). In Ontario, under C.D. Gaitskell’s leadership, summer schools were the main (and very successful) form of art teacher education.

art educati o n i n th e era o f c h i l d a rt ( 1 9 3 0 s to t h e 1 9 5 0 s ) The writers of Nova Scotia’s Department of Education Handbook to the Course of Study (1935) in introducing the section “Art and Handwork Grades i to vi,” could state with confidence: No defense has to be offered for providing drawing and handwork in each grade of the common or elementary school. This matter has been fought out during the last fifty years and the question settled definitely. On all grounds these activities have been accepted so that their position at present is firmly fixed in the modern curriculum. The value of selected handicrafts and drawing in helping to develop all the tastes and powers of each pupil cannot be overestimated. Education which is confined to books alone is likely to stifle the ambition and interest of all except a very few. Handwork related to other school subjects and expressing the individual interests and abilities of the child is the best way in which he can vitalize the content of the other things taught him in the school. (Nova Scotia 1935, 427)

Introduction

15

While art and related activities had assumed an established role in public education, the values they embodied were clearly utilitarian. According to the Handbook, art and “handwork” were not only “the principal means of motor training in the elementary school” but also possessed “deep social significance because they introduce the pupils to some of the arts and crafts on which modern civilization is founded and give him some appreciation of the dignity of worthy labour” (ibid., 431). Moreover, art activities “are rich in opportunities to develop the qualities of ingenuity, initiative, resourcefulness and self reliance” (ibid.). The handbook sets these objectives in geographical, historical, and nationalistic context. The pioneer life that has prevailed in Canada in past generations has naturally produced these qualities in its people and the schools should guarantee their active persistence for they are too precious to be allowed to dwindle. Education must also awake and develop the latent abilities for appreciating and creating beautiful things which the material development of our country has stifled in some definite measure. (Ibid.)

These are ambitious goals. Such curricular statements indicate progressivist thinking and an acknowledgment of the importance of a child’s active participation in the learning process and of the educational benefits for children of visual art. The art that is referred to, however, is modelled after the art of competent adults. Lessons in picture study are encouraged, and the Canadian published texts Grayson’s Picture Appreciation for the Elementary School (1929) and for the high school (1932) and McLennan’s Children’s Artist Friends (1931) for grades one and two are on the recommended list. Even in these books examples of painting by Canadian artists are scarce.5 The Newfoundland government was happy to report that in 1937 music, art, and handwork were being taught in the elementary as well as ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades in many schools and were being introduced gradually to all grades (Newfoundland 1938). Drawing from memory and imagination had a place in the subject that by 1935 was uniformly called “art.” In 1937 a Newfoundland-wide exhibition of handwork received favourable comments. A comprehensive art resource book for teachers titled Handbook: Art and Handwork appeared in 1939. It was designed to be worked through sequentially from grades one to nine and remained the recommended guide well into the 1950s. By 1949, the year that Newfoundland joined the Canadian

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From Drawing to Visual Culture

1.2 Arthur Lismer at the Victoria School of Art and Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1917. (Collection of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University)

confederation, the syllabus remained essentially unchanged although condensed in outline to five topics: design, still life, illustration of a simple scene, perspective, and lettering. On the examination students could respond to questions in any of those areas and had a choice of media (as long as it was pen, pencil, crayon, or brush). The notion that the art of children could be considered art in its own right blossomed from the 1930s into the 1950s with the development and spread of child art and progressive education ideas and practices. Growing out of the work of Franz Cizek in Vienna in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and fuelled by the Child Study Movement and the theories of John Dewey, the idea that the artwork of children had its own character and integrity gradually took hold. Since art was by then regarded as a part of everyday

Introduction

17

living, it followed that it should be an integral (i.e., “integrated”) part of school programs. The work of Arthur Lismer in Toronto and later in Montreal put Canada on the international “child art” map and eventually influenced practice in Canadian schools. The seeds were sown by Lismer as early as 1917 in his Saturday children’s class in Halifax where he was principal of the Victoria School of Art and Design (Pearse and Soucy 1987). His philosophy and practice blossomed in the mid-1920s in his children’s classes at the Art Gallery of Toronto and reached full flower with children’s classes and a teacher training program at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from 1942 through the 1950s to the mid-1960s. (Sherman and Lemerise 1990; Robertson 1993). The inspiration, of course, was Franz Cizek’s juvenile art classes in Vienna. Although Lismer never visited Cizek’s classes, as many North American and British educators did, he arranged for a large travelling exhibition of Cizek’s students’ work to be shown at the Toronto Art Gallery in 1927. Lismer’s public lectures on the subject and his leadership of summer courses for teachers in Ontario from 1921 to 1932 are considered to be “a factor in the revision of the art courses in 1937 and 1938” (Tait 1957, 9). Lismer travelled widely in Canada and abroad, crossing the country several times by train between 1932 and 1939, stopping at small and large centres informing and charming his audiences with his talks on Canadian art and “Children and Art.” To Lismer, art was “more than a subject for the talented few”; it was “a way of developing the instinct for beauty and emotional responsiveness” (Lismer 1935, 38). He liked to say in his lectures that art not only had a social function, art was a social function and production was life (McLeish 1955; Pearse 1992). Art was the universal principle he sought in his youth and art education for children was the medium through which it flourished. Spreading this message and acting it out was his way of being socially and morally responsive and responsible. Arthur Lismer was a spirited speaker and a member of the Group of Seven painters who advocated a distinctive approach to portraying the rugged landscape of the Dominion. Indeed, Lismer and his career as an artist and educator are in many respects emblematic of art education in Canada. Lismer’s life (1885–1969) spanned much of the period considered in this history. His own art training as a youth in Sheffield, England, in the late nineteenth century reflects the methods and practices typical of that time and parallels the drawing (and later art) education in nineteenth-century Canada discussed in this volume. While

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From Drawing to Visual Culture

Lismer’s contributions and influences are described either directly or indirectly in the chapters that follow, for a vivid and detailed portrait of Lismer the artist-teacher and, as a subtext, aspects of the history of evolving art education theories and practice in Canada and abroad, the reader is referred to Angela Nairne Grigor’s encyclopedic Arthur Lismer: Visionary Art Educator (2002). Considering Canadian art education through Arthur Lismer’s writing, ideas, and teaching methods provides continuity as well as insights – in particular that tension between a child-centred approach more suited to a non-school environment (such as college or art gallery Saturday classes) and the more structured, subject-centred approach favoured by public schools. That “child art” eventually made its way into the schools attests to the power of the idea and the influence of advocates like Lismer, his associates, and students. There is, of course, an irony in the observation that Canada’s best-known and most-influential art educator never taught in a public school. But it also shows that schools have never been the only places for providing art education. In the summer of 1934 another child art promoter, the British teacher and author Marion Richardson, also traversed Canada by train lecturing on her innovative teaching methods and showing lantern slides of her pupils’ artwork (Richardson 1948). Her trip, organized by the National Gallery of Canada and sponsored by the Carnegie Trust, allowed her to speak to the public and to teachers at the university summer schools in Edmonton, Saskatoon, Vancouver, and Victoria. Richardson, supervisor of art in the London County Council schools, told packed audiences that “the object of teaching art was to provide the child with a means of expression” and that “children’s art is the first direct way of getting an understanding of adult or mature art” (Daily Colonist, Victoria, British Columbia, Thursday, 2 August 1934). Beyond describing the ways in which young children make art, she advocated a pedagogy that stressed individual personal emotional and intellectual growth in students of all ages. One of the attendees at Richardson’s 1934 Toronto workshop was Mackie Cryderman, the woman who ran the art department at H.B. Beal Technical and Commercial High School in London, Ontario. Cryderman was very impressed and “responded immediately to the new philosophy of studentfocused teaching in which free self-expression was encouraged” (O’Brien 1998, 27). Even in the context of Beal’s vocational art department (later known and highly respected as Bealart), the “practicalvocational” nature of art and how it was taught was changing.

Introduction

19

A pioneer of child art in Canada, Norman Bethune is better known as a surgeon, inventor, medical writer and theorist, lecturer, social reformer, soldier in the Spanish civil war, and doctor in Mao’s revolutionary army in China, highly respected by the Chinese. He was also a teacher, poet, and painter. Living and working as a surgeon in Montreal in 1935, Bethune painted and befriended other artists. His association with the painters Fritz Brandtner and Marion Scott led to the creation of the Children’s Art Centre of Montreal, which operated out of Bethune’s living room. Brandtner had studied in Vienna under Cizek and told Bethune about the master’s art education theories and methods. Bethune saw a model for helping the children of the city’s slums by bringing to them the joy and creativity of the arts. Lemerise and Sherman discuss the symbiotic relationship between these and other artists and art educators in chapter 6. There was a radical, socially committed spirit associated with child art in Canada in the 1930s. Child art and subsequently art education, which as Panayotidis observes in chapter 7, was rooted in the social-aesthetic philosophies of the Arts and Crafts Movement and associated with social reconstruction discourses. Child art was regarded as a progressive, left-wing, bohemian idea – perhaps part of art education’s image problem in the later, more conservative decades of the twentieth century. The following summary relating to art education in Alberta could no doubt apply to public school art education in the country as a whole in the pre-World War ii period: The new approach to art education commenced in 1935, barely became established in the lower grades when it was interrupted by the war years. It is apparent that the senior art courses never did become what was intended of them, because of the resistance to change by the teachers, then because of the teachers by reason of the war, and finally because of the extreme teacher shortage ... Despite brief successes the resources available did not appear to be sufficient. War, economic depression and development hampered the development of art education. There was apparently an almost continuous shortage of suitable teachers qualified to teach art. Those who were sufficiently qualified seemed centred in the cities. (Charles 1958, 34, 35)

The extent to which a city art program can flourish is exemplified in Stephenson’s examination of art in one Vancouver school between 1920 and 1950 (chapter 8). Relying largely on interviews with students from that period and on school yearbooks, she constructs a portrait of

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From Drawing to Visual Culture

a school community in which art plays a vital and integrated role. She credits the impact and durability of the program to the commitment of generations of art teachers in providing art experiences for students both in the classroom and beyond. Although such exemplary programs did exist in the larger cities of the nation, “art education in Canada, at the end of the 1940s” was described succinctly by MacGregor as “a spotty and inconsistent activity, in which the provinces, by and large, espoused liberal philosophies and conducted conservative programs” (1979, 1).

the modern period: wo r l d wa r i i to t h e 1 9 7 0 s Although the child art crusaders worked outside the school system, their influence slowly filtered into the classroom. The momentum increased after the Second World War, aided partly by “foreign” writers like Herbert Read with his influential book Education through Art (1943; 1958)6 and Viktor Lowenfeld, author of Creative and Mental Growth (1947). These books were required reading for students in the fledgling art education program at the Nova Scotia College of Art in the early 1950s (Pearse 2000). As an art education student at the University of British Columbia in the early to mid-1960s, I was struck by “Sir Herbert’s” call for an art-centred education and quoted him regularly: Education is the fostering of growth, but apart from physical maturation, growth is only made apparent in expression – audible or visible signs and symbols. Education may therefore be defined as the cultivation of modes of expression – it is teaching children and adults how to make sounds, images, movements, tools and utensils. A man who can make such things well is a welleducated man. (Read 1943, 11, in Pearse, 1965, n.p.)

It follows that the aim of education is the creation of artists, people with keen aesthetic perception who are proficient in the various modes of expression (Pearse 1965). I took Read to mean that for the teacher of the visual arts, aesthetic perception implies a heightened awareness of environment, experienced through the personality and background of the individual, that can be expressed through various art media. The art teacher therefore must be educated in and a practitioner of an art or craft form, however broadly interpreted. These ideas were heady

Introduction

21

1.3 Charles Dudley Gaitskell. (Collection of the Canadian Society through Art)

stuff for a young student teacher, as were Lowenfeld’s child-centred synopsis of developmental stages; John Dewey’s notions of education for democracy and art and education as essential modes of experience; and Charles Gaitskell’s suggestions for bringing art to children and adolescents. As Arthur Lismer and his work defined the growth of child art in Canada, Charles Dudley Gaitskell gave shape to school-based art education in the postwar period. Gaitskell’s life and career can be seen as a counterpoint to Lismer’s. For one thing, Gaitskell worked for his entire life within the public education system. Born in England in 1908, he spent his youth on the coast of British Columbia and as a young man studied at the University of British Columbia, the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, and the Victoria Normal School.7 His teaching career took him from a one-room school in the interior of British Columbia to the position of supervisor of art for the Peace River Educational Area

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From Drawing to Visual Culture

during the mid-1930s and a similar position in the Powell River area from 1939 to 1944. In 1945 he moved east to begin work on a doctorate in Toronto. From the mid-1940s to his retirement in 1973 he worked in the Ontario Ministry of Education as director of art (the first appointment of its kind in Canada), principal of summer courses, and assistant superintendent in the Curriculum branch. He authored several books on art education (or rather coauthored – his wife Margaret was the chief researcher), including the worldwide best-seller, Children and their Art (1958).8 Gaitskell’s influence on the shape of art education in Ontario has been powerful, due both to his intelligence, political savvy, and charisma and to a centralized, government-dominated art-teacher education system. It is surprising, then, that Ontario did not emerge in the latter half of the twentieth century as a leader in art-education scholarship and postgraduate art education. Clark astutely describes in chapter 9 the various political and institutional factors that effectively inhibited the development of postsecondary, especially graduate, artteacher education programs and research in the province. Gaitskell’s influence internationally and nationally was also great, yet not so restrictive. By the early 1950s his writing had received international attention and he was asked by unesco in 1951 to direct a seminar in Bristol, England, on “the condition of art education in the world today” (Raunft 2001, 126). This brought him into contact with Herbert Read, who to Gaitskell was “a kindred spirit and a friend” (Macgregor 1979, 2). The Bristol meeting led to the formation of the British-based International Society for Education through Art (insea) and set the wheels in motion for the establishment of a Canadian version. Upon his return to Canada, on the advice of Dr J.D. Althouse, then director of the Ontario Department of Education and president of the Canadian Education Association, Gaitskell used the association’s annual conference as a venue to hold initial meetings of educators interested in forming a national art education association. From 1952 to 1954 he met and corresponded with national leaders in the field, notably Wynona Mulcaster of the Saskatoon Normal School, Murray MacDonald, supervisor of art for the Edmonton Public Schools, and Howard Dierlam, a teacher who eventually became director of arts and crafts for the city of Toronto. Their efforts culminated in the creation of the Canadian Society for Education through Art (csea) in 1955 in Quebec City with Gaitskell elected as the first president. Canadian art educators now had a voice for their interests and concerns. Arthur Lismer was among the speakers at the inaugural conference, setting a

Introduction

23

trend for subsequent assemblies, which featured a range of leading and influential thinkers including Viktor Lowenfeld (1958, Toronto), Edwin Ziegfeld (1959, Montreal), Henry Shaefer-Simmern (1961, Windsor), Abraham Maslow (1962, Saskatoon), Sir Herbert Read (1963, Montreal), Buckminster Fuller (1973, Regina) and Marshall McLuhan (1974, Charlottetown). It is interesting to note that in the early years of the society (1956 to 1960), the honorary members, individuals cited for their promotion of art education values, were known primarily as artists or as National Gallery directors (Arthur Lismer, Lawren Harris, Anne Savage, Charles Comfort, Alan Jarvis), whereas all subsequent honory members have been professional art educators.9 Rooted in child art and progressive education, a movement that stretched from the 1920s through the 1950s, art education in Canada in what might be called the modern period (postwar to 1980) is characterized by an interest in the organizing principles of art and design combined uneasily with theories of creativity. Dewey’s ideas about art, education, and democracy, Read’s call for education through art, and Lowenfeld’s non-interventionist views of child art coexisted with a curriculum and practice that valued Bauhaus theories of art and design. Art was seen as a relationship with materials and organized, almost scientific, experimentation with their properties. Art programs encouraged explorations involving clay, textiles, wood, wire, and a variety of papers and paints. Students made colour wheels, tonal studies, and panels that illustrated a variety of textures, shapes, and lines. The influence of Bauhaus designers, artists, and teachers who fled from Europe to North America just prior to, during, and after the Second World War was great. The idea of there being “visual fundamentals” and a “foundation” of knowledge and skills for art education was directly transported to art schools and adapted to secondary art programs. A version of the theory eventually reached the elementary grades in spite of Gaitskell’s claim in 1969 that “we do not teach principles of design to our children” but rather encourage them to “deduce their own from their experience” (Gaitskell 1984, 9). These practices were buttressed by the theories of the American humanistic psychologists Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, who spoke of necessary conditions for creativity and of self-actualization. All of these elements and others were absorbed and reflected in a steady stream of books and articles in the journals of the American National Art Education Association (naea) and keynote addresses at the annual csea conferences that helped spread the ideas and careers of a growing number of American art edu-

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From Drawing to Visual Culture

cators including Edwin Ziegfeld, Victor D’Amico, Manual Barkin, Edmund Feldman, Vincent Lanier, and Elliot Eisner. By the early seventies America had replaced Britain as the major source of art education influence. Stephenson notes in chapter 8 that bc teacher-artists Bob Steele and James Gray consider the period from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s to have been a kind of “golden age” of school art in that province. Similarly, in Clark’s estimation (chapter 9), the 1950s under Gaitskell can be considered a prime era for art education in Ontario. In these “golden years,” principals tended to support art teachers by recognizing their subject as a necessary part of a well-rounded education. However, the launching of Sputnik in 1957 ushered in the space race and strengthened the emphasis on science education. The role of art as a school subject became compromised. In bc the Chant Royal Commission relegated art to the “non-academic” stream. Art educators responded to this attempt at marginalization by arguing that art is training in creative thinking and problem solving and should thus be included in the school curriculum. Ironically, this period saw the spread of art programs at all levels in schools across the country, a trend that peaked in the mid-1970s and diminished in the early 1980s. The situation described in this report from Nova Scotia was typical: Art programs in Nova Scotian schools have greatly increased since the mid1960s. In 1967 there were fewer than 25 specialist art teachers in schools throughout the province. By 1977 there were 100 more with approximately 130 estimated at that time. The growth of programs, as well as the availability of trained teachers, spread rapidly during the early and mid 1970s. Yet in 1979, the growth had not only stopped, but was abruptly reversed with some programs being curtailed as a result of declining enrollments. If art teachers were not actually cut, those who left were not replaced. Some boards tended to shift teacher assignments within their jurisdiction, with the result that more unprepared teachers found themselves in front of art classes. (Pearse 1980, 55)

At least some of the growth in the 1960s and 1970s can be attributed to the growing interest in arts and culture, not to mention a booming economy and a general sense of optimism, engendered by Expo 67 and Canada’s centennial celebrations. Rapid technological developments in colour printing made the mass distribution of colour images affordable, narrowing the time gap between the appearance of

Introduction

25

new art movements and their influence on school art curricula. This era also witnessed the development of post secondary fine arts degree programs at the undergraduate level; the introduction of Master of Fine Arts (mfa) and Master of Arts (ma) programs in Canadian universities, and the decline of the Normal Schools. In the mid-1960s bfa (Bachelor of Fine Arts) and ma in Art Education programs began and flourished at Sir George Williams University (later Concordia) in Montreal and bfa programs in Fine Arts and in Art Education were initiated at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax with master’s degrees following within ten years. There has been an intriguing symbiosis between the growth of art in public schools and in postsecondary schools of art. Similarly, a number of well-known Canadian artists (in addition to the ubiquitous Lismer) are noted for their interest in and promotion of art education for children and youth both inside and outside of schools. Lemerise and Sherman (chapter 6) describe how this phenomenon appeared in Quebec in the 1930s when the modernist Montreal artists Fritz Brandtner and Marion Scott, with Dr Norman Bethune, founded a children’s art school. Other examples from Quebec include the artist and teacher Paul-Émile Borduas, leader of the Automatistes and champion of children’s spontaneous art making ,and the Montreal painter and teacher Anne Savage, both active in the 1940s and 1950s. Similar examples can be found in other parts of the country. In Ontario we see artists highly regarded as teachers and with a profound commitment to art education, for example Jock MacDonald and Doris McCarthy in Toronto and the painter-teacher Eric Atkinson in London. In Vancouver, spanning the deacdes from the 1920s to 1990s we see artists ranging from William Weston to Jack Shadbolt, Sam Black, Gordon Smith, and Bob Steele. Artist Claude Rousell of Moncton, New Brunswick, was a tireless advocate for art in Acadian schools from the 1960s to the 1990s. The prairie painter Otto Rogers and the Emma Lake School of artists had a profound influence on the shape of art education in Saskatchewan and Alberta in the 1960s and 1970s through both their art and their teaching practices. It seems that this relationship between artists and art education became institutionalized in the second half of twentieth century starting with the 1949 Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, whose report gave birth to the Canada Council, and continuing with the Canadian Conference of the Arts (cca). Through these vehicles artists and arts groups expressed a paternal interest in the need for

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From Drawing to Visual Culture

the presence of more art, and presumably better art teaching in the public schools. To achieve these ends they advocated increased government support and funding for artists-in-schools programs. The 1970s saw a growth of art education programs in Canada’s public art galleries and museums.10 Traditionally, the functions of art museums have been collection, preservation, display, and interpretation, “usually listed in descending order of priority” (MacDonnell 1978, 9). While an educational function was assumed, it was relatively passive and built on the premise that if works were displayed and perhaps minimally labelled, and the public given access to contemplate them, appreciation and enlightenment would ensue. This elitist stance gradually gave way during the twentieth century to a realization that since public support was necessary for the institutions’ survival, the public’s needs must be met through educational programming. Moreover, it could not be assumed that the public, including school children, had the knowledge and skills to understand and appreciate art. In the effort to reach a broader public and sustain and develop sound practice in such areas as lectures, studio classes, and guided tours, art gallery boards and directors began to realize that they could not rely solely on volunteers, known as “docents,” but had to hire and nurture appropriately trained educational staff. Increasingly, educational activities in art galleries extended beyond the Saturday morning children’s classes pioneered by Lismer in Toronto and Montreal and popular at institutions such as the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Hamilton in the 1950s and 1960s when fostering children’s creative expression was seen as the key to their learning to appreciate and value art. By the 1970s art educators realized that children’s creative growth need not be inhibited or stilted by exposure to art by adults and that indeed, artists, art critics, and art historians were all appropriate to be models (Barkan 1966). In addition to being producers of art, children had “tremendous creative potentials as intelligent viewers, perceptive critics, and sensitive interpreters of the arts” (Feldman 1970, vi). Stimulated by a tendency in American art education towards what was known as aesthetic education and energized by the groundbreaking work of a growing network of art gallery educators, public school educators were becoming introduced to strategies through which children could be actively engaged in looking at and responding to art. For many Canadian children a school-initiated visit to a local art gallery was their first authentic experience with art objects. The art gallery, its educational staff, and

Introduction

27

its visual resources were becoming key and essential elements of art education in Canada.

the late modern and postmodern era ( 1 9 8 0 s to t h e p r e s e n t ) Since 1980 the csea has opened each decade by inviting a prominent art educator to convene a panel of practitioners from across the country “to describe events and trends in their immediate surroundings” and “to essay a few predictions on how things might look at the end of the decade” (MacGregor 1992, 4). Ten years later MacGregor summed up the first session: I identified four focuses that seemed to have relevance for art educators in the 1980s. The first was political, and the point was made that provincial associations should be more active in lobbying for the realization of their goals. The second was curricular, and dealt with the need for a balanced curriculum in which production, history and criticism received a share of attention. The third was directed towards art teaching, and the need to consider teacher education as something ongoing in a teacher’s professional life, rather than simply a preservice phase. The fourth was the emergence of an expanded definition of art education to include gallery programs and early childhood programs. (Ibid)

These four points were still priorities in the 1990s (Irwin 1992, 44). Art educators had to be fierce advocates as all regions experienced losses in programs, or at least the threat of loss, due to the vagaries and fluctuations of the national and local economies and political influences. One often heard about “times of financial restraint,” “accountability,” and “partnerships.” Irwin notes that as “provincial governments changed, thus bringing new parties into power, philosophical shifts were introduced and forged into some new curriculum documents, only to be overturned by the next change of government” (1999, 30). Nevertheless, several provinces had secured art education’s place as a component of the common core curriculum across all grade levels and by the mid-1990s British Columbia, Ontario, and Nova Scotia could boast a compulsory fine arts credit for high school graduation. Art education in the late modern and postmodern eras can be described as an amalgam of child-centred modernist philosophies and practices, Bauhaus-engendered “art fundamental” theories laced with

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From Drawing to Visual Culture

American Discipline Based Art Education (dbae) and a Canadianized version of “Arts Education,” enlivened with a dash of multiculturalism. As defined by the Getty Institute (Greer 1984), dbae recognizes four traditional “disciplines of art” – studio practice, art criticism, art history, and aesthetics. Each of these, claims dbae, is to be taught with an emphasis on a more academic, sequential, and evaluated curriculum. While dbae has become doctrinaire for most us curricula, its impact has been less direct in Canada, partly because of ineligibility for Getty funding but most likely because of our decentralized education system. Nevertheless, if Canadian curriculum documents do not dutifully follow the four-discipline model, they do tend to advocate a balanced approach of process and product that includes both making art and responding to art. As Irwin observes, in the 1980s “most provinces across Canada rewrote art education curricula and in so doing established a sequential nature to art education which included studio, art history, art criticism and aesthetics as part of the substantive content for all programs” (1999, 29). Moreover, there were usually calls to heed environmental, social, and multicultural considerations. In the 1990s educational materials emerged to encourage teachers “to raise issues and activities that address cultural pluralism, multiculturalism and aboriginality” (Ibid., 31). Unfortunately, there is little or no funding for implementation of such materials and as has often been the case, and indeed the fate of art education in Canada, school boards are left to their own resources. One discernible impact of the Discipline Based Art Education approach has been the fostering of “a new relationship between museums and schools” (Stephen 1997, 248). Since the late 1970s educators in art galleries and museums have been concerned with promoting “visual literacy” and have pioneered strategies of art criticism expanding on Feldman’s technique involving description, analysis, interpretation, and judgment (MacDonnell 1978; Feldman 1970). dbae gave a compelling curricular context for responding to art and galleries provided a practical forum and reasonably accessible site for addressing dbae concerns. As well as contact with “the real thing,” galleries could make available to schools “materials specific to collections and exhibitions at the gallery and accessible to local area schools” (Stephen 1997, 251). In order to be able to accommodate their changing roles and functions, museum and gallery educators were “now expected to have formal training and experience as educators as well as in art history and/or studio” (ibid., 248).

Introduction

29

In some provinces, most notably Saskatchewan and parts of Ontario (Clark 1994), the visual arts are taught as one of the “arts,” which include music, dance, drama, and perhaps even literature, film, photography, and computer arts. While some see this trend as further evidence of the dilution of visual arts, others herald it as a kind of liberation. The arts as a curricular component are most firmly established in Saskatchewan, a province with a tradition of collectivity and collaborative action. From the mid-1970s to 1996 the Saskatchewan Department of Education constructed a coherent arts education framework in a process involving the cooperation of teams of teachers, school administrators, university faculty members, professional artists, and members of the arts community at large (Hanson, Bush, and Browne 1998). Implemented from grades one to twelve and developed for use by generalist classroom teacher and specialist alike, the curriculum consists of four discrete “strands”: visual art, dance, drama, and music. Each receives fifty minutes per week of instruction time, and includes three components – the creative/productive; the cultural/historical; and the critical/responsive with required learning of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. An important aspect of the Saskatchewan arts curriculum is that it includes Indian, Métis, and Inuit content and perspectives (ibid., 48). In other parts of Canada, perhaps the greatest value of the arts education movement has been as an advocacy tool. Art educators have found allies in educators and supporters of the other arts in their efforts to lobby governments and policy makers to preserve funding for existing programs or initiate new ones. In the 1980s support also came from an unlikely source, a cognitive psychologist affiliated with Harvard, Howard Gardner. His theory of multiple intelligences promotes an integrative approach to learning and suggests that art plays an important, or at least equal, role in the school curriculum as it represents a way of knowing the world (Gardner 1983, 1993). Gardner challenged the pre-eminence of verbal and mathematical skill as the dominant methods of teaching and learning by providing a more complex vision of how people think and learn. He divides intelligence into eight domains, each representing the biological and psychological potentials within each individual.11 The intelligence most closely associated with visual art is what he calls “visual-spatial intelligence.” By identifying distinct but interlocking intellectual capacities or “intelligences,” Gardner confirmed what many art educators suspected – that intelligence is a multidimensional phenomenon that is not fixed and

30

From Drawing to Visual Culture

can be enhanced. When an artist, or a student, is engaged in the artmaking process, several types of intelligence are in play. The implications for art’s role in the school curriculum are powerful. While “art as a distinct subject” is firmly established as an idea, if not always in actuality, in every provincial curriculum, and while being considered as part of a collective called “the arts” gives a kind of strength by association, there is a growing trend towards thinking of art and art education as part of a larger “visual culture.” This expanded view is an aspect of the impact of the decentred, pluralistic, postmodern perspective that is by its nature inclusive and absorbent (Pearse 1997b; Clark 1996). Art, in the broadest sense, has permeated the general culture and is accessible to children and youth through the media and advertising as well as computer and Web-based technology. The study of visual culture involves the critical analysis of the complex interaction of the form, content and context of works of art, craft, and design (including film, popular media, and advertising) with emphasis on social and historical contexts. According to Robert Belton, “the phrase, ‘visual culture’ indicates both the study of cultural artifacts that are experienced principally through vision and the changing attitude of their study, which is gradually reducing the traditional academic separation between high art and low art or popular culture” (Belton 2001, 7). Nowhere do the domains of “high art” and “low art” come together with greater frequency or impact than in the public school art classroom. It is the notion of “visual culture” that makes this volume possible. Art education, with its multidisciplinary nature – based in the fine, applied, and popular arts; drawing on art, craft, and design history, aesthetics, art criticism, art production, philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy; and addressing the education of adults and children, amateur and professional, specialist and generalist – is both a component of and a contributor to the country’s visual culture, not a separate and seemingly marginal discipline in school programs. Although it is not a comprehensive history, this volume gives a sense of the nature, scope, and range of art education’s evolution and changing place in Canadian society.

Recto Running Head

2 Learning to Draw at the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute f. graeme chalmers

This chapter examines art education for working men in a nineteenthcentury Ontario county town, focusing on the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute. The earliest mechanics’ institutes were founded in Glasgow and London in 1823. The first in the United States was the “Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts,” founded in 1824, and the first Canadian institute was established in Montreal in 1828. Speaking in 1843 in Saint John, New Brunswick, the Reverend J.C. Gallaway outlined the main premises of the mechanics’ institutes. To begin with, all men were qualified and entitled to acquire knowledge. Such knowledge afforded “pleasant and profitable recreation to the mind.” Education was favourable to the cultivation of domestic virtue and helpful in securing financial betterment. It accelerated the general progress of the arts and sciences. The Mechanics’ institutes promoted general peace and improvement of the community. Finally, they were “an assistance rather than an impediment to the progress of genuine Christianity.”1 Similar speeches, aimed at controlling the less desirable social behaviour of young men (drinking, gambling, and sexual promiscuity), were made in other Canadian cities, towns, and villages.2 Forty years after the formation of the first institutes in Britain, Hind reported on the progress of mechanics’ institutes in Upper Canada: “The primary object of these institutes is to afford to the industrial classes of the community permanent sources of intellectual instruction, relaxation, and

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amusement, by means of classes, popular lectures, and libraries. In some places these objects have been fully realized, and many young men have by their influence been attracted from the saloons and the theatre, but in a great many instances no such influence has been exerted, and the institutes exist only in name.”3 Vernon’s dissertation (1969) on adult education from 1790 until 1900 gives considerable attention to mechanics’ institutes in Ontario, especially Toronto. But with the exception of work by Hirsch (1992) on the Bytown Institute, Keane (1989) and Robbins (1987) on Montreal, and Reilly (1994) on the pre-Confederation Kingston Mechanic’s Institute, very little research has been completed on individual institutes in Canada. This chapter focuses on the mechanics’ institute in Barrie, Ontario. As a county town, Barrie was representative of any nineteenth-century Upper Canadian town trying to take itself seriously.4 It was trying to show that it had come of age. Barrie stands at the eastern end of an old nine-mile portage route from Lake Simcoe to Georgian Bay known to native people, trappers, and fur traders. By the 1820s settlers had arrived and a British military presence was established. The settlement was named for Sir Robert Barrie, the commander of the British fleet stationed in Kingston. The town’s first streets were also named after British officers. Barrie was incorporated in 1853. As Canadian historian Arthur Lower observed: “There was no question of the interpretation given to Britishism by the British who had settled Barrie. It was the Tory True Blue variety. Every local circumstance seemed to bolster the strength of that group. In the countryside around the town, North of Ireland Orange settlers were numerous.”5 Fisher identifies a “family Compact” that consisted of the elite of Barrie. “The majority followed legal or medical careers but there were also those who distinguished themselves in the academic and financial worlds. They formed a closely knit coterie that dominated the economic and social life of Barrie for much of its first century.”6 It was this group that initially directed the mechanics’ institute and controlled access to positions of power and influence, but they eventually merged their interests with those of the more conservative members of the emerging middle class — small businessmen, minor government officials and civil servants, teachers, etc. An early reference to a mechanics’ institute in Barrie is found in Smith’s Canadian Gazetteer, (1846)7 but it appears that this initiative did not last very long. The Barrie Magnet, “a weekly journal devoted

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33

to Agriculture, Commerce, Science, Public Improvement, the Diffusion of Morality, Useful Knowledge and General Intelligence,” reported on 31 March 1848 that “a misunderstanding, unfortunately, occurred, which led to the abandonment of the whole project.”8 However, the Magnet believed that the institute might be revived by “a number of young men of the town [who] have formed themselves into a Mutual Improvement Society and have already had two or three nights’ debate.” To encourage the young men of the district to “make something of themselves” the same issue of the Magnet (1848) published a front page column titled “Origin of Genius” reminding its readers that Columbus was the son of a weaver, Homer the son of a small farmer, Oliver Cromwell the son of a brewer, Franklin the son of a tallow chandler and soap boiler, Defoe, the son of a butcher, Virgil the son of a porter, and Shakespeare the son of a wool stapler. A “Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Society” met in the basement of the Presbyterian church until the mid-1870s and it is likely that this group and other class-conscious and sectarian literary, musical, patriotic, fraternal, temperance, and recreational clubs and societies siphoned off members who might otherwise have joined the mechanics’ institute. The mechanics’ institute that existed in Barrie for the last half of the nineteenth century had its origins in the Barrie Debating Club, which was formed at the Queen’s Arms Hotel on 16 January 1854. Most of the original members were young landowners as indicated by the use of “Esq.” after most, but not all, of the forty-one members’ names. The meetings were frequently held in D’Arcy Boulton’s law office. (At this time the Boultons were one of the wealthiest and most socially prominent families in Upper Canadian society.) The first and only art-related debate from this period centred on the question: “Are the works of nature, or those of art the most pleasing to the eye?” The Chair decided in favour of works of art. By the fall friction between the members, caused by the political nature of some of the debates, threatened to break up the society. The minutes of the meeting of 1 November record that a bill would soon be put before the members to make some changes to the society. The meeting of 22 November was the first meeting of the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute. Seven members were present and three more were proposed for membership. By 7 December more members had been admitted and a letter was sent to a local member of the legislature informing him that a mechanics’ institute had been established in Barrie “for the purposes of Intellectual and Scientific improvement, by means of a Library, Reading Room, Museum,

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From Drawing to Visual Culture

Lectures, Classes, etc.” The letter requested incorporation as a public body entitled to hold property, an initial government grant “to aid in the purchase of a library and instruments” and a further yearly operating grant. A grant of two hundred dollars was received.9 An annual grant was repeated until 1858 when grants to all mechanics’ institutes in Upper Canada were withdrawn, probably because none of them offered any evening classes for artisans. Barrie does not appear to have received any provincial funds again until 1871. In 1875 the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute received the largest grant (eight hundred dollars) made to any Ontario institute.10 The young men who formed the original board of directors represented the elite of Simcoe County. The president was D’Arcy Boulton, a lawyer who was to become County Grand Chaplain of the Orange Order and an elected (Conservative) member of the Ontario legislature. (In 1861 as the leader of an Orangemen’s protest against the Prince of Wales landing in Kingston, he told his audience that the present “government had done everything to forward the interests of Popery in Canada.”11 This, of course, would not endear him to the Catholic working classes). William Boys was vice-president. Boys became Simcoe County trustee on the Hamilton and North-Western Railway and a county judge. In the 1870s he was also the “Examiner” for Simcoe County schools. Secretary-Treasurer John Hogg founded the Collingwood Enterprise, became a lieutenant colonel in the militia, and was elected Simcoe County warden. The Committee of Management included Charles Hammond Ross, a dry-goods merchant who became a police magistrate and eventually mayor of Barrie; Thomas Fox Davies, who founded the Barrie Magnet and went on to publish the Orange and Conservative newspaper Spirit of the Age; and Alexander McKenzie, who became lieutenant colonel of the Simcoe Battalion and served in the Northwest Mounted Police. In addition to being Orangemen, most of the directors were also Freemasons, “the oldest and largest ... fraternity dedicated to the Brotherhood of Man under the Fatherhood of a Supreme Being. Although of a religious nature, Freemasonry is not a religion,”12 but it was an organization frowned upon by the Roman Catholic church. Although as Reilly (1994) found in Kingston the involvement of the Protestant Tory elite can be seen as a form of self-interested social control, this small group also interacted on a daily basis with the middle class, whose members operated their own businesses and also wanted to reinforce and further their own interests. Vernon posits that Ontario mechanics’ institutes were, by the

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end of the century, essentially middle-class organizations “run by people with middle-class values which they constantly sought to impose on members of the lower class” (1969, 520): “It would appear that the class distinctions and the class snobbery perpetuated by the more conservative element of the upper middle class, who ... came to dominate the mechanics’ institutes and literary societies, raised a barrier between the directors of these institutions and the workingclass people for whom they were trying to provide educational opportunities” (ibid., 528). And, as the majority of the directors belonged to both Masonic and Orange Lodges, there was certainly a barrier prohibiting participation by the Roman Catholic working classes. On 15 November 1854 the Northern Advance editorialized (p. 2): barrie mechanics’ institute -- every institution for the improvement of the mind, either in Science or Literature, has a claim upon public attention and public support. With this view we notice the advertisement in this day’s issue announcing the formation of a Society under the above caption -Mechanics’ Institutes are becoming so general and so highly valued wherever they have been judiciously introduced, that we have no hesitation in bespeaking a hearty cooperation from the enlightened inhabitants of this town and neighbourhood. We are informed by the Secretary “that it is modeled, as near as circumstances will permit, after the Toronto Institute:” this is a noble parentage; and we feel assured that the fostering care of that richly endowed Institution will lend a helping hand to the rising genius of this legitimate offspring, if its local support should prove commensurate with the object in view. We hope a suitable library is contemplated — an appeal to the public should be made at once. If care be taken to avoid all sectional and party influences, it cannot fail of success.

As Hirsch says of the originally unsuccessful Bytown (Ottawa) Mechanics’ Institute, “Probably the motivation for organizing it was to show other towns that Bytown [like Barrie] was keeping abreast of the times” (1992, 13). The other Simcoe County towns of Collingwood and Orillia did not begin their mechanics’ institutes until two years, and ten years, after Barrie. The railway came to nearby Allandale in 1853 and to Barrie in 1865, and it was the railway that shaped the county town during the rest of the century. Later in the century Belden’s Illustrated Atlas of the County of Simcoe (1881) summarized the lengthy entry on Barrie as follows:

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From Drawing to Visual Culture

Barrie enjoys advantages, both material and intellectual, which have secured for the town a place among the most highly favoured in the province ... Its delightful situation, overlooking the placid bosom of Kempenfeldt Bay, is an attractive feature, the importance of which is generally acknowledged. Its public interests are carefully guarded by efficient local legislators; its moral standing is uneclipsed in Canada; its social and fraternal interests are fostered by the intelligence of the people and the various societies incident to Canadian towns; its commerce is extensive and firmly established.13

By 1855 a music class was listed “in connection” with the mechanics’ institute and the parochial school house was used for meetings. One of the first lectures was on “Popular Education” and the first “exhibition of works of art and mechanism, and general production ... to show the capabilities of the Mechanics of the County of Simcoe, as to the production of specimens of Manufacture, useful as well as ornamental” was planned for August.14 The Barrie exhibition was no doubt modelled after the successful Toronto Mechanics’ Institute exhibitions, which were designed “to bring the productions of skillful Mechanics and Artisans before the public: that genius and enterprise may be fostered and patronized: and also to encourage a laudable emulation on the part of the Mechanic or Artisan, to excel in their respective professions.”15 Others, in addition to “mechanics,” were invited to contribute to the exhibition. In an advertisement the Northern Advance also announced that “Contributions, from ladies or others, of Pictures, Engravings, Needlework, &c., will be kindly received.”16 The exhibition was held at the Barrie Court House. At the conclusion of the 1857–58 series of lectures, John Ardagh stated, “The chief object of an institution like ours must be to create and foster a taste for refined pleasure, and for intellectual effort, even where the latter does not appear immediately subservient to the serious business of life”;17 furthermore: “It is the duty of this Institution not merely to teach but try to morally elevate all who fall within the sphere of its influence.”18 Perhaps because of these lofty ideals, the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute showed little interest in the more practically minded Board of Arts and Manufactures for Upper Canada, which was established in 1857 under the direction of the minister of Agriculture. The board was designed to have control over certain aspects of mechanics’ institute affairs and it attempted to set up an examination system. Twenty-six subjects were outlined in great detail and in the first volume of the Journal of the Board of Arts and Manufactures (1861) an appeal was made to “the

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37

Managers of Mechanics’ Institutes and Library Associations desirous of cooperating with this Board, in promoting the education of such of their members as have not been able to avail themselves of the benefits of academical instruction, but who are now willing to engage in classes or evening schools, or other means of self improvement.”19 Drawing and Modelling was to include: Orthographical Projection, or Geometrical Drawing, of Architectural or Engineering subjects, Machinery, etc. Linear Perspective. Ornamental Drawing of Natural or Conventional objects. Original Designs. Landscape Drawing in pencil, crayon, watercolours, or in oil. Models of figures, groups, foliage, etc., connected with the Fine or Decorative Arts.20

A note was appended that candidates for the examination could not be professional artists. Few institutes were able to offer the required courses and by 1864 only seventeen “mechanics” were examined in any of the twenty-six official subjects, and few mechanics’ institutes became affiliated with the Board of Arts and Manufactures. Affiliated institutes were allowed to send one delegate to the board for every twenty working mechanics of manufacturers on its roll. Various payments, including passing over at least one-tenth of any government grant were required for this “privilege.” Additionally, meetings were held in Toronto on the first or last Tuesday in each of January, April, July, and October – hardly convenient for working men! In 1860 ten institutes were affiliated with the board but by 1864 the only institutes to be represented were Cobourg, Dundas, Hamilton, London, Toronto, and Whitby. Nevertheless the board dreamed up grand plans, such as that for a School of Design that would include instruction in Elementary and Geometrical Drawing, as well as the higher branches of art; particular attention being given to the drawing and modeling of organic forms, with a view to the attainment of such an accurate knowledge of their structure as shall enable the student to apply them with power and truth to every branch of decorative art or manufacturing industry. Instruction by means of lectures to be given on the fundamental principles of decorative and constructive design.

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From Drawing to Visual Culture

The Board to provide suitable casts and appliances, to which more attention should be given than to drawing from copy.21

With the establishment of the Province of Ontario and Confederation, the Board of Arts and Manufactures was abolished and the Council of Agricultural and Arts Associations was established. According to J.C. Hopkins, the council “did little except promote provincial fairs.”22 The Mechanics’ Institutes Association of Ontario was also established and held annual conferences. Again, it appears that Barrie did not participate. In 1880 control of mechanics’ institutes’ affairs passed from the minister of agriculture to the Minister of Education.23 From 1861 until 1868 the Barrie institute, although unaffiliated with the Board of Arts and Manufactures, received monthly copies of the board’s journal. The Barrie founders, despite limited success, must themselves have felt elevated, when they read the Governor General’s praise for their counterparts in Hamilton and Gore. Lord Stanley claimed that their exertions “will tend to keep moral and intellectual progress on a par with that material progress of which I see so many evidences.”24 Moral elevation was a recurrent theme: One satisfaction the directors ... will always have, where they are successful, that by their efforts many young men are saved from the drinking and gambling saloons, from loitering at street corners, or spending their time in idleness, during the most dangerous period of life, and induced to habits of sobriety and study ... In every city and town how many youths are there away from parents and home, learning their various trades and callings, or who have homes entirely wanting in everything that could conduce to their mental or moral improvement?25

For the next twenty years lectures, a library, and “moral elevation” were the mainstay of the institute. But, after establishing a reporting system and requiring annual inspections, the government increasingly began to feel that “the principal object for which Mechanics’ Institutes are established, of affording practical instruction by Evening Classes in technical subjects of advantage to the artizan, mechanic, and other industrial classes, is only partially accomplished.”26 Although the Barrie Grammar School employed J.C. Brathwaite as “Drawing and Writing Master” from 1861, the first reference to an “Architectural and Mechanical Drawing Class” at the Barrie Institute is in 1876, when six students (out of ninety-one) were enrolled in the class.27 In

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the same year classes were offered in bookkeeping and penmanship, arithmetic, and music. The government increasingly argued that some subjects were more appropriate for mechanics’ institutes than others. Writing, english grammar, arithmetic, bookkeeping, mensuration, and freehand, architectural, and mechanical drawing were the favoured subjects and, from 1877, the only ones for which additional grants and prizes were awarded. (In 1880 mechanics; hydrostatics, pneumatics and hydraulics; physics, heat, light and electricity; chemistry; geology and mineralogy; and zoology and botany were added.) Music was especially targeted as a subject that mechanics’ institutes should not offer. No classes in what was termed “Ornamental Drawing” were offered at the institute until late 1878 when an offer was received from a Miss Braley of Toronto “to organize and instruct a class in drawing under the auspices of the Institute at a charge of $4 for each pupil.”28 The offer was accepted. It is significant that in the winter of 1878 gaslight was available in Barrie for the first time. It was thus easier to stage evening drawing classes. The following year John Dickenson, a director of the institute and lawyer who had earlier studied civil engineering and been chief engineer when the railway was built from Barrie to Penetanguishene, was asked to teach courses in mechanical and freehand drawing. These courses were offered for two dollars and included use of the library and reading room. Perspective and model drawing were added in the same year and prizes were awarded. In 1880 eight students studied drawing “applicable to the Trades and Manufactures” that was supposed to include: “Model Drawing, Machines and Constructions, Map and Topographical Drawing, Designs and Estimates” as well as “Practical Geometry, (Plane and Solid); Orthographic, Oblique and Perspective Projections; Intersections of Surfaces, Shades and Shadows.”29 In 1880 the Barrie class was one of eight in Ontario mechanics’ institutes to work in these subjects. By the 1880s, with Daniel Spry and James Purvis as presidents, the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute, in addition to classes in architectural, geometrical, and object drawing, also provided evening instruction in writing and bookkeeping, english grammar and composition, theoretical and applied mechanics, and chemistry. Spry, in charge of the Barrie postal division, had recently been transferred from Toronto where he had been a vice-president of the city’s much larger mechanics’ institute. Although he had more experience of a successful mechanics’ institute, with many evening classes, than his Barrie counterparts, he was still much like previous presidents: he was active as an Anglican and in all

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From Drawing to Visual Culture

branches of Free Masonry; in fact in 1882 he was elected “Grand Master.” However, he was a Reformer rather than a Tory. Purvis, who became president in 1883, was a practically oriented hardware merchant. By this time too, wage earners such as labourer Samuel Prior, carpenter Joseph Poole, and caretaker James Roberts were also serving as directors. Despite following Department of Education regulations for practical courses, the institute remained concerned with moral betterment and the elevation of taste. However, the entertainment that proved most successful was not necessarily the choice of the board of directors, who preferred readings and musical entertainment provided by their wives and daughters to the popular magician and minstrel shows that toured mechanics’ institutes throughout North America. James Hunter, a teacher at the Barrie Collegiate Institute, lamented: It is a self-evident fact that the town has little sympathy with literary and scientific pursuits. Negro minstrel entertainments, low class concerts, and such like sources of amusement, are the only things that pay ... The Mechanics’ Institute is the centre of much intellectual activity, yet its directors feel that their course is all the time a dreadfully uphill one. Their discouragements have been so numerous, their attempts to introduce higher class entertainments have been uniformly so unsuccessful, that it is no wonder the enthusiasm of all but a few has grown cold.30

In 1881 the institute again tried to sponsor a literary society. Again Hunter, who became a member of the institute’s board of directors in 1883, wrote to the Northern Advance: In the coming winter, — books or billiards, which shall we have? Both! Well, better half a loaf than no bread. The Mechanics’ Institute Literary Society has just started on its untried career. Shall it be said that the young men of Barrie would not support one literary society. They need its help. Join it, work in it, and they will get ten times more than they give. Testimony is united on the benefits of such societies. They are simply invaluable. They have made many a man; they never ruined one. Can billiards claim as much?31

Within the visual arts there was not a similar high art/low art debate. Art education remained more “practical.” In the hands of Dr Samuel Passmore May, superintendent of Ontario art schools, mechanics’ institutes, and public libraries from 1880 until 1905, the education department had a vocal advocate for industrially oriented art educa-

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tion. May was familiar with the British (South Kensington) model of “practical” art education (see Chalmers 1993) and attempted to implement and regulate a similar system in Ontario “for the common worker.” May counted eighty-four industries, ranging from the manufacture of agricultural implements to the making of wool cloth, that employed over fifty thousand Canadians. Consequently, he set up a South Kensington-like system of examinations for certificates in primary, advanced, mechanical, and industrial art. Despite conflict in some quarters, such as with the Ontario Society of Artists, by 1890 twenty-one mechanics’ institutes, as well as numerous public and private schools were presenting candidates for the examinations. The Globe newspaper reported: The figures are the best illustrations that can be given of the rapid advance that has been made. In the year 1882 the number of certificates granted in the primary art course was 106, last year [1889] the number was 3,508. There were 40 certificates in the advanced course granted in 1883, the first year of the establishment of the classes, last year there were 222. In the mechanical drawing course there were 11 issued in 1883, and last year 82.32

But that was not to say that new Department of Education regulations were not of concern to mechanics’ institutes. Otto Klotz,33 the president of the Preston institute, published a damning attack on the Ontario Education department’s Special Report (1881). In 1884 the regulations became a local issue. The Barrie Mechanics’ Institute wanted to offer the government-approved courses in drawing, but the proposed teacher, Duncan Shaw, did not himself possess the required certificates. Consequently the minutes for 16 October record that he was required “to furnish some specimens of his work for transmission to the Department.”34 Duncan Alexander Shaw was born in 1840 in Sunnidale Township, Simcoe County, and died in Toronto in 1903. With his younger brother, Hugh Robertson Shaw, he maintained the Shaw Brothers, a photographic and portrait painting studio and gallery in Barrie with additional studios in Aurora, Guelph, Rockwood, Rosseau, and Toronto. In Barrie they were in competition with two other establishments: W.C. Reeves Portrait Photographer, and Barraud Brothers. While working as a lithographer at the Copp Clark Publishing Company in Toronto, H.R. Shaw met the artist John Colin Forbes (see Chalmers 2001). Eventually both Shaw brothers were tutored by

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From Drawing to Visual Culture

Forbes and helped maintain his Toronto studio before establishing their own business in Barrie in about 1878. The training that they received from Forbes was probably similar to the two-year unpaid apprenticeship that artist-naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton served with the same artist. Seton describes the experience as “strictly a life of routine and mass production.” (1940, 128) D.A. Shaw exhibited accomplished but somewhat sentimental portraits and landscapes with titles such as In the Evening There Shall Be Light, An Old Poet, Thoughts of Other Days, and Lenten Meditation at the annual exhibitions of the Ontario Society of Artists.35 Although he worked as a photographer there was a danger that Shaw was too oriented to fine arts to offer courses such as “Primary Drawing,” which consisted of freehand drawing from flat examples, practical geometry, linear perspective, model drawing, and memory or blackboard drawing, let alone the more advanced “Mechanical Drawing” course, which consisted of projection and descriptive geometry, machine drawing, building construction, industrial design, and advanced perspective. However, he must have been successful as the Northern Advance reported in 1885: “We are glad to hear that the Mechanics’ Institute intend to again have evening classes in connection with their Institute, especially as the work done by their class in mechanical drawing, is a skill that every mechanic should be glad of the opportunity of improving themselves in.”36 Drawings from the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute (and forty-four other Ontario institutes) were included in the Ontario Department of Education’s display at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London. Shaw and his students had access to a growing number of approved texts. The art education books in the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute library compared favourably with those in other smaller Ontario towns such as the Coldstream Mechanics’ Institute, 1894; Goderich Mechanics’ Institute, 1893; Orillia Mechanics’ Institute, 1891; and Port Hope Mechanics’ Institute, 1886.37 According to the catalogues of “books, magazines, etc.” in the library of the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute for 1887 and 1891,38 most of the art-related books in the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute library were practical treatises for the working man.39 One example of a practical book is Davidson’s Model Drawing (1868b), which introduces single-point perspective through a series of drawing exercises related to a single cube. More complex shapes and other types of perspective precede the study of three-dimensional rendering and the utilization of more complex

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intersecting planes. Students also learn to use T-squares and set squares. Although most of Ruskin’s works in the library were probably read by “gentlemen” rather than workers (e.g., Ruskin 1865, 1870, 1875, 1877, 1885a,b) one book (Ruskin 1873) was directed especially to working men and labourers.40 Ireland and Nicholas’s (1880) Works of William Hogarth exhorted workers to lead circumspect lives.41 Like Whewell’s lecture on the “Great Exhibition” (1851), several books on architecture (Garbett 1850; Gwilt 1867; Lefèvre 1870; Tuthill 1881; and Whitewick 1846, 1847) are intended to cross social classes.42 They range from an architectural encyclopedia to architectural appreciation and practical “how to” books. There was one book on the new art of photography (Wilson 1881).43 More gentlemanly books on art history and appreciation included works by Black (1875), Cunningham (1843), D’Anvers (1876), Flaxman (1874), Irving (1861), Vasari (1855), and Viardot (1870).44 Art books by and for women were limited to three: Mary Smith Lockwood’s treatise on decorative needlework (1878); Lucy Crane’s “Lectures” (1882), and the Garrett’s book on house decoration (1876).45 The Barrie library did not subscribe to any artrelated journals, the only exception being the British Magazine of Art’s annual (1881).46 Following his 1887 personal inspection, Dr May announced that he was perfectly satisfied with the state and progress of the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute. No doubt he was impressed by one of the lectures of that year, “The Way to Succeed,” delivered by Mr Tilley. The Northern Advance reported: The secret of success is labor directed to one special object with a persistence which knows no flagging. [Mr Tilley] emphasized the importance of choosing a calling or profession for which the person is constitutionally fitted, deprecated the crowding into the so-called genteel professions, indicated that only a small number ever attained to eminence and that a large number of so-called professional men are eking out a mere existence, while the first-class mechanic is as independent as a prince and able to provide a good home for his family. Labor is asserting its claims more than it has ever done before. The age indeed may be called the age of organization. He showed that individually and nationally labor and thrift lie at the foundation of success ... He showed that the most successful men were, so to speak, men of one idea, who persistently pursued it through difficulties, neither turning to the right nor the left till the end was attained. Arkwright, Watt, Stephenson and others were instanced as examples.47

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In 1891, after an extensive fundraising campaign, the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute moved into a new building. This provided an opportunity for some self-searching. The 1891 annual report asked the following questions: “Have the public taken advantage of the opportunities our Institute presents? How many members have we? Do all our members use the library? How are our Free Reading and Recreation Rooms patronized? What classes of persons use our Library most? Does our Institute attract to any considerable extent the wageearning classes for whom the Institutes were originally intended? Does the Literary Society maintain its usefulness? How far have the evening classes been taken advantage of?”48 The report attempted to answer most of these questions. For example we learn that the membership was greater than at institutes in the two other Simcoe County towns of Collingwood and Orillia. However, in comparison to other groups, there were few “wage-earners” among the Barrie members. At Barrie only thirty-nine members were wage earners, including thirty-one who were clerks in stores and offices, whereas eighty-three were “businessmen” and fifty-four were “professional” men. In addition, fourteen members were farmers, seven were students, and thirty-nine were classified as “miscellaneous.” This last group included some women members. We also learn that Duncan Shaw’s drawing class, measured in terms of examination successes, was considered the most viable of the evening classes – particularly after the introduction of electricity in 1888. Those who, according to the rhetoric, were supposed to benefit from drawing classes, however, do not appear to have taken advantage of the classes offered in Barrie. By the time that the institute began to offer drawing classes the town contained several carriage factories, planing mills, and furniture factories. Lea (1978) studied people who decorated carriages, wagons, and agricultural implements in Barrie.49 She found that most of the painters learned their trade as apprentices and from such publications as Carriage Monthly: A Practical Journal. Harris (1981) consulted census and tax assessment records to compile a list of ninety-one painters and glaziers who were active in Barrie before 1900.50 Using similar sources Wilde (1981) identified sixty architects and builders;51 Kell (1981) identified a further 152 builders for the same period;52 and Burns (1981) identified twenty-one brickmakers and bricklayers active in Barrie between 1861 and 188053 – few were associated with the mechanics’ institute. Campbell (1981) studied nineteenth-century Barrie tinsmiths,54 one of whom, John Paxton, did serve as a director of the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute.55

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It was regretted that numbers were not sufficient to offer a commercial class. The library was well used, 4,288 books having been borrowed in 1890. But only 78 withdrawals were for books on either science or art, in comparison to 3,012 withdrawals of fiction. At Barrie, as in other mechanics’ institutes, works of fiction had been increasingly added to the library. The 1874 Report from the Commissioner of Agriculture and Arts hoped that mechanics’ institutes would “continue to maintain and develop their distinctive characteristics, that of promoting the education of working men of the various industries of life, and that they will not degenerate into mere reading rooms for the reception of the sensational literature of the day.”56 Similarly the special report on Ontario mechanics’ institutes (Ontario, Department of Education 1881) raised this as a major concern. The Ontario report quoted an 1875 report from the Boston Public Library claiming that fictional work “fosters discontent with the peaceful homely duties which constitute a large portion of average men and women’s lives; and notwithstanding many popular notions to the contrary, it is no part of the duty of a municipality to raise taxes for the amusement of the people, unless the amusement is tolerably sure to be conducive to the higher ends of good citizenship.”57 The report went on to state that a “Dr Rae, in his treatise upon Mental Hygiene, referring to the effect of novel reading in America, says: ‘The volumes of trash poured forth daily, weekly and monthly, are appalling. Many minds which, if confined to a few volumes, would become valuable thinkers, are lost in the wilderness of brilliant and fragrant weeds.”58 In many ways it could be said that Barrie was ready for the new provincial legislation of 1 May 1895 whereby all mechanics’ institutes in the Province of Ontario became public libraries. In 1900 the Barrie Public Library reported 9,228 separate withdrawals of books from its collection; only fourteen of these were borrowings of “art” books.59 At the time of the dissolution of the Ontario institutes there were 292 mechanics’ institutes across Canada with a total membership of 32,603. Their educational functions were taken over by a growing number of technical colleges. Like most other small towns Barrie, was never able to implement a vision of art education that matched the rhetoric of the times. In a prize-winning essay on ways to improve mechanics’ institutes, Richard Lewis (1877) devoted considerable space to the importance of art education.60 He discussed British models and lamented the fledgling status of industrial art education in Ontario: “At present the system of

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instruction is unfixed and unscientific. The great majority of pupils simply learn by copying from examples, and have rarely any theory explained to them. They draw for amusement, and not for the special object of becoming skillful artizans.”61 Typical of his time, Lewis, like other proponents of an extensive system of art education to respond to increasing industrialization, quoted a writer, in a then recent (but unnamed) educational journal, who stated, “in answer to the question why there is such an interest in art education,” that: It is because the great Industrial Exhibitions of the world, from the first one at London in 1851, to the last at Vienna, show, beyond a scintilla of doubt, that such an education is a leading factor in national prosperity. Because a large class of American manufacturers have discovered that under the leveling influence of steam transportation and telegraphy, they must be completely driven from even the home market unless they can carry to that market in the future more beautiful products than hitherto. Indeed nothing is so salable as beauty. Because American artisans are learning the more artistic the work they can do, the better the wages they can command; that, in truth, there is hardly any limit to such increase. Because they further find, in all varieties of building construction, that a knowledge only sufficient to enable them to interpret the working-drawing placed in their hands (and nearly everything is now made from a drawing), will add one-third to their daily wages.62

But in Barrie the notion of a competitive edge was not as important as other motivations. Lewis saw it this way (and I agree): “There is some analogy between the claims of the night classes of the Mechanics’ Institute and those of the Sabbath School. Both are established to supply knowledge, to remove ignorance, to advance virtue and truth, and especially to provide instruction to those whose circumstances would, without such help, leave them destitute of any culture.”63

Recto Running Head

3 Postsecondary Art Education in Quebec from the 1870s to the 1920s j. craig stirling

introduction Now they want to mix industry and art. Industry! We don’t want anything to do with it! May it stay in its own place and not establish itself on the steps of our school, true temple of Apollo. J.A.D. Ingres, Réponse au rapport sur l’Ecole impériale des beaux-arts, Paris 1863, pp. 4–5 ; Boime 1985, p.47 If, don’t you know, industry were united with culture and culture with industry. Vershinin in Act IV of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters in Nine Plays of Chekhov New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1946, p. 143. (Three Sisters was produced by the Moscow Art Theatre on 25 May 1901.)

Modernist art history has focused traditionally on the stylistic development of individual artists and artistic movements. Recently challenges to conventional methodologies and interpretations of formalist modernism in art history have resulted in a renewed interest in and evaluation of institutional history, due in part to the extensive influence of Michel Foucault, who deemed art institutions part of the “practical systems” he found worthy of investigation. Official art institutions were part of government, run and administered by the ministries responsible for education. By tracing and analyzing the evolution and

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development of art institutions in Quebec and Ontario from 1876 to the early twentieth century, a political and economic model can be reconstructed in which visual artists as well as industrial art and design students functioned. The history of art education in postsecondary schools of art and design in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario is complicated. In a period covering a half-century, institutions changed names, opened and closed, individual art educators moved around, the curriculum was not static but evolved, it was flexible and it was adjusted to meet the needs and expectations of politicians, manufacturers, industrialists, educationalists, and students of art and design. The postsecondary schools of art and design were developed separately in both provinces. It was believed that drawing was the foundation of all art educational studies. England’s South Kensington system with its utilitarian philosophy exerted enormous influence and its drawing manuals and curriculum were used for specific periods in the primary and secondary schools as well as the postsecondary art schools from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries in industrialized countries and emerging industrial economies.

henry cole, the south kensington system, and the importance of drawing When we want steam, we must get Cole. Prince Albert (Alexander 1983, 143; Frayling 1987, 35)

During the 1850s and 1860s progressive educationalists on both sides of the Atlantic perceived drawing as quintessential to a general education at the primary and secondary school levels and a necessary skill to be developed at postsecondary schools of industrial art and design whose interest was purely commercial. Drawing as a required subject joined reading, writing, and arithmetic in the curriculum only after drawing courses were established in postsecondary schools of industrial art and design. Their purpose was to provide technical and vocational education and to develop and train designers and a skilled labour force for manufacturing and industry. In 1853 the South Kensington system of postsecondary schools of industrial art and design was established in response to the failure of the Schools of Design to educate and train British artists and designers for industrial and manufacturing interests. Established in 1837, the

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Schools of Design had three branches in London and eighteen others throughout Britain. They had been criticized continuously since their initial organization under their first director, architect John Papworth (1775–1847), and his successor William Dyce (1806–1864). The final blow came in 1851 with the disastrous showing of British manufactured goods and other exhibits at the Great Exhibition of Industry of All Nations in London. The foreign and domestic press agreed unanimously that the British exhibits were inferior in quality and design to those of all participating nations, especially England’s archrival, France.1 British government officials were bitterly disappointed that France’s exhibits had received superior reviews. Trade and commercial rivalries between England and France, combined with old hostilities, mutual animosity, and memories of the not-too-distant Napoleonic Wars, were catalysts for change. Deficiencies in the curriculum of the Schools of Design were held responsible for Britain’s decline. Drawing was the core of design education and the schools would have to be reformed completely to make British finished goods more saleable in world markets. Henry Cole (1808–1882),2 whose meteoric rise in the British civil service has become legendary (Bonython 1982; Alexander 1983), headed the detractors and critics of British displays at the Great Exhibition. As early as 1848 when Cole was a member of a select committee reporting on the Schools of Design, their shortcomings had been apparent to Cole and his circle (Bell 1963, 253). A man of great ingenuity and resourcefulness, Cole established the monthly Journal of Design and Manufactures (1849–52) as a vehicle from which to attack the schools with the explicit purpose of either replacing or reforming them (Levine 1975). As chief organizer of the Great Exhibition, Cole had put into practice Prince Albert’s idea to hold an industrial exhibition of all nations in London to promote peace and stimulate international trade and British industry. With the profits from the Great Exhibition Cole founded the South Kensington Museum and the Schools of Industrial Art and Design. From 1852 to 1861 he increased the number of postsecondary schools of industrial art and design in British towns from thirty-six to ninety-one. According to both public and critical opinion, it was clear that by the 1862 London Exhibition, Britain had regained her superiority in the world of art and design. This change of fortune was attributed directly to the South Kensington system of industrial art and design schools. The Department of Science and Art (dsa) had been created in March

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1853. Richard Redgrave (1804–1888), artist and educator (Burton 1988), was largely responsible for the new curriculum. He stated in the first report of the dsa in October 1853 that the South Kensington system was “a complete and systematic course, both for the acquisition of technical skill and execution, and for obtaining a knowledge of the principles which should guide the application of such skill, when acquired, in the practice of Design” (dsa 1854, 11). Four courses of drawing classes were available to students. The principal course was for “Designers, Ornamentists and those intending to be Industrial Artists” and comprised twenty-three levels of drawing classes (ibid., 31). Three other courses were offered. Those in “General Education” took thirteen levels of study, “Machinists, Engineers and Foremen” took seven; and “Primary Course for Schools” took eight (ibid., 30). The South Kensington system was not flexible; it emphasized technical instruction over fine art and scientific methods over creativity, and it was objective rather than subjective. The system seemed well suited to the age of Darwin. Although the priority of the South Kensington system was to train industrial artists and designers, its curriculum was adopted later in British primary and secondary schools as part of the teaching of drawing and appreciation of “art culture”3 in a general education. Henry Cole and many of his fellow Victorians believed in social progress, access to free education for all classes, and the democratization of political processes. Cole was convinced that everyone could and should learn to draw and that drawing could be taught by all teachers in primary and secondary schools. Therefore, in 1857, four years after establishing the new curriculum for the postsecondary schools of industrial art and design, Cole and Redgrave introduced a course for training teachers (Cole 1884, 299; Allthorpe-Guyton 1982, 112). This was primarily aimed at “Schoolmasters and Mistresses and Pupil-Teachers, who should teach Elementary Drawing” and “Masters for the Schools of Art.” Previous generations of drawing masters and art instructors had received little remuneration for their services and little respect. The training of art teachers and artists not only legitimized their profession but also raised their status to new levels of respectability. The training of industrial art and designers for manufactures, the inclusion of drawing and art in the general curriculum of all schools, and the training of art teachers, remained the three unaltered priorities of the South Kensington system until its termination in 1899. Some

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authors4 have argued that the three priorities and various stages of instruction continued to survive in British art education well into the twentieth century. The influence of the South Kensington system was extensive and profound. In Britain and elsewhere, educationalists, politicians, and manufacturers believed that national prestige and moral, social, and economic benefits would result from the adoption of a standardized system of drawing and art applied to industrial concerns based on the South Kensington system. The competitive nature of the second half of the nineteenth century was reflected in the numerous international exhibitions that showcased a nation’s wealth and saleable manufactured goods available for export. Countries scrambled to emulate the South Kensington system, which had been perceived as responsible for Britain’s pre-eminent position in the world of art and design. From the early 1850s until the late 1880s French government officials, such as Delaborde in 1856, Merimée in 1862, Antonin Proust in 1884, and Marius Vachon in 1889, produced detailed reports5 on British art education and British exhibits at international exhibitions. The 1863 reforms to French art education emphasizing industrial art and design, as well as the assumption of control by the French government of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, can be linked directly to the influence of the South Kensington system and British success at the 1862 London Exhibition. Although the French did not make drawing compulsory in primary and secondary schools until 1878, the government announced that its priorities would be “national education and industrial prosperity” including the reorganization of French museums, “compulsory drawing and design instruction in school curricula, and the strengthening of National Manufactures” (Mainardi 1993, 66, 83–4). By the time Cole retired as general superintendent of the dsa in 1873, the number of postsecondary schools of industrial art and design in British towns with a population exceeding ten thousand had increased from twenty in 1852 to 122 with an enrolment of over 22,800. Five hundred and thirty-eight adult education evening drawing classes were attended by 17,200 and 194,500 children had access to elementary drawing in schools throughout Britain.6 The utilitarian philosophy of industrial art and design education continued to dominate British art education until the South Kensington system was phased out in 1899 with the adoption of the Technical Instruction Act and the creation of the Royal College of Art, whereby fine art was separated from

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industrial art and design. Highly sought after and respected graduates of the South Kensington system schools of industrial art and design were employed as art educators throughout Europe, North America, and elsewhere. Many industrialized countries like France, emerging industrial economies like the United States and Brazil, and the British colonies of New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and India adopted a hybrid form of the South Kensington system curriculum for their art schools. In Quebec two important organizations promoted drawing at the postsecondary level. The Conseil des arts et manufactures de la province de Québec (campq), from 1857–1929, emphasized drawing for industrial art and design and manufacturing interests. campq’s evolution can be placed into three distinct periods: 1857–76; 1876–91; and 1891–1929. The school of fine art of the Art Association of Montréal (aam) from 1883 offered drawing and fine art oriented classes.

campq, 1857–76: p-j-o chauveau’s search for a system campq was established in 1857 to encourage and promote manufacturing and industrial development in Quebec.7 At its first meeting, held at the Montréal Mechanics’ Institute on 25 August 1857, one of the stated goals was to finance evening drawing classes for working-class men modelled upon the type of instruction offered in prototypical British institutions in London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow.8 At the same meeting members suggested that a museum be founded with a collection of plaster casts of well-known sculptures from which the drawingclass students could hone their skills. A campq museum was never realized because of a lack of funds (Duchesne 1984). The idea for a museum linked to drawing classes was inspired by the South Kensington Museum in London, as well as by its Ontario counterpart, the Educational Museum in Toronto, opened by Egerton Ryerson in 1857. From 1857 to 1869, linear, geometrical, mechanical, and architectural drawing classes were held in the evenings in rooms rented by the Montréal Mechanics’ Institute. After a few years this limited curriculum did not meet the needs or expectations of those enrolled, their employers, or government officials. In Quebec during the early 1860s numerous individuals including such prominent Montrealers as the Anglican bishop Francis Fulford (1803–1868) and artist Napoleon Bourassa (1827–1916)9 urged the provincial government to recognize the impor-

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tance of drawing as a subject to be incorporated into the curriculum of both primary and secondary public day schools and to establish schools of industrial art and design like those in Britain. By the mid1860s, in addition to articles in the popular press, official government publications included articles from American and European sources on the economic, social, and moral benefits to societies whose educational institutions adopted a system of drawing. Change was initiated by Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau (1820– 1890), Minister of Public Instruction for Lower Canada and a man of strong convictions and deep intellect. During a trip to Europe between November 1866 and June 1867 he examined first-hand systems of education in Ireland, Scotland, England, France, Belgium, and Germany. His reports were published initially in a pedagogic periodical he founded in 1857, the Journal de l’instruction publique, and its English-language equivalent, the Journal of Education.10 Chauveau was most impressed by England’s South Kensington system of industrial art and design schools in which drawing played a prominent role (Chauveau 1876, 103). His comments echoed those of his liberal and progressive contemporaries in Europe and America, who believed that the mission of schools of industrial art and design went beyond teaching workers to draw and training them for manufacturing and industry. Schools of industrial art and design were critical to the retraining of a workforce for modern needs, but more importantly, they could mould young impressionable minds, instill moral and social responsibility, function as a deterrent against crime and juvenile delinquency, and discipline a new emerging urban industrial class – in short, they could offer a panacea against all societal ills (Chauveau 1876, 110). Chauveau, a Renaissance man with literary and artistic interests, was premier of Quebec from 1867 to 1873. Education was paramount to him and high on the list of his government’s priorities. Therefore, he assumed the difficult education portfolio, successfully maintaining state’s interest in provincial education against the powerful opposition of the Roman Catholic church. As minister of Public Instruction and as committee chairman of campq’s schools of industrial art and design, he was savagely attacked, along with the schools, in the French-language press by spokesmen for the Roman Catholic church and their supporters. He was accused of advancing the “masonic programme” in “Godless schools” through the secularization of education whereby the Roman Catholic church was losing control over content and curriculum (Ryan 1966, 204, 207, 210, 239; Stirling 1997, 360). Due to the

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vitriolic attacks on the schools spearheaded by the Roman Catholic church, campq schools failed to attract large numbers of Frenchspeaking working-class men. During the first school session in 1869– 70, only four of the 238 students enrolled11 at campq’s Montreal school were identified as French speaking. In October 1869, six schools of industrial art and design were opened in Montreal, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, Sorel, Levis, and Three Rivers. The new curriculum differed only slightly from that offered in provincial mechanics’ institutes funded by campq. The number of courses was increased from four to seven. Four courses were retained: “ornamental drawing, and modeling for application to manufactures,” “architectural drawing and design,” “practical geometry,” and “mechanical drawing.” Of the three new courses, two were practical – “architectural construction” and “chemistry and physics as applied to arts and manufactures” – and one was oriented to fine art – “painting in oil and watercolours.” The new campq curriculum was only an interim solution. The council’s Montreal school rented rooms for its evening classes in the Molson Bank building. Three experienced drawing instructors12 were appointed, two of whom had taught drawing at the Montréal Mechanics’ Institute since 1865: architect Alexander Cowper Hutchison (1838–1922) and “Mr Smith.” Hutchison was responsible for architectural and mechanical drawing and practical geometry. Mr Smith helped Napoleon Bourassa with “ornamental drawing, design and modeling for application to manufactures.” campq purchased a selection of “beautiful casts ... from the South Kensington Museum” (Journal of Education 1869, 214) and other art reproductions from catalogues supplied by the South Kensington art educational authorities throughout the 1870s.13 As early as 1864 (Butterworth 1968, 313) South Kensington officials realized the economic benefits and potential profits of supplying British primary, secondary, and postsecondary schools, as well as the schools of industrial art and design throughout the empire and beyond, with reproductions of famous art objects from the South Kensington Museum collections. Casts and chromolithographs were favoured, but by 1871–72 photographic copies had become cheaper and more accurate and “did not involve the sort of shipping problems entailed by casts” (Levine 1972, 308–9). During the early 1870s numerous campq committees were formed to search for a comprehensive and uniform drawing system and competent instructors. In 1873 the council sent Henry Bulmer,14

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former president of the Montréal Mechanics’ Institute from 1851 to 1855, to London where he met with representatives of South Kensington’s National Art Training School, interviewed two prospective art instructors, and received a tour of the South Kensington Museum. Unable to persuade any instructors to emigrate, Bulmer and campq committee members reiterated their priority to hire “first class professors from South Kensington” and “adopt a uniform system of instruction” for campq schools. A year later, in 1875, a campq delegation visited Boston, New York, and Philadelphia to gather information and evaluate American industrial art education. The campq committee were unanimous in their praise of Walter Smith, a South Kensington graduate, and his system of industrial art education and drawing manuals, which had been used in Boston schools since 1871: The Government of the State is beginning to put into operation for the purpose of diffusing art culture, not as an indispensable constituent of a competent general education but as a means of enabling our manufactures to compete more successfully with the manufactures of Europe. The material prosperity of the State depends chiefly upon the profits of its manufactures. That these profits might be immensely augmented by the application of a higher artistic skill, is no longer doubted by any well informed person ... Thoughtful men are becoming everywhere more and more impressed with the value and importance of technical education, and drawing is now recognized by some scholars as lying at the foundation of all technical education. (campq, 16 February 1876, 235–8, banq)

The following year campq members,15 including a group of politicians, clergy, manufacturers, and educationalists, visited the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition where American ingenuity and progress were showcased for the first time on a large scale to both public and critical international acclaim. The 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition was the perfect venue for promoting the Smith system to a wide audience. After viewing the Massachusetts educational exhibition, which included drawings from twenty-four towns where the Smith drawing manuals were used, and after meeting with Smith, the Quebec contingent returned home to recommend that the Smith system and drawing manuals be adopted in campq’s postsecondary schools of industrial art and design.

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1876–91: the walter smith system Curricular change is the result of complex patterns of interaction between influential individuals and general processes of social, political, and economic change. Gordon and Lawton 1978, 2; Bantock 1980, 227–8.

Walter Smith (1836–86) was the right man, at the right time, in the right place. He was without question the seminal figure in art education in North America during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. His standardized system of industrial art and design drawing manuals were used with varying degrees of success and for different lengths of time “in Massachusetts, New England, the Middle, Southern and Western States, Ontario, the Maritime provinces, Manitoba, British Columbia, and Québec” (Dominion Illustrated 1890, 290–1). Before he immigrated to America in 1871 to become director of drawing in Boston public schools and state director of art education for Massachusetts, Smith had been one of the few students who completed the arduous twenty-three levels of the South Kensington system’s industrial art and design course in London at the National Art Training School. By doing so he assured himself a prominent position within the elaborate network of British industrial art and design schools. An ambitious man with an abrasive personality, Smith assumed various responsibilities between 1859 and 1871 at several South Kensington controlled British art schools including Leeds, Wakefield, Halifax, Keighley, and Bradford, where he returned in 1882 after his American sojourn. His rise within the bureaucracy of the South Kensington postsecondary schools of industrial art and design was meteoric, but his influence16 was far more extensive and profound in the New World, particularly in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil. In Quebec, Smith’s system and drawing manuals were used in campq’s postsecondary schools of industrial art and design in 1876–91, Protestant primary and secondary day schools in 1877–91, and Roman Catholic primary and secondary day schools in 1877–87.17 For the first time in Quebec’s educational history a uniform system for teaching drawing was used at the postsecondary level. With the adoption of the Smith system rules and regulations were imposed that mirrored those of the South Kensington system. Each municipality had to

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satisfy four conditions before a campq school could be established. First, a “free evening drawing school must be needed and wanted”; second, the population should number “at least 3,000” and “have a local industry”; third, there should be available “an efficient resident teacher of drawing”; and fourth, the municipality was responsible for providing “accommodation, heat and light” (Documents de la Session [ds] 1881–82, vol. 16, no. 2, 62–3, banq). The students, predominantly working-class men, ranged in age from twelve to forty-five, with about one-third enrolled in public day schools and two-thirds employed in manufacturing or industry. Initially the evening drawing classes were free, but during the 1879–80 session, due to chronically high absenteeism, a nominal fee was imposed that was returned to the student if he attended over two-thirds of the classes (ds 1879–80, vol. 14, no. 2, 341, banq). campq’s schools were a microcosm of the nineteenth-century Canadian public school system in which low attendance was endemic. The attendance problem was continuously raised by detractors who wanted to replace the Smith system. campq “furnished paper of the same quality and size” in order to evaluate and compare objectively student drawings, which were exhibited annually at the session’s end. Prizes were not awarded for drawing proficiency because of their association with schools of fine art, which went against the utilitarian philosophy. campq awarded Smith’s drawing manuals to students in an attempt to extend the influence of the Smith system and popularize drawing throughout Quebec (campq, 5 February 1878, 346, banq). This had been done with the South Kensington manuals of William Dyce, Ralph Wornum (1812–1877), and Richard Redgrave (MacDonald 1970, 246). Smith’s manuals were used in both the junior and senior freehand drawing classes. Teachers used blackboards and gave oral instruction and demonstrations. Students in the junior classes drew from “card copies of straight lines in the form of squares, crosses, etc., curved lines and circles and combinations of curved and straight lines, geometric forms of simple objects, such as vases, spirals, etc., forms of simple conventional leaves, flowers, etc.” The senior classes, building on the exercise of drawing simple objects in outline in combinations of straight and curved lines, progressed to more complicated configurations such as “elementary examples of ancient styles of ornament, including the acanthus leaf, wave-scroll, anthenium, lotus flower, borders, etc. ... simple outline drawings from the cast, and from objects such as, cubes, cones, cylinders, prisms and outline various parts of the human figure” (campq, 13 May 1884,

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3.1 Freehand Drawing Class exhibits, 1890. (Dominion Illustrated 1890, 293)

638–9, banq). The exercises not only introduced students to the essential stylized shapes in nature, which were imitated to decorate commercial goods for industry and manufacturing, but also familiarized them with images in the history of decorative arts. South Kensington-trained F.S. Cleverley, who taught the junior freehand drawing classes at campq’s Montreal school for two sessions in 1887–88 and 1888–89, stated that he was unable to distinguish between the South Kensington and Smith systems: Junior pupils, having no idea of drawing, are first given two points on their drawing paper, between which points they are taught to make a straight line ... as soon as he can draw a straight line, I give him a series of straight lines to do, which, by the addition of a few others running in a contrary direction, such an object as a gate, a box with a lid closed, a box with lid open, a book, and an indefinite number of articles can be outlined. From straight to curved lines is a short step, and I have found it always advisable to give ... some outlined object such as a teacup in a saucer, knife, bottle, jug etc. (ds 1887–8, vol. 22, 201–2, banq)

In addition to Smith’s manuals, campq acquired its teaching apparatus from South Kensington. This consisted mainly of lithographs,

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3.2 Modelling and Sculpture Class exhibits, 1890. (Dominion Illustrated 1890, 293) 3.3 Wood Carving Class exhibits, 1890. Photograph. (Dominion Illustrated 1890, 293)

prints, and engravings that constantly wore out and needed to be replaced. At the 1886 Indian and Colonial Exhibition in London, the council exhibited a representative sample of its students drawings and spent over five hundred dollars on purchases from South Kensington (campq, 9 February 1886, 705, banq). Perhaps as a result of these purchases the following year Colonel Donnelly, secretary of the Department of Science and Art in South Kensington, forwarded “an unframed set of the stages of instruction, examples of South Kensington students’ drawings and seven plaster casts” (campq, 10 May 1987, 764; 5 August 1887, 768; 16 February 1888, 776, banq). Drawings produced in campq’s schools during the Walter Smith years were characteristic of the South Kensington system in style, execution, and subject matter. In the 1890 campq annual student exhibition the advanced freehand class executed highly finished drawings in pencil of individual parts of human anatomy and classical sculpture (fig. 3.1). The modelling class exhibited plaster casts after famous classical sculpture and Italian Renaissance religious images in low relief (fig. 3.2). The wood-carving class was represented by historical ornament and flowers in low relief (fig. 3.3). The lily (fig. 3.4) in the lower

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3.4 Lily. Pencil drawing, 45.5 x 38.4 cm. Bears stamp E.S.K. (Examined South Kensington) lower left. Initialled J.S. verso. Photo: Dr Joe Rock. (Private collection, Edinburgh)

centre and upper right was a popular motif that first appeared in William Dyce’s Drawing Book (1842) and was used continuously in manuals of the Schools of Design and later in South Kensington’s industrial art and design schools. campq’s Montreal school always had the largest staff and offered the most courses. During the 1876–91 period the majority of instructors were either former campq or South Kensington graduates. The homogeneity of the staff was another factor that reinforced the utilitarian South Kensington philosophy of industrial art and design. The notable exception was Paris-trained John C. Pinhey (1860–1912) who briefly taught advanced freehand drawing at campq’s Montreal school for three sessions from 1889–90 to 1891–92. The curriculum developed slowly. All campq schools were required to offer classes in freehand, mechanical, and architectural drawing. From 1876 to 1886, the curriculum at campq’s Montreal school remained the same, with only a few additions. For a brief time it

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offered three fine art oriented classes, watercolours in 1874–75, figure and ornament in 1877–78, and anatomy in 1884–85 and 1885–86. At the request of numerous women a “ladies’ drawing” class was taught by South Kensington-trained Harrington Bird (1846–1936) for three sessions from 1879–80 to 1881–82. None of these subjects conformed to the South Kensington ideology and thus were cancelled. In 1887 campq attempted to move beyond mere drawing instruction by instituting a rule whereby each campq school had to offer at least one practical course in order to receive its annual grant (ds 1889, vol. 22, 197, banq). The addition of six practical courses at Montreal’s campq school more than doubled enrolment. The practical courses – modelling and wood carving, decorative painting, building construction and stair building, plumbing, and scagliola – reflected the need for a trained workforce and growth in Montreal’s public and private housing industries. Pattern making was linked specifically to the boot and shoe industry. In this respect, campq differed from South Kensington, which never offered practical courses to continuing criticism. Montreal became a magnet and its population grew rapidly in the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth centuries due to the demographic shift in Quebec from a rural-based agricultural economy to an urban industrial economy of wage labour. This phenomenon combined with the influx of immigrants who chose to settle in Montreal in search of employment in the new economy, boosted the city’s population. Initially campq’s policy was to encourage municipalities to establish a school with strong ties to local manufactures. However, by the mid-1880s depopulation of rural communities combined with a deliberate shift in campq’s policy to reduce their schools from fifteen in 1881–82 to only seven by 1895–96 resulted in the Montréal school becoming the Quebec colonial counterpart of South Kensington’s National Art Training School in London. The Smith system and manuals received mixed reviews. Initially heralded as a panacea for all of Quebec’s social problems, the practical application of theory proved much more difficult and complicated. Support, resistance, and opposition to the Smith system emerged from numerous groups and for varied reasons. Politicians, Protestant clergy, educationalists, artists, manufacturers, and industrialists supported the adoption of the Smith system. Politicians believed and hoped that the system would benefit and influence the new urban industrial class to be socially responsible, morally upright, and temperate. Manufacturers and industrialists were eager to transfer the costs of training a work-

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force to the provincial government. Protestant clergy, educationalists, and artists, who had failed for decades to convince legislators to include drawing in the curriculum of the public day schools, were finally appeased, although most wished that creativity and fine art had been emphasized rather than industrial art and design. On the other hand, teachers and students had resisted the Smith system from the beginning, particularly the elementary course. The Roman Catholic church opposed it because the provincial government had encroached upon its jurisdiction in the secularization of education. Women also opposed the system since, with few exceptions, they were excluded from enrolment in campq schools, whose mission was to train working-class men for manufacturing and industry. In Britain from 1853to 1899, the South Kensington system had been criticized severely by numerous groups and individuals (Stirling 1989, 27–38). Its American counterpart, the Walter Smith system, received similar critical response (Chalmers 2000, 111–35). In retrospect, the personal attacks endured by Smith and his system in Massachusetts from 1871 to 1882 make his critics seem sycophantic and pedestrian. For financial reasons campq never established an art-teacher training course or a museum. Both were features of the South Kensington system, which may have resolved the problems of incompetent art teachers and strengthened the links between campq schools and South Kensington in both theory and practice. Remarkably, under continued criticism, the Walter Smith system endured for fifteen years, from 1876 to 1891 in campq schools, only to be replaced by the similar and equally unpopular system of homegrown educator Edmond M. Templé.

1891–1929: the templé system and edmond dyonnet Something else Tonks did for me because of his concern about my lack of manual skill, was to arrange for me to go and have some lessons with an old friend of his who was an elderly coach painter ... He was a man without much formal education but he had had a very thorough Victorian apprenticeship ... he taught me how much paint should be put on the brush and how to do a straight line ... He told me how to hold the brush and to draw the line at a steady pace ... After we had done straight lines we did curves which are much more difficult. William Coldstream in Morris 1985, 13

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French-born Edmond M. Templé was tenacious. He taught drawing at Montreal’s École normale Jacques Cartier and Académie commerciale de Plateau and later was appointed director general to supervise adult education evening classes (Heap 1981, 605).18 In 1887 Templé persuaded the Roman Catholic committee19 of the Council of Public Instruction to replace the Walter Smith system and drawing manuals with his own in their public day schools. He then contacted both campq and the Protestant committee of the Council of Public Instruction but they rejected his offer. He persisted, however, corresponding annually with campq from 1887 to 1891. He even applied unsuccessfully for a teaching position at campq’s Montreal school. He bombarded the council with his activities, copies of his publications (Templé 1886), and letters advocating the adoption of his system and drawing manuals from prominent French-speaking Roman Catholic committee members of both campq and the Council of Public Instruction, including the influential Frère Stephen, director of the Christian Brothers of Quebec and Charles A. Lefèvre, Templé’s friend and colleague,20 and professor of drawing at the Normal School in Laval. In August 1891 opposition collapsed and campq and the Protestant committee of the Council of Public Instruction cited two reasons for their decision to adopt the Templé system and drawing manuals in their schools: the desirability of establishing a uniform system in all Quebec schools, and the difficulty of acquiring Walter Smith’s manuals in the French language since the death of translator Oscar Dunn (1845– 1885). Templé’s relentless lobbying to have his system and drawing manuals used in all Quebec public day schools including campq’s was lucrative for him. However, the politics of drawing underscored the deep divisions between the Protestants and Roman Catholic committee members of the Council of Public Instruction and campq based on religious and linguistic lines. A comparison of the Smith and Templé drawing manuals reveals little ideological difference as both promoted the South Kensington utilitarian philosophy of industrial art and design and the same stepby-step methodology of drawing exercises.21 Most of Templé’s ideas sprang from the same source, the South Kensington system via Walter Smith. Like many of his contemporaries, he linked drawing with calligraphy and stated that it was just as important a subject as reading, writing, and arithmetic, to be cultivated in children through adulthood. He was convinced of the moral benefits of drawing instruction, not to mention the economic prosperity it could bring to society in

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general and to working-class men in particular (Templé 1889, 26). To Henry Cole and his followers, including Walter Smith, industrial art and design were the priority, though “the faculties of the few” or fine art and artists would also be developed within the system. Templé concurred with this view. “L’éducation artistique d’une nation est affaire autant que de pédagogue et d’esthétique” (ibid., 23). The first half of Templé’s manuals followed closely the South Kensington prototypes, the drawing of straight and curved lines between two points leading gradually to more complex combinations (Templé 1891, 1–49). The second half (ibid., 50–103) applied those principles to copy portraits of historical figures from Quebec or, as Templé stated, “bon nombre de héros qui y prendront leur place” (ibid., préface). Along with “Québec heros” Montcalm, Marguerite Bourgeois, Jean Olier, Maréchal de Levis, and Pope Leo xiii, religious art such as Murillo’s Head of the Virgin, and Guido Reni’s Ecce Homo, classical statuary, Apollo Belvedere and the Venus de Milo, local architecture, familiar landscapes, and examples of decorative art rounded out Templé’s drawing manual. In total twenty exercises were to be completed in three or four easy steps with a description and history of the image on one page and the image in stages of completion on the other with instructions on how to proceed. Templé’s drawing manuals, with their nationalistic and religious subjects and overtones, were more attractive to and had support from Roman Catholic church officials and French-speaking Quebecers. From the outset the Roman Catholic church vehemently opposed campq schools and the Anglo-American Walter Smith system and drawing manuals because of their secular nature, which conflicted with the Church’s ultramontanist ideology. The systems and drawing manuals formulated by Smith in the early 1870s and by Templé in the late 1880s were outdated and no longer relevant to Quebec’s industrial art and design needs; nor were they the answer to the province’s art educational questions. Although the population had outgrown these inflexible, unimaginative systems, however, drawing continued to be included in the curriculum of Quebec’s primary, secondary, and postsecondary schools. The adoption of Templé’s system and drawing manuals in 1891 coincided with the appointment of Edmond Dyonnet (1859–1954) as instructor of the junior (elementary) and senior (advanced) freehand drawing classes at campq’s Montreal school, a position he would retain for thirty years from 1892 to 1922. His appointment was significant because for the first time the same instructor taught both levels

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of freehand drawing, which created continuity and uniformity. A French-born European-trained artist, Dyonnet led a busy life. In addition to his campq employment, he taught drawing at both the école Polytechnique (1907–23) and at McGill University (1920–36); he offered a sketching class at the Art Association of Montreal (aam) School of Fine Art (1901–11); was secretary of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (rca) (1910–48); and managed to submit works of art to exhibitions at the aam between 1891 and 1920 and the rca between 1893 and 1941. Dyonnet has been heralded as the “leading champion of the academic tradition” in Canada (Harper 1977, 100). He disliked “novelty and fashion” in modern art. Trained in European fine art academies and exposed to conservative middle-class ideas and philosophies of fine art, he condemned the Cubists, Futurists, and particularly the Impressionists, whom he described as “despisers of art who have undertaken the mission of denying beauty and proscribing truth” (Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, Yearbook, 227). Like many artists and educationalists of his generation, he believed drawing was the cornerstone of fine art. “Let those who have no mastery of drawing try to paint from the living model and they will soon discover that it is the most difficult task in the world” (Dyonnet 1951, 11). He had little use for Templé’s system and drawing manuals and stated that his students “learnt nothing whatsoever ... with such a method it was surprising that there was even one student, and that the whole collection of these books should be burnt forthwith” (ibid., 32–3). During his first session in 1892–93 Dyonnet’s junior freehand drawing class continued to “work from card copies in straight lines and combinations of straight lines in the form of crosses, squares, etc., then curved lines and circles and the combination of curved and straight lines, simple geometric forms and geometric definitions, then going on to simple conventional designs and freehand exercises” (campq, 135/2, 550, banq). Dyonnet implemented innovative changes to reform the junior freehand drawing class in the following session, 1893–94. He replaced lithographs of cubes, cones, spheres, and pyramids with threedimensional objects to introduce his students to the study of geometric form. campq’s other provincial branch schools continued to draw from the flat until 1908 (campq, 4 September 1908, 75, banq). From 1893– 94 his junior freehand drawing class drew in outline “differently shaped blocks, commencing with the most simple, and progressing to more complicated shapes,” which exposed his students to perspective, light

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and shade, and tonal values (Canadian Architect and Builder 7, no. 11 [November 1894]: 143). His senior freehand drawing class started with studies from plaster casts of individual features, such as hands, feet, and head, then progressed to the full length antique figure. Study from life, that is, from the draped or nude figure was not offered until 1901–02. Until then, Dyonnet recommended that his advanced students, such as Henri Zotique Fabien (1878–1936), enrol in the school of fine art at the Art Association of Montreal under his friend and fellow artist William Brymner. Acquiring teaching apparatus was a priority and often a challenge. From the mid-1890s, through the efforts of Edmond Dyonnet and sculptors Louis-Philippe Hébert (1850–1917) and Alfred Laliberté (1878–1953), campq gradually replaced worn-out lithographs with three-dimensional objects and plaster cast sculpture from Paris rather than London. This signalled a deliberate shift in campq’s official policy away from exclusively industrial art and design towards fine art, to which it now gave equal importance. On a trip to Paris in 1895 Dyonnet secured eighty-three casts from two well-known distributers of classical statuary, S. Luchesi and Blanchard and the Union centrale des arts décoratifs. Further purchases were made by L-P. Hébert in 1900 from Monrocq Frères and by Alfred Laliberté in 1907 for the campq Montreal school’s freehand, modelling, and decorative art classes. The awarding of prizes during the 1893–94 session accompanied the change in philosophy and direction. Prior to 1893 prizes had been awarded only once, in the freehand drawing class offered by James Weston (1815–96) at campq’s Montreal school in 1881. During the early years, the council had refused to award prizes primarily because of their association with middle-class schools of fine art but also because of the difference in age (between fifteen and forty) and background of its students. Proficiency certificates were awarded for the first time in 1899 to students who successfully completed three years of general study or four years in freehand drawing. Alfred Laliberté, who had studied at campq’s Montreal school from 1898 to 1902, furthered his fine art studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1902 to 1907, returned to teach modelling at campq’s Montreal school in 1907–08, and was commissioned in 1915 to strike medals (fig. 3.5) for the annual student exhibitions (McLachan 1915, 195–8; Cloutier 1990, 131). Finally by the mid-1890s, after decades of failing to elicit support from local man-

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3.5 campq medal. Bronze, 5 cm, 1925 Signed on obverse lower right A. Laliberté. Inscribed on reverse: Conseil des arts et manufactures, Delle Eugenie Fischer Solfege, Montréal 1916–17 Caron Frères, Montréal.

ufacture and industry, numerous individuals and companies contributed money and donated prizes for the best student designs presented at the annual exhibitions.22 Additions to the curriculum also reflected the trend to accommodate fine art students and women, who, as noted earlier, had been all but excluded from campq schools. There were the ladies’ freehand drawing day classes offered by Harrington Bird over three sessions from 1879 to 1882 at the Montreal school and, in 1881–82, at both Granby and Huntingdon. The establishment of fine art afternoon classes specifically targeted women. campq’s Montreal school opened freehand drawing in 1889 with higher enrolment than its evening class and painting in 1910–11. Other campq provincial schools such as St Hyacinthe included freehand drawing in 1906–07 and painting in 1908–09; and Quebec City introduced decorative painting in 1906–07 and painting in 1908–09. The Montréal school offered additional fine art evening classes in study from life23 in both advanced freehand drawing in 1901–02 and modelling in 1904–05 and a voice-training course, solfeggio, in 1899–1900. Evening practical classes in dress

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3.6 Freehand Drawing Class exhibits, 1898. Photograph. Canadian Architect and Builder 1898, 187)

cutting in 1895–96 and millinery in 1906–07 were attended almost exclusively by women. Dyonnet was the most important and influential instructor in the campq schools. As director of the Montreal school he hired whom he pleased. Attracting teachers was difficult because there was neither job security nor seniority. Instructors were paid a flat rate per lesson of either $3.50 or $2.50. Contracts were renewed annually, which

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3.7 Modelling Class exhibits, 1898. Photograph. Canadian Architect and Builder 1898, 188.

explains why staff members were so transient. campq never adopted the “graded system of payment” that might have been an incentive for teachers and resolved the frequent staff turnover. By the mid-1890s Dyonnet surrounded himself with a staff of men like Joseph Scherrer (1860–1936), James L. Graham (1873–1965), J.H. Egan, G.A. Monette, Duncan P. MacMillan (1873–1908), Joseph St Charles (1865– 1926), Joseph Charles Franchere (1866–1921), Jobson Paradis (1871– 1926), Alfred Laliberté (1878–1953), and Elzear Soucy (1876–1970), all of whom had studied initially at campq’s Montreal school and then completed their fine art studies in Paris.24 The Roman Catholic church, which had strongly opposed the secular nature of campq’s schools, asserted its influence after 1890 in campq’s rural schools in Iberville, Three Rivers, St Hyacinthe, and Granby, where twenty-four members of staff were priests from the Christian Brothers. The 1898 annual campq exhibition revealed the importance of classical statuary acquired from French suppliers and the diversity of subjects exhibited in the freehand (fig. 3.6) and modelling (fig. 3.7) classes. In 1922–23 Paul-Émile Borduas (1905–1960), on the recommendation of Ozias Leduc (1864–1955), enrolled in the evening drawing classes at campq’s Sherbrooke school where he made a series of outlined

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pencil drawings after famous Greek and Roman statues from classical antiquity, including Silenus with the Infant Bacchus, Omphalos Apollo, Myron’s Diskobolos, and Polykleitos’s Doryphoros. campq schools continued until they were closed in 1929 (Comeau 1983). During their long sixty-year history from 1869–1929, schools of industrial art and design were established in more than twenty-six locations in Quebec and employed more than two hundred and twenty-two instructors who taught drawing and fine art to thousands of industrial art and design students and prepared working-class men for employment in the new industrial economy. Enrolment25 was as impressive and staggering as it had been in the South Kensington system during its heyday, between 1853–99. campq schools provided free drawing courses, industrial art and design education, and vocational and fine art classes, as well as the “opportunity of receiving theoretical and practical education” (ds 1912–3, vol. 47, no. 6, 157, banq).

art association of montréal The other important organization that promoted and eventually offered drawing instruction in the last quarter of the nineteenth century in Quebec was the Art Association of Montréal.26 At the aam’s first council meeting, held on 18 February 1860 in the Montreal home of Quebec politician Christopher Dunkin (1812–1881),27 newly appointed secretary Thomas D. King28 wrote to Henry Cole, superintendent of the dsa, South Kensington, to ask for financial assistance for the fledgling “Colonial Institution.” Although financial assistance was denied, Cole forwarded catalogues, brochures, and other literature about the South Kensington Museum and its collections.29 aam council members, who comprised businessmen, politicians, clergy, and other enlightened wealthy English-speaking Protestants, specified six goals that were to be developed. Fine art was to be promoted by “lectures, conversazione, etc.,” an annual art exhibition would be held, an art library and reading room would be established, an art gallery for “sculpture, including casts” and paintings would be opened, and a “school of art and design” would be founded. Between 1860 and 1879 the aam council held its meetings in rented rooms in Montréal and supported linear, geometrical, architectural, and ornamental drawing classes first at the Montréal Mechanics’ Institute, then in campq schools. With the construction of an art gallery building on Phillips

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Square in 1879, the aam could fulfil its mission. In the following year the aam hired three artists to offer fine art classes. The classes were held in the morning and afternoons with composition and landscape taught by Allan Edson (1846–1888), figure painting and drawing by German-born William Raphael (1833–1914), and modelling and sculpture by Belgian-born François Van Luppen (1838–1899) who was patronized by Canadian Governor General the Marquis of Lorne and his wife hrh the Princess Louise (aam, ar 1881, 8). The first exhibition of student works was a disaster. Both the Montreal press and the aam council members unanimously agreed that “proper teaching was a necessity” (“Art Education in Montreal,” Montreal Gazette, 31 January 1883, 4). Classes were cancelled for two reasons: first, because “most pupils wanted to produce pictures before they had been thoroughly grounded in drawing,” and second, because of incompetent teachers (aam, ar 1882, 23). The aam council members recommended that a salaried teacher should be hired “independent of the fees or caprices of the pupils”; that the art instructor should be “educated in the South Kensington School”; and that the curriculum should be “similar to that of the Schools of Design in Great Britain” (Dominion Annual Register and Review 1882, 306; “The Art Association,” Montreal Gazette, 15 January 1883, 4). In early 1883 aam council member John Popham30 travelled to London to secure the services of a “South Kensington-trained teacher” (mmfa Archives, cmb 1, 3 January 1883). Upon his return to Montreal and after long deliberation, the aam council recommended that Welsh-born Robert Harris (1849–1919) be appointed director and principal instructor of the aam School of Fine Art at an annual salary of one thousand dollars (mmfa Archives, cmb 1, 2 May, 7 August, 5 September 1883). Harris was well known since his painting A Man of No Account had entered the aam museum collection in 1881. In 1880 he helped to found the Canadian Academy of Arts (which became the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1882), and his painting The Fathers of Confederation (1883) hung in the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. Harris organized the aam School of Fine Art into two terms, one from early October to mid-December, and the second from mid-January to early May. Classes were held on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 9:30 to 12:30, with an average enrolment of twenty-five to thirty-four students, predominantly women from affluent English-speaking Protestant Montreal families. The aam council fixed tuition at an expensive forty dollars per annum or twenty-five dollars per term. Conforming

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to his own extensive art educational background, Harris believed strongly that an intensive and lengthy training in drawing was essential before a student advanced to paint. Harris had begun his fine art education in Boston in 1873 where he studied anatomical drawing under sculptor, painter, and medical doctor William Rimmer (1816–1879),31 followed by study from life at the Lowell Institute. In 1877 he spent three months at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London, studying under Alphonse Legros (1837–1911).32 Finally, in 1878 he rounded out his studies under Léon Bonnat (1833–1922)33 at the Académie Julian. When he returned to Canada he taught advanced drawing at the art school in Toronto, where the South Kensington curriculum was used. Harris was given carte blanche to develop the aam School of Fine Art curriculum. At the end of his first year none of his students had advanced beyond drawing from the cast in either pencil or charcoal, which was considered the elementary level by Parisian atelier standards. As he reported to the aam council, he was discouraged and disappointed by the casual attitudes of his students who viewed art as “accomplishment” and wanted “to dabble in colors before they learned to draw.” He chastised his students for “not understanding the principles of art” for wanting “to pass an hour in futile multiplication of chromos.” The only solutions to these misconceptions “was that of sound hard work in drawing ... to study those essential qualities of proportion, contour, and values, which are the first and most important facts of appearance as revealing the character of objects” (mmfa Archives, cmb 1, 3–4 June 1884). Harris wanted to resign but was persuaded by the aam council members to return for a second year. A number of students from the previous year reenrolled, so he divided them into elementary and advanced drawing. During the second year his students made progress. Among the three hundred works included in the aam annual student exhibition, not only did his students draw from the cast and draped model but a number executed “studies in oil-color from the cast, the model and still-life” (aam, ar 1885, 6). During Harris’s tenure at the aam, three attempts were made to solicit financial aid or teaching apparatus from South Kensington officials, all without success. A few years earlier artist Marmaduke Matthews (1837–1913) had loaned casts, the Natural History Society of Montreal presented two casts, Myron’s Diskobolos and Antinous, and the Institut canadien donated casts of the Apollo Belvedere, the Laocoon, Venus de Milo, and Diana.34 Harris remained at the aam for another year until he finally resigned

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in May 1886. He strongly recommended as his successor his friend William Brymner (1855–1925), the most recently elected member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Harris had neither the time, inclination, nor patience to implement an art educational program during his three years at the aam. However, he initiated ideas that Brymner embellished, enriched, and saw to fruition.

william brymner and the aam school of fine art, 1886–1921 In all his teaching and painting he had the Scottish fondness for thoroughness and he treated with disdain everything that gave evidence of sham, cant, or insincerity. MacTavish 1925, 55

Brymner’s contributions and importance as an art educator have been overlooked even though he was “best remembered and highly respected as a teacher by his former pupils” (Braide 1979, 65). This oversight is unusual because of his prominent position as director and principal instructor of the aam School of Fine Art from 1886 to 1921, a period of thirty-five years.35 His longevity might be explained by his Scottish character or familial traits. His dedication in remaining at the aam for all of his professional career mirrored that of his father Douglas Brymner (1823–1902),36 who spent thirty years as Canada’s first “Dominion Archivist” from 1872 until his death. His longevity as aam director and principal instructor is even more remarkable and ironic in light of derogatory comments he made about art school teachers in 1879 when he was a young twenty-three-year-old furthering his fine art studies in Paris: “I hope from the bottom of my heart never to become the master of any art school. My aims at the present moment are very much higher” (Artists Collection C121, Wm. Brymner Correspondence, 30 September 1879, mma). Brymner’s aam curriculum focused almost exclusively on drawing. He encountered the same problems cited by his predecessor, Robert Harris. Due to the various backgrounds and training of the predominantly English-speaking Protestant female students (fig. 3.8), their different abilities, casual attitudes, and resistance to a rigorous drawing program, his job was equally challenging. His mission was to help his students develop their drawing skills and reach their potential: “Drawing has been insisted on as of the first importance, for without

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3.8 Students of the Art Association of Montreal, June 13, c. 1915. Photo: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

it as a foundation no real progress can be made in either painting, watercolour, or modeling” (aam, ar 1886, 5). Brymner’s interest in drawing was cultivated at an early age. In 1869, at age fourteen, he enrolled in drawing classes at campq’s Montreal school (Hill and Landry 1988, 148). The following year he apprenticed in the office of architect Richard Cunningham Windeyer (1831–1900), who practised in Montreal from 1863 to 1871 before relocating to Toronto. When his father was named Dominion Archivist and moved to Ottawa in 1872, Brymner was employed for six years, 1873–78, in the office of the chief architect of the minister of Public Works. His family had encouraged him to pursue a career as an architect. His career path was altered forever when he accompanied the Canadian delegation to the Paris Universal Exposition in 1878 to work on the installation of the Canadian exhibits.37 At the close of the exposition he decided to remain in Paris to further his drawing and fine art studies. Initially he attended the free evening drawing classes in Parisian public schools, but the rigid, unimaginative curriculum reminded him of his experiences in campq’s Montreal school, so he looked elsewhere. American artist Hiram Reynolds Bloomer (b. 1845) recommended the Académie Suisse,38 where daily unsupervised study of the living model continued uninterrupted from 6:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. The Académie

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Suisse was too advanced for Brymner’s abilities so he enrolled in the evening drawing classes offered by Charles François Pinot (1817–1879), who started him at the elementary level drawing from casts of individual anatomical features, hands, feet, and heads, for two hours Tuesday to Friday. He purchased a number of casts so that he could practise drawing in his Paris lodgings. An encounter with another American expatriate, Ralph Wormeley Curtis (1854–1922),39 led Brymner to enroll in the Académie Julian,40 Paris’s “best life school,” where he drew from life in the afternoons and continued at Pinot’s in the evenings. He kept up this daily routine until dwindling financial resources and poor health forced him to return to Ottawa in 1880. During Brymner’s formative years of fine art study in Paris he was attracted to the work of artists like William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) and Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815–91) whose paintings were “so finely and minutely painted” (Artists Collection C121, Wm. Brymner Correspondence, 31 July 1878, mma). He also praised two of his professors at Julian’s, Jules Lefebvre (1836–1911) and Clarence Rodolphe Boulanger (1824–88), “two of the best artists in France” for “accurate drawing and color” (ibid., 4 November 1878). His personal preference for these French artists and their art reaffirmed his own strong inclination for drawing. Clearly Brymner modelled his aam curriculum and based his teaching methodology upon his Parisian experiences at Pinot’s and Julian’s. He organized the aam curriculum into three areas: elementary drawing from casts; compositional study in the form of sketches; and drawing and later painting after the living model. During his first three years (1886–89), the School of Fine Art continued to offer essentially a course in elementary drawing in pencil and charcoal from casts as none of Brymner’s students were ready to advance to life study. His students started sketching in pencil and charcoal from plaster casts of individual anatomical features such as hands, feet, and heads as he had done at Pinot’s. This exercise was designed principally to heighten students’ awareness of the effects of light and shade on an immobile object. The next step was to study and draw from casts of well-known antique sculptures. This introduced students not only to “acknowledged masterpieces of the ancient Greco-Roman world” but also to the concept of effet, or the subtle gradations of tonal values. Brymner suggested a number of additional exercises including memory drawing, based on the teaching and philosophy of Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran (1801–1897),41 which was intended to increase powers of observation, imagination, and the ability to record the continuous changes in

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Nature. “Memory drawing should be made from the cast or model. It is an excellent practice and although much neglected is indispensable. Without the drawing from memory the artist is powerless to put his first ideas of a picture on paper and this is the first step towards painting a picture” (mmfa Archives, Fonds Wm. Brymner p16, 16). Inspired by John Ruskin (1819–1900),42 Brymner advocated the direct study of Nature and condemned imitating or copying Nature, which resulted in misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and, most importantly, the artist’s inability to resolve technical problems: If you begin by doing what is called clever handling, using large brushes, putting on quantities of paint you can only be imitating the workmanship of men who have evolved their own style by the long and hard study of Nature. Their brilliant execution is natural to them, whilst yours, if not founded on Nature ... will probably only imitate the chosen masters’ most glaring mannerisms and other faults ... An art training should not teach you to imitate anyone, but should teach you how to study and help you see with your own eyes. (Ibid., 8, 11)

Brymner knew of Ruskin’s immense literary reputation as early as 1878, when he visited the Fine Art Society Gallery in London, to view an exhibition of one hundred and twenty works by J.M.W. Turner from Ruskin’s art collection.43 Another preliminary exercise he recommended to his elementary class was modelling in clay or plaster to give an understanding of form and proportion before progressing to advanced drawing and painting from life. “When the pupil can, with comparative ease, make a figure in white plaster stand well and solidly on its feet and get it well into proportion it is time to begin study from the living model” (ibid., 14). Throughout the 1880s and 1890s Brymner requested funds to add casts of well-known sculpture to the aam cast collection. Finally after 1900 casts of some of the Elgin Marbles and works by Donatello and Della Robbia were acquired. Subjects of the annual drawing competitions have been difficult to identify; in 1895, however, the elementary antique class drew Michelangelo’s Head of Brutus (c. 1538, Florence). Some of Brymner’s advanced drawing class students drew from life for the first time in 1889. He placed great emphasis on the endless possibilities of the nude. Most of his ideas on the nude were derived from French artist, critic, educationalist and instructor Ernest Chesneau’s widely circulated and influential book The Education of the Artist

Postsecondary Art Education in Quebec Table 3.1 Art Association of Montreal Annual Scholarships, 1889–1921 Year

Life

Antique

1889 1890

Kate Penfold Margaret J. Sanborn

1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897

James L. Graham David P. MacMillan Samuel Robertson Lilian Tucker Lilian Cameron Ethel Arnton Robert Montgomery

1898

Mary S. Norris

1899

Eveline Clay F.W. Hutchison Berthe Lemoyne Helen G. McNicoll Edward Boyd Clarence Gagnon L. Maitland Moir Alfred Beaupré

Emily Fourdrinier Marion Laing Fanny G. Plimsoll Winnifred T. Stevenson James Sonne William Edson Alberta Cleland Ethelwyn Hammond Zotique Fabien Helen G. McNicoll Janet M. Powell Candide Bienvenu Greta Murray Gustave Monat

1900 1901 1902 1903 1904

1907

F.D. Nutter Berthe Lemoyne Marguerite Buller Ruth Barr Edith Karley Emily Coonan

1908

Charles Coldrey

1909

1912

Mabel Harvie Sadie Spendlove Mabel May Adrien Hebert Mabel May A.M. Pattison Rita Daly

1913

Rita Mount

1914

Annie Ewan Lillias Torrance Regina Seiden Dorothy Coles Ruth Hefflon Marjorie Gass R.W. Pilot Donald Hill Edith Michaels

1905 1906

1910 1911

1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921

Marie Ann Proulx William Clapp Esther Durnford Ruth Barr Mabel Lockerby May Sherman Charlotte Lorenz Randolphe Newton Ethel G. Brown Mrs. N. Holland Jeanne de Crévecoeur Mabel Harvie Jessie Cream Miss McQueen Winnifred Brown A.M. Pattison Blanche Martin Emile Brunet Alma Clarke Muriel Spencer Florence Harvey Hilda Meritt Marie Prévot Annie Savage Gertrude Percival L.J.O. Belanger Nellie McNaught Carolyn Alice Gill M. Marquis Patricia Bates

77

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3.9 Academia, 1901. Clarence Gagnon. Charcoal on paper, 61 x 43.2 cm. (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts). Gift of the artist. Photo: Marilyn Aitkens.

(1886) of which Brymner had a copy in his library: “The study of the nude is, of course, an indispensable exercise for every artist who is anxious to master the numberless combinations of form that Nature offers to his consideration. The drawing of the figure necessitates faithful observation, a quick and accurate eye, facility of hand, delicacy of drawing and a sense of proportion” (ibid.).

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Drawing from life was more intricate and difficult, although the poses adopted generally resembled famous sculpture from classical antiquity. Brymner’s pupils began their life drawing with a light sketch in an attempt to capture form, ensemble or the entire figure. In 1889 a draped model was available for three days a week, which was increased to six days a week in 1898. By 1905, a nude model posed five mornings and a draped model two afternoons a week. In 1889, as some of his pupils acquired greater competence and a more studious attitude, Brymner established two annual scholarships (See Table 3.1), one for the best drawing from the antique and the other from life. The scholarships not only served to motivate, encourage, and create a friendly competition amongst his students but also helped to pay the expensive aam annual tuition. The life scholarship was not awarded until 1891 because none of Brymner’s students attained the minimum standard. The life class usually drew from the “semi-nude figure of a man.” The award-winning charcoal drawing by Clarence Gagnon (1881–1942) of a semi-draped male (fig. 3.9) from the 1901 life class is highly finished, with close attention to anatomical detail and a rigid pose that adds to its formality. In both style and technique it resembles the life drawings produced in Parisian atelier competitions in which Brymner and his aam predecessor Robert Harris had participated. In 1904, after three years at the aam School of Fine Art, Gagnon,44 like many of Brymner’s students, went to Paris to continue his studies at the Académie Julian. Brymner’s life-long interest in life study is no better exemplified than with three superb oils of a reclining female nude (figs. 3.10, 3.11, 3.12) dated circa 1915. Although posed differently, these figure studies strongly reinforce his Paris atelier training. In the absence of the model, Brymner had his students make “quick sketches” of him or of fellow classmates to strengthen their powers of observation. Perhaps the best surviving examples of this exercise are the sensitive pencil drawings in the 1898 sketchbook of Mary Mullally (1880–1960). Brymner actively participated in the classroom and produced paintings and drawings along with his pupils. One exceptionally fine example is his portrait (fig. 3.13) of Helen Galloway McNicoll (1879–1915), who won the aam life competition in 1900 (see Table 3.1). He encouraged his students to keep a small sketchbook with them at all times to record scenes of everyday life. Quick sketches were an essential part of the curriculum and were considered a relief from the more disciplined techniques of the classroom when students could pursue their interests, capture immediacy and spontaneity, and develop

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3.10 Nude Figure. Signed Wm. Brymner 1915 bottom right. Oil on canvas, 74.7 x 101.7 cm (1171. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa)

3.11 Reclining Figure. William Brymner, c. 1915. Oil on canvas, 45.7 x 87 cm (Montréal Museum of Fine Arts). Gift of Mrs W. Brymner. Photo: mmfa

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3.12 Reclining Nude. William Brymner. Oil on canvas, 68.3 x 99 cm. (1975.009 Musée d’art de Joliette). Gift of Dr Hawey A. Evans

a point of view uniquely their own. Quick sketches did not represent preliminary drawings but were considered studies in composition. Brymner always preferred the pencil’s accuracy and filled numerous sketchbooks (now housed at the Art Gallery of Hamilton) with drawings of architectural details, figures, and landscapes on his many sketching excursions to Europe with American, British, and Canadian artists. Through his early associations and later friendships, Brymner asked a number of professional artists (see Table 3.2) to offer additional fine art classes to complement his curriculum. A modelling class was organized by sculptor George W. Hill (1862–1934) in 1896 and again in 1905 by artist and rca lawyer Kenneth R. MacPherson (1861–1916). A watercolour course was taught by James M. Barnsley from 1889 to 1891 and Charles E. Moss from 1892 to 1901. En plein air sketching was offered by Edmond Dyonnet from 1901 to 1911, then by Maurice Cullen from 1911 to 1921. Anatomy was taught by sculptor and physician Dr Robert Tait McKenzie from 1898 to 1900 and illustration by William M. Barnes in 1904–05. An after-school elementary drawing

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3.13 Helen McNicoll. William Brymner, 1901. Graphite on paper, 21.9 x 15.1 cm. (76/29. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto). Gift of R.F. Elliott, 1976

class for children was taught by Miss Alberta Cleland from its inception in 1898 to 1937. Brymner’s curricular innovations superceded the Académie Julian; the illustration course and children’s drawing class predated those offered by the Académie Julian by three and eight years respectively (Fehrer 1984, 211). Brymner was well acquainted with the international reputation of the South Kensington system and had direct experience teaching it. After his return from Paris he taught freehand drawing at the Ottawa art school in the early 1880s when the Ontario postsecondary schools of industrial art and design used an abbreviated South Kensington curriculum (Braide 1979, 26). He also briefly offered advanced freehand drawing at campq’s Montreal school in 1890 when the Walter Smith manuals were used (campq, 13 May 1890, 853, banq). He condemned

Table 3.2 Art Association of Montreal Fine Art Instructors and Classes Subject

Year

Allan Edson (1846–88) William Raphael (1833–1914) François Van Luppen (1838–99) Robert Harris (1849–1919) William Brymner (1855–1925) ” ” James M. Barnsley (1861–1929) Charles E. Moss (1860–1901) Edmond Dyonnet (1859–1954) Maurice Cullen (1866–1934) George W. Hill (1862–1934) Kenneth R. MacPherson (1861–1916) Dr Robert T. McKenzie (1867–1938) William M. Barnes (1882–1955) Alberta Cleland (1876–1960)

Composition & Landscape Figure Painting & Drawing Modelling & Sculpture Elementary & Advanced Drawing Elementary & Advanced Drawing Painting Watercolour Watercolour “en plein air” sketching “en plein air” sketching Modelling Modelling Anatomy Illustration Elementary Drawing for School Children

1880–81 1880–81 1880–81 1883/4–85/6 1886/87–1921 1900/01–1921 1889–91 1892–1901 1901–10/11 1911/12–1921 1896 1905/06 1898/99–1899/1900 1904–05 1898/99–1937

Postsecondary Art Education in Quebec

Instructor

83

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the South Kensington system with its utilitarian philosophy of industrial art and design and drawing manuals in which students were required and expected to produce highly finished drawings for commercial purposes at the elementary level. Even though he realized its shortcomings, limitations, and ideological and methodological differences, the initial stages of the aam’s elementary drawing course exercises for children matched exactly those in both the Walter Smith and later Templé drawing manuals which were used in Québec’s public day schools. In a step-by-step program students began drawing straight lines between dots, then advanced to form squares. A circle was then drawn in a square, which led to curved lines. Cubes, prisms, pyramids, cylinders, cones, and spheres were first drawn from the flat, then from objects. Plaster casts of individual parts of the body were followed by “full length figures from the antique” (mmfa Archives, Fonds Wm. Brymner p16, 13–14). In the spring of 1917, Brymner suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. After three months in Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital he returned to the aam School of Fine Art. Four years later in 1921 he retired and the Brymner era at the school ended. William Brymner’s contribution to the aam School of Fine Art and to art education in Quebec was outstanding. He was a modernist45 who was at the vanguard of contemporary art educators in North America and Europe. His philosophy of art was eclectic, as he tapped a multiplicity of sources of inspiration and was familiar with a diversity of methodologies of drawing and fine art instruction. Through his longevity, creativity, imagination, and ingenuity he shaped the aam School of Fine Art curriculum to his art educational background and experiences. Drawing was quintessential to making art and it was his priority. With limited financial resources and inadequate teaching apparatus, and faced with opposition to drawing and painting from the draped and nude model from narrow-minded Victorian Englishspeaking Protestants and French-speaking Roman Catholics, Brymner was nevertheless able, after a few challenging years, to offer a strong course in elementary drawing, followed by advanced drawing from 1889 and painting from 1901. For a generation of visual artists, predominantly women, he organized advanced drawing and fine art classes based on his Paris atelier experiences at a time when the utilitarian philosophy of industrial art and design education was promoted throughout Quebec by both the Council of Public Instruction in primary and secondary public day schools and by campq postsecondary industrial art and design schools.

Recto Running Head

4 Postsecondary Art Education in Ontario, 1876–1912 j. craig stirling

introduction There were two kinds of pressures and doctrines developing which tended to destroy traditional recreations and pastimes: the utilitarian philosophy of manufacturers and the puritanical attitudes of the Methodists. Utilitarian philosophy, as interpreted by the manufacturers stressed the value of work and discipline, and condemned ... any activities which were not “useful”. At the same time, Methodists ... condemned anything in the arts or literature which was non-religious in character. (Ossowska 1971, 34)

In Ontario during the second half of the nineteenth century, two major forces, Methodism1 and Utilitarianism, shaped the society and favoured the adoption of the South Kensington system, with its utilitarian philosophy of industrial art and design. During the 1830s and 1840s a network of mechanics’ institutes2 was established in Upper Canada to give working-class men access to free education to improve their work skills and lives. The limited evening curriculum included reading, writing, arithmetic, and numerous mechanical and technical drawing courses. By the 1850s, as enrolment increased, the curriculum had become obsolete and the instructors inadequate to meet the needs and expectations of the students. Throughout the 1850s and 1860s civic officials, clergy, politicians, and educationalists recognized the

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importance of vocational and technical training for the large unskilled increasingly urban population. Legislators, however, were slow to act. As had been the case in Britain and Lower Canada (Quebec), Ontario’s educationalists believed that schools of industrial art and design “would be the means of greatly diffusing education amongst the poorer classes of our people, promoting temperance, and lessening crime” (Hodgins 1911, vol. 3, 323, 372). The Comprehensive School Act of 1871 was enacted as a solution to offset crime and help the disenfranchised by establishing industrial and manual labour schools. Egerton Ryerson (1803–1882),3 a Methodist minister and Upper Canada’s first superintendent of education from 1844 to 1876, was the main adherent for reform and catalyst for change. He identified problems and inadequacies in the public school system and set about correcting them. As early as 1849 (Armstrong 1961, 33–49) Ryerson recommended that a museum and school of art and design be established in Toronto, but he was unable to convince politicians or solicit funding from either public or private sources. Drawing was quintessential to technical and vocational education and Ryerson lobbied tirelessly to have it included in Upper Canada public school curriculum. Writing in the important monthly Journal of Education for Upper Canada (1848, 301), he insisted that drawing and art education deserved to be included in the curriculum because “the impressions made upon the mind through the eye are more vivid and distinct than those made through hearing, tasting or smelling.” This pioneering periodical, of which Ryerson was sole editor from its inception in 1848 until his retirement in 1876, was packed with information on international educational systems, regional educational news, school architecture, educational theory and practice, and history. Most importantly, it anticipated future educational publications such as Henry Cole’s Journal of Design and Manufactures (1849–52) in Britain, and P.-J.-O. Chauveau’s Journal de l’instruction publique (1857–98) in Quebec. Ironically, it wasn’t until Ryerson retired in 1876, twenty-seven years after he had first raised the idea, that a post-secondary school of art and design was founded in Toronto by the Ontario Society of Artists (osa, established in 1872), with a meagre grant from the Ontario provincial government. One of his most important legacies to Ontario was the Educational Museum,4 opened to the Toronto public in 1857. The museum, with its diverse collection of objects, was modelled upon the South Kensington Museum in London. The mission of both museums was to provide a “means of training the minds and forming the taste

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and character of the people” (Hodgins 1911, vol. 2, 12). These sentiments echoed the educational philosophy espoused earlier by Henry Cole and the South Kensington circle. Between the mid-1840s and the mid-1860s Ryerson travelled to Europe on four occasions to study and evaluate educational systems in primary and secondary public schools and to purchase educational material and school apparatus. Most of his purchases for the Educational Museum were made during his trips of 1855–56 and 1866–67. The collection included specimens of natural history, science, armour, more than two hundred and fifty copies of paintings after well-known artists from all periods and all European schools, engravings after famous paintings, and a large collection of sculpture, “including casts of some of the most celebrated Statues, ancient and modern, and Busts of the most illustrious of the ancient Greeks and Romans, also of Sovereigns, Statesmen, Philosophers, Scholars, Philanthropists, and Heroes of Great Britain and other Countries. Likewise a collection of Architectural Casts, illustrating the different styles of Architecture, and some of the characteristic ornaments of ancient Gothic and modern Architecture” (ibid., 12). Throughout its history the Educational Museum collection received mixed reviews. Its critical reception ranged from high praise to savage condemnation. Ryerson’s biographer, Nathaniel Burwash, has placed the criticism into perspective: “The art critics of today will perhaps smile at the copies of the old masters imported from France, Germany and Italy. But in those days they served their purpose and sowed the seeds of aesthetic life which today is developing a true Canadian art” (cited in Johnson 1971, 245). Ryerson’s Educational Museum was used, like the South Kensington Museum, to cultivate taste, promote “art culture,” educate, and inform. From 1876 to 1912, art students in Toronto had access to the museum’s vast collections of “excellent plaster casts from antique statues” with which they could practise their “accurate” drawing skills and improve their manual dexterity.

1876–82: the osa influence The history of Ontario’s postsecondary schools of art and design5 falls neatly into two periods, 1876–82 and 1882–1912. In 1876, a pivotal year, the Ontario government sent a delegation of educationalists, politicians, industrialists, manufacturers, and members of the osa to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in search of an educational

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system that would best serve the needs of an emerging industrial economy and increasingly industrialized province. Most North American educators, including those in Ontario, favoured the adoption of the Walter Smith system and drawing manuals, used in Massachusetts since 1871 and showcased prominently in Philadelphia. Although all members of the delegation acknowledged the importance of drawing and art education, the Ontario government deferred indefinitely any decision to adopt the Smith system and drawing manuals in provincial public day schools. Following the government’s inaction, the osa unilaterally established the Ontario School of Art in Toronto in 1876. The osa opened two additional art schools in Ontario, the Western Ontario School of Art and Design in London in 1878, and the Ottawa Art School in 1879. Curiously, even though the osa was a fine-art-oriented organization, its three postsecondary art schools were modelled upon the South Kensington schools of industrial art and design, which had the reputation of having contributed significantly to economic revival, unprecedented industrial growth and development, and the prosperity of all classes in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was hoped that the osa schools would contribute to Canada’s industrial self-sufficiency: “The great need of the country is the creation of skilled mechanical and artistic labour, which shall in the future make the country independent of foreign importation of manufactures ... making the elements of art integral parts of all education” (Dominion Annual Register and Review 1880–81, 321). The function of the osa art schools was to provide sound fundamental education in drawing for students of both fine art and industrial art and design. The curriculum reflected this duality of philosophy. Industrial art and design courses were offered in the evenings to “mechanics and apprentices” who were charged a nominal fee. Fine art courses were available during the mornings and afternoons to “ladies and gentlemen” who paid three times more than the evening rates. The curriculum of the three osa art schools was an abbreviated version of the South Kensington system’s twenty-three stages of instruction. The osa art schools in Toronto and London had seven and eight stages of courses respectively. The first five stages in each school were identical. Students began by drawing in “accurate freehand” ornament and natural objects, figures and animals from the flat copy and in the round first in outline then shaded. Stage six in Toronto was “ornamental design, perspective and anatomy” in outline and in the round (Ontario School of Art Prospectus 1879, n.p. [2], oca Archives), whereas

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London offered “mechanical and architectural drawing in outline and from models” (Charles Hill’s Curatorial File, Report of the Board of Agriculture, ngc). The final stage in both Toronto and London was “colour commencing with monochrome” (ibid.), which was the equivalent of South Kensington’s twenty-third and final stage. London offered an additional course in modelling in clay and, at a later date, a course in porcelain and china painting developed uniquely by the Griffiths brothers,6 James (1814–1896) and John H. (1826–1898). Before their arrival in London in 1855, the Griffiths brothers, like their father, had worked for Minton’s as professional china decorators. The Griffiths’ students were in demand and quickly employed by a number of London and Toronto china companies including Hurd, Leigh and Co., W.J. Reid and Co., and Pigot and Bryan (Davis 1989, 45). Students at the osa art school in Toronto had access to the extensive collection of the Educational Museum, which gave them a distinct advantage over the students enrolled in the art schools in London and Ottawa where half the annual government grant was expended on the purchase of plaster casts, teaching apparatus, and educational materials. Not only were staff of the three art schools residents of the cities they taught in but most had been trained in British art schools under the control of the South Kensington system. This homogeneity of staff reinforced the South Kensington utilitarian philosophy of industrial art and design. Richard Baigent (1840–1890), a South Kensington-trained artist and member of both the osa and rca, taught perspective and elementary drawing at the osa art school in Toronto from 1880 to 1883. He reiterated Henry Cole’s dictum that anyone “can learn or be taught drawing” and that learning to draw “rightly ... was the solid study of accurate form” on which all art depended. He believed that art education would not only “contribute to the mental and moral illumination” of his pupils but also benefit intellectually and morally both individuals and society (Baigent 1881, 59–61). In 1879 the artist Lucius O’Brien (1832–1900), who had visited the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876 as part of the Ontario delegation, published a report on art education in the United States that highly recommended the adoption of the Walter Smith system and drawing manuals for use in all Ontario schools. The politically astute O’Brien was osa vice-president from 1875 to 1881 and later the first president of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (established 1882). His report shaped and charted the direction of art education in Ontario for the next thirty years. It was based on the ideas expressed by South

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Kensington’s most important expatriate, the ubiquitous Walter Smith. O’Brien had read Smith’s published paper on technical education delivered in early 1879 at the Educational Association of the United States in Washington, dc. He urged the Ontario government to include drawing in the public day-school curriculum. Although he stressed the importance of drawing as a subject in primary and secondary schools, he gave priority to postsecondary art training. He was convinced of the benefits that would accrue to both individuals and society with the adoption of a comprehensive standardized system of drawing based on the South Kensington system, which had revolutionized art education in Britain: To develop the intelligence, cultivate the taste, and train the hand and eye to skilful work, is art education ... upon it depends wealth and commercial supremacy. England’s system of art education was born of commercial necessity, and within the last quarter of a century it has enabled her to surpass in the taste of her designs, as well as in the skill of her workmanship, all her rivals. Her progress was virtually acknowledged by the French Government, who in 1863 appointed an Imperial Commission to discover the cause. (O’Brien 1879, 588)

O’Brien’s report influenced all subsequent publications on art education in Ontario and was the catalyst for change. From 1882 to 1886, the Walter Smith system and drawing manuals were used in Ontario primary and secondary public schools including the postsecondary art schools until they were replaced by the Dominion drawing manuals, also known as the Canadian drawing manuals. In 1882 the Ontario education department, which since its establishment in 1876 had continuous power struggles with the osa art school committee members, paid the debts and assumed control of the osa art school in Toronto.7 A few years later in 1885 the Western Ontario School of Art and Design in London and the Ottawa Art School were also taken over by the Ontario education department.

1882–1912: nulla dies sine linea The Art School be yet regarded by our local rulers as a power working for the general good ... Art and crime are antagonistic; Art and commercial prosperity, to say nothing of refinement and general advance. (Dominion Annual Register and Review 1884, 198)

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[Toronto Art School] shall occupy a position for Canada similar to that filled in England by the great school of South Kensington. (Dominion Annual Register and Review 1885, 352)

In 1882 the osa art school was renamed the Toronto Art School. The name change was both symbolic and political. The Ontario education department wanted to distance itself from the Ontario School of Art, which shared the same abbreviation (osa) as the Ontario Society of Artists with whom they had ongoing conflicts since 1876. In addition to the original three osa art schools in Toronto (1876–1912), London (1878–1901), and Ottawa (1879–1901), the Ontario education department from the mid-1880s opened art schools in five other cities: Kingston (1884–1904), Hamilton (1885–1910), Brockville (1886–99), Stratford (1886–87), and St Thomas (1889–1905). The Ontario education department’s mandate was to extend the influence of industrial art and design throughout the province and to make available drawing courses to “children, mechanics and artisans” (rme 1882, 165 lac) and “to impart technical instruction to the working classes” (rme 1886–87, 186, lac). Rules and regulations were the cornerstone of state-run educational bureaucracy. In 1882 the educational department organized the curriculum into three courses of study: Elementary (or Primary) – five subjects; Advanced – six subjects; and Technical (or Mechanical) – five subjects.8 Over the next thirty years, from 1882 to 1912, the curriculum was not static but evolved with subjects added, subtracted, combined, renamed, and shifted from the three courses of study. In 1897–98 five extra or special subjects were grouped under a fourth course – Industrial Art. Also in 1882 an art teacher training program was initiated, modelled upon the South Kensington course established in 1857, which qualified instructors to teach drawing in “Public and High Schools, Mechanics’ Institutes and Industrial Art Schools” throughout Ontario. Teacher’s certificates were first awarded in 1884 for the primary and in 1885 for the advanced courses. The students ranged in age from fifteen to forty and were from all socioeconomic levels of Ontario society. As an incentive, high-school students were offered twelve “three year tuition free” scholarships to the Toronto Art School in an attempt to boost enrolment and encourage a career in art and design (rme 1884, 236, lac). In 1884 the Western Ontario School of Art and Design and the Ottawa Art School became affiliated with the Toronto Art School for examination pur-

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poses, as did all Ontario secondary schools, mechanics’ institutes, and colleges. All student drawings were sent to Toronto for evaluation before certificates and medals were awarded, just as all drawings had been forwarded to London’s National Art Training School in Britain. Two gold medal competitions were established, one for “the best ornamental design applicable to decorations of Industrial Art” and the other for “the best study from the Antique in chalk”. In addition, two bronze medals were offered for the “highest marks in the five subjects in the Elementary course” (rme 1885–86, 192, lac). Certificates were issued for drawing proficiency in all the courses. In 1880, as a student at the osa school in Toronto, George Agnew Reid (1860–1947) was awarded a silver medal for his antique subject drawing Jason and the Golden Fleece (Boyanoski 1986, 45, 52). Payment upon results was another direct influence of South Kensington. All Ontario schools were entitled to “one dollar for every pupil obtaining one proficiency certificate ... in any of the Drawing courses, and five dollars for a full certificate in the Advanced or Mechanical Course” (rme 1886–87, 184, lac). Exactly as in South Kensington, the subject and size of a competition drawing was specified and all entrants were supplied with the same paper in order to evaluate fairly each drawing submitted for certificates. Samples of work done during the session must be given in (a) Ornamental Design and Outline, and Shading from the Antique . . . (b) Drawing from the Antique, full figure. The drawing shall not be less than two feet, in height, on white paper, in chalk, either with or without the aid of stump, background shaded or plain work to be finished in 36 hours. (c) Original Design. This is to be executed in pencil on paper provided by the Department; . . . drawing not less than six inches by four inches. The designs recommended are those suitable for wall paper, carpet, oil cloth, etc. (rme 1885–86, 192, lac).

Hamilton Art School student Ina N. Banting9 won a gold medal in 1886 for her floor tile (fig. 4–1) and oil cloth (fig. 4–2) designs, which were comparable to the work of such South Kensington students as Arthur Ford (wallpaper), William Hammond (wall tiles), William Parkinson (ceiling paper), and John Brownsword (flower designs; Fisher 1899, 3, 5, 10, 26). The Ontario education department examination committee stipulated that all drawings submitted “must be in pure outline ... to combine correctness of drawing and neatness of execution”; otherwise, “if there be any shading the exercise will not be examined” (rme 1903–04, 217–18, lac).

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4.1 Design for Floor Tile. Ina N. Banting. Hamilton Art School. Report of the Minister of Education 1884–85, p. 194. (Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa)

Life study either from the semidraped or nude figure was the sine qua non of a fine-art-oriented education. Before the Ontario education department assumed control of the postsecondary art schools, only the Ottawa Art School, in its inaugural year of 1879, offered study from life “both nude and draped in oil and watercolours,” and again later, from 1883, under the influence of its American-born Paris-trained principal Charles E. Moss (1860–1901).10 Fine art students were a minority in Ontario’s postsecondary art schools, so in 1882 the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts proposed that one hundred dollars be budgeted to both the osa and aam to pay for life classes principally in Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa.11 However, the rca grants were not distributed until three years later in 1885. London, Brockville, and Hamilton offered life study without rca funding.12 Initially the rca grant in Toronto was diverted from the hiring of models to pay for the acquisition of plaster casts and teaching apparatus.13 Finding models to pose for life classes was a daunting task. To find “ideal physiques” matching the masterpieces of statuary from classical antiquity was virtually impossible. The major obstacle was the reputation and notoriety of “a model’s life in the gay ateliers of Paris” (Colgate 1954, 9), so poignantly described in George Du Maurier’s popular and widely circulated autobiographical novel Trilby (1894). It was generally believed

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4.2 Design for Oil Cloth. Ina N. Banting. Hamilton Art School. Report of the Minister of Education 1884– 85, p. 195. (Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa)

in Victorian Protestant Ontario and elsewhere that study from life brought models of “doubtful character” into contact with young impressionable students, rendering “the classroom unwholesome and dangerous” (Trobridge 1905, 307). Under such puritanical and restrictive conditions life study in Ontario’s postsecondary art schools consisted mainly of study from the semidraped male model (fig. 4–3). Even the Toronto Art Students League (1886–1904), which had been organized to “afford facilities for the study of drawing and painting from the antique and life” (Holmes, 1894, 175) for professional members of the osa and rca and advanced art students at the art school in Toronto, considered life study only acceptable (semidraped male) if “mounted in Christian-like manner” (ibid., 173). The idea of founding one “strong central” school in Toronto supported by a provincial network of schools based on the South Kens-

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4.3 Life Class, Hamilton Art School. Report of the Minister of Education 1907, p. 705. (Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa)

ington system was expressed frequently in Ontario educational annual reports. In 1890 a direct policy was enacted to create a “truly central school” in Toronto at the expense of the rural schools, which were gradually and systematically closed during the 1890s; until by 1905 only two remained, Toronto and Hamilton. In October 1890 the Ontario School of Art was renamed the Central Ontario School of Art and Design, whose mission was “a large and influential School of Art in Toronto, which shall bring students from all parts of our Province” as well as other regions of Canada (rme 1890–91, 161, lac). Objections to this policy were voiced by the public and staff members of the other provincial postsecondary schools of art and design. The public complained about the lack of access to free drawing and industrial art and design education and the art school staff worried about loss of jobs and income. The education department refuted these allegations about centralization and gave the reason for the decrease in the number of schools as higher proficiency in drawing in primary and secondary schools and “Ladies Colleges” eliminating the need for the elementary

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4.4 Designs for Cushion Covers, Hamilton Art School. Report of the Minister of Education 1907, p. 715. (Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa)

part of the curriculum (ibid. 1902–03, 128). Throughout the 1890s and later, the education department amassed statistics to prove that the Central Ontario School of Art and Design attracted students from “all over” Ontario and other provinces as well, thereby fulfilling its mission (ibid. 1900–01, 147). Manufacturers were slow to recognize and support the art schools where most of their workforce were trained, but by the late 1880s several individuals and companies had begun to offer monetary incentives and prizes for designs produced at the schools.14 In Toronto the art school opened two additional branches, one in Parkdale (1888 to 1990–91), and the other in the West End (1886 to 1991–92) located near “a number of manufactures and other large employers of skilled labor” (ibid. 1896–97, 232). During the 1890s students found employment in “various trades and professions” (ibid. 1896–97, 157), although in 1895 Brockville art school officials accused local manufacturers of “borrowing designs of foreign origin” (ibid. 1895–96, 337) because it was cheaper than hiring art school graduates. One of the undisputed benefits of industrial art and design education was that graduates were paid a salary rather than employed as unwaged apprentices (ibid. 1889–90, 316). From its inception in 1885 the Hamilton Art School had maintained strong links to local manufactures and industry, perhaps due in part to its extraordinary principal, South Kensington-trained S. John Ireland (1854–1915), and his wife who

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4.5 China Painting and Design. Hamilton Art School. Report of the Minister of Education 1907, p. 719. (Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa)

offered a progressive industrial art and design curriculum. Ireland, a former head of industrial art and design schools in Barrow, Barnstaple, and Ilfracombe, lecturer at King’s College, London, and an art examiner for the City of London and Birkbeck College in London, along with his wife, made outstanding contributions to the development of an arts and crafts curriculum unique to the art school in Hamilton. Both were active in the community and cofounded the Hamilton Arts and Crafts Association in 1885. Ireland’s rigorous lecture series was popular with students and public alike.15 Hamilton students produced designs for local manufactures including cushion covers and china painting (figs.4–5, 4–6). In 1900 the Hamilton Art School was renamed the Hamilton School of Art, Design and Technology, a decision that divided the staff, students, and directors on the school’s mandate that the “principal instruction should consist of Industrial Design” rather than fine art (ibid. 1900–01, 146). In 1909 the Hamilton school was merged with the new technical school and again was renamed the Technical and Art School, (Seath 1911, 271). The new

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curriculum included courses in science and applied art but retained many of the courses from 1885 including mechanical, freehand, and architectural drawing, china painting, modelling in clay, and industrial design. In 1910 John Seath, Ontario’s superintendent of education, reiterated the same philosophy, ideology, and educational policies that had been promoted more than half a century earlier by Egerton Ryerson in Ontario, Walter Smith in Massachusetts and Quebec, and Henry Cole and the South Kensington circle in Britain – that “the most important department should be that of Industrial Art and Design” (ibid. 1911, 310). In 1912 the Ontario provincial government passed the technical education legislation, which closed the Central Ontario School of Art and Design and created two new institutions: the Toronto Technical School, which was designed to meet Ontario’s need for a skilled workforce in its industrial and manufacturing sectors, and Ontario College of Art (hereafter oca), which offered fine art education. The initial impression was that industrial art and design had finally been separated from fine art. However, closer examination proved otherwise. The oca syllabus was organized into four courses: Primary, Advanced, Design and Applied Art, and an art teachers’ training program (oca Archives, General Syllabus 1913–14, 12). The oca curriculum resembled in structure and content the original 1882 osa art school course of study. Primary course subjects included blackboard and memory drawings executed in “pure outline.” The purpose of the primary course was “training of the hand and arm for control in drawing and the eye in judgment of proportion and form,” which had been repeated in all art educational literature since the first report from South Kensington’s Department of Science and Art in 1854. The Advanced course consisted of drawing historical ornaments, the antique figure from casts, still life, costume studies, modelling, portraits, illustration, as well as drawing and painting from life. The Design and Applied Art course consisted of ten subjects and was modelled on the curriculum of the City School of Art in Liverpool and the Municipal Art School of Manchester (Seath 1911, 54, 63). Many of the subjects such as embroidery, tapestry, lace-making and weaving, printing on fabrics, wallpaper, jewellery and enamelling, pottery, tiles, lettering and illumination, and decorative illustration had already been offered in the progressive arts and crafts curriculum of the Hamilton Art School. The oca’s first principal, George A. Reid (1860–1947), stated that “perhaps the only essential difference between the early school [Ontario School of Art]

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and the present College of Art [oca] is the development of crafts in connection with design” (Reid 1912, 4). Reid and his colleague William Cruikshank (1848–1922) were outstanding art instructors because of their long service at the art schools in Toronto and dedication to their students. In 1890 Reid began a forty-year16 association with the postsecondary art schools in Toronto, first teaching painting, then drawing and painting from life at the Central Ontario School of Art and Design, and second as oca principal and instructor of primary drawing and costume studies from 1912 until 1929. After studying at the osa art school in Toronto from 1878 to 1882 when the South Kensington curriculum was used, Reid spent the three years from 1882 to 1885 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, under Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), one of the most innovative and progressive art educators in nineteenth century America. Although he had been exposed to the avant garde “radical” teaching methods of Eakins, which included modelling in clay and painting with the brush without any preliminary drawings, Reid’s teaching methodology was traditional and conventional, founded in extensive studies of “anatomy and perspective” (Miller 1946, 182). Like Edmond Dyonnet, his conservative Quebec contemporary and campq director, Reid, who had experimented with impressionism, dismissed “Post Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism, Expressionism” as ephemeral styles and fashionable trends. Cruikshank was renowned for his “dry, humourous and often cutting remarks” as well as his unparalleled strength as a draughtsman with “few rivals” (Mavor 1926, 43) and had an extensive and diversified fine art training in Britain. Initially he enrolled in the Edinburgh School of Art when the South Kensington curriculum and philosophy were imposed; this was followed by life study at the Royal Scottish Academy, and seven years at London’s Royal Academy.17 To supplement his income he worked as an illustrator for a number of London illustrated periodicals before emigrating to Canada in the early 1880s. For more than thirty years, from 1883 until his retirement in 1916, he taught elementary and advanced drawing at postsecondary art schools in Toronto. He and George Reid also organized drawing and painting from life at the Toronto Art Students’ League. Few art instructors had the staying power of Reid and Cruikshank, although staff members of Ontario’s postsecondary art schools remained at their teaching positions longer than their Quebec campq counterparts, who often moved from school to school and in and out of the system. Over the thirty-six

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years from 1876 to 1912, eighty-four staff members (fifty-seven male, twenty-seven female) taught drawing and fine art or “extra subjects”; seventy-eight of these (fifty-one males, twenty-seven females) were either graduates of British art schools controlled by South Kensington or former students of Ontario’s postsecondary art schools or both18 (Stirling 1989, 332–50). The homogeneity of staff reinforced South Kensington’s utilitarian philosophy of industrial art and design. South Kensington-trained artists were highly regarded and their qualifications ensured their employment in Ontario’s postsecondary art schools, mechanics’ institutes, colleges, and public schools.19 The South Kensington curriculum and its history were reprinted continuously in the Ontario education department annual reports from 1882 to 1899.20 In 1885 hrh the Princess Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria and wife of the Marquis of Lorne, Governor General of Canada from 1878 to 1882, presented thirty-nine drawings by South Kensington students “illustrative of the South Kensington curriculum” to the National Gallery of Canada.21 Her generosity was reciprocated on two occasions. In 1887 and 189722 the Ontario education department, to commemorate Queen Victoria’s golden and diamond jubilees, forwarded a representative sample of drawings from Ontario’s postsecondary art schools. Direct or indirect contact with South Kensington continued. In 1897 John Sparkes, principal of the National Art Training School in London, delivered a series of public lectures to the students and staff of the Hamilton Art School (Canadian Architect and Builder 1897, 175). Three years later in 1900, no doubt as a result of his successful lectures, Sir Donald Smith (1820–1914), Canadian High Commissioner to Great Britain from 1896 to 1914, arranged for an exhibition of drawings and paintings from the South Kensington schools to be presented in Ottawa. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century international exhibitions were the perfect venue for showcasing a nation’s industrial goods, manufactures, and cultural products. At the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876 participation by the Ontario education department and Ontario’s postsecondary art schools was limited (Stamp 1978, 305), but the foreign press praised subsequent Ontario exhibits at the Paris Universal Exposition in 1878, London’s Indian and Colonial Exhibition in 1886, and Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.23 The Ontario press gave favourable and extensive coverage to the international exhibitions and the postsecondary art schools annual student exhibitions in the Canadian Gazette, Toronto Globe, Morning Post, and Toronto Saturday Night.

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To sum up, the postsecondary art schools in Ontario developed differently from those in Quebec. The South Kensington system was the inspiration for state schools of industrial art and design. The Ontario education department took control of the three osa art schools in Toronto (1876), London (1878), and Ottawa (1879), and in 1885 opened additional schools in five other Ontario towns. The idea of one strong central school with numerous provincial schools was modelled structurally on South Kensington’s National Art Training School in London supported by an elaborate network of branch schools throughout Britain. However, failure to attract support of local manufacturers during the 1890s led the Ontario Department of Education to pursue a deliberate policy of closing the rural schools in favour of one central school in Toronto. Throughout their history Ontario’s postsecondary art schools not only promoted the utilitarian philosophy of industrial art and design but also adopted specific features of the South Kensington system. The curriculum was a shortened version of South Kensington’s twenty-three stages. Drawing examinations were standardized. The type of paper was supplied. The size of drawings was specified. An annual student exhibition was held. Proficiency certificates and medals were awarded for every subject and course. The program of “payment on results” was initiated to encourage excellence and reward affiliated schools, mechanics’ institutes, and colleges for certificates and medals their students won. Evening classes for workingclass men were either free or nearly so. The osa and its members, many of whom taught in Ontario’s postsecondary art schools, played an important role in ensuring that fine art courses were part of the curriculum. Fine art or “extra-subjects” day classes were offered to “ladies and gentlemen” at a substantially higher fee than the evening classes. Ryerson’s Educational Museum, modelled upon the South Kensington Museum, attempted to improve public taste, educate and inform, and promote “art culture.” It also afforded art school students the opportunity to become familiar with copies of the “acknowledged masterpieces” of art, and the large collection of casts was used for drawing exercises. The art teacher training program specifically targeted women for “honourable and useful employment.” Whereas at campq schools women could not teach, women instructors made up thirty-five percent of Ontario’s postsecondary art schools staff, no doubt due to the osa influence. Again, where women were excluded from enrolment at campq schools, women excelled and outperformed men at Ontario’s art schools to capture an overwhelming number of

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medals and certificates.24 The number of certificates awarded between 1885 and 1904 was staggering, 73,048 in the primary course, 5,898 in the advanced, 1,501 in the mechanical, and 465 in the industrial (rme 1903–04, 217–19, nl). The South Kensington system had a profound and extensive international influence, including in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. John Ruskin’s prediction in 1877 that “the Professorship of Sir Henry Cole at South Kensington has corrupted the system of art-teaching all over England into a state of abortion and falsehood from which it will take twenty years to recover (Cook 1912, vol. 29, 154) seems conservative in terms of geography and chronology. In retrospect, Ruskin underestimated the impact of the South Kensington system at home and abroad in emerging industrial economies.

Recto Running Head

5 The Dawn of the Twentieth Century: Art Education in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia harold pearse

introduction As we begin a new century it is fitting to look back and try to construct a picture of the field of art education at the beginning of the last one. What was the teaching of art like in Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? In 1900 the country was only thirty-three years old and consisted of seven provinces and two territories. Canada was experiencing the greatest boom it had yet known: world trade was thriving, new railways were being built and a new tide of immigration was rapidly settling the West. All parts of the country reaped benefits. The national confidence was such that Wilfred Laurier, prime minister from 1896 to 1911, could proclaim: “The nineteenth century was the century of the United States, the twentieth century will be the century of Canada” (Careless 1973, 301). The concept of public or common school education was not much older than the country. What place did art education, in any form, have in that system? What can we learn from the first years of the twentieth century that is relevant to an understanding of art education as we enter the twenty-first century? Through a series of vignettes, this chapter creates a portrait of art education, then just beginning to evolve from the teaching of drawing, in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia. The time frame is 1900 to 1905. The entry points are the careers of three educators, one in each province: a city school

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board supervisor, a supervisor of drawing and art for a city school system, and a teacher in a one-room rural school. Through them we shall examine drawing and art programs at the time and consider implications for contemporary art education policy and practice. The issues that arise relate to inadequate approaches to teacher training, inequalities in terms of resources for rural and urban schools, concerns regarding transition in curriculum priorities, and the challenge of new technologies. Then as now, gender issues are central, as is the debate between practical and cultural or aesthetic justifications for teaching art in schools.

nova scotia Drawing (later called “art”) has had a presence in public education in Nova Scotia since 1850 and has been an official subject since the inception of the Free School Act of 1864, which ensured that all common schools were free to all children in the province (Hamilton 1970, 101–2). The February 1867 issue of the Journal of Education, the official organ for the province’s education authorities, contains lengthy articles on “Drawing in Schools” and “Oral Lessons on Colour.” Readers are informed that, “by the direction of the Council of Public Instruction drawing materials have been placed within the reach of our public schools at a trifling cost. It is hoped that Inspectors will lose no opportunity of bringing before teachers, trustees and people, the importance of introducing into their schools the art of drawing, as a regular branch of school work” (Journal of Education 1867, 33). Referring to the annual reports between 1866 and 1887, Don Soucy notes that “in 1865 only 15 public school students in Nova Scotia were reported to be taking drawing, which was even fewer than the 22 students listed as taking cricket” (Soucy 1987a, 50). By the following year, he continues, “3,734 students, about 5% of the public school population, took drawing, and that percentage increased to 10 within the next few years” (ibid.). The notice in the journal must have had some effect. The percentage remained at that level until Nova Scotia implemented Walter Smith’s industrial drawing program in the 1880s, which was eventually taught to forty-six percent of the province’s students (ibid.). In spite of this growth, drawing programs in Nova Scotian schools remained inadequate for some educators, most notably Alexander McKay (1841–1917). A native Nova Scotian from Colchester County, McKay started teaching at the age of fifteen and graduated from the

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5.1 Alexander McKay, Supervisor for the Board of School Commissioners for the City of Halifax 1881–1916. (Collection of Public Archives of Nova Scotia)

Normal School at Truro, Nova Scotia, in 1859, when he was eighteen. He was a teacher and principal in schools around the province for eleven years before taking over the principalship of the Dartmouth Public Schools, where he served for nine years. In 1881 after twentyfour years in the schoolroom he was appointed supervisor for the board of school commissioners for the City of Halifax, where he served until his retirement in 1916. McKay was a strong advocate of drawing and art in public education.1 Although his own subjects were mathematics and science, he was known for his “comprehensive general knowledge” (Halifax Morning Chronicle, 1917). He was aware of the system of drawing education promoted by the British National Art Training School at South Kensington, the centre of the British art

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school system and its success in training industrial designers. He would have known the few artists, architects, and drawing instructors in the city and they would have been trained at South Kensington. Educators like McKay in the British colonies felt that instruction in this kind of drawing had great potential to provide their youth with marketable skills, perhaps even some cultural refinement, and enhance the area’s economy. Alexander McKay’s enthusiasm no doubt played a key role in bringing Walter Smith to Nova Scotia in 1882 to lecture on his drawing system to teachers in Halifax and Truro. Walter Smith was a South Kensington alumnus who in 1871 was hired by the State of Massachusetts to establish a statewide comprehensive drawing system. Within a few years Smith had set up such a program, established the Massachusetts Normal School, and packaged his industrial drawing program in a series of texts and teacher’s guides. McKay was in a position to recommend that these texts be used in Halifax schools. By 1884 Walter Smith’s books were being used for all grade levels in Nova Scotian schools (Soucy 1987b, 2). Alexander McKay often used his annual reports as a soapbox from which to proclaim the value of drawing. In 1901, for example, he devoted two pages to the topic in the 1901 Nova Scotia Superintendent of Education’s Report (Nova Scotia 1901, 180–81). In the same report on the page across from a photograph of drawings by students from Morris Street School displayed at the Provincial Exhibition, he proudly noted that Mr Lewis Smith taught the classes (ibid., 170–71). Lewis Smith (no relation to Walter), a former student of Halifax’s Victoria School of Art and Design and later its first Nova Scotia-born principal (1910–12), apparently served as what we would now call an “artist in the school.” According to McKay, Smith had “studied the most modern developments of school drawing” and was “very successful in importing much of his own enthusiasm for the subject” (ibid., 171). In his report for 1904, after years of promoting the subject, McKay proclaimed that “it was decided that the subject of drawing should receive the attention in the schools which its importance justifies,” and so “a special teacher of drawing was employed for eighteen weeks” (Nova Scotia, 1904, 128, 131). The teacher, Miss A.E. Weaver, “devoted about three hours each day to the pupils of the common schools and one, after school, to the teachers” (ibid., 131). Ever the advocate, in his report for the year ending 31 July 1905, McKay devoted four paragraphs to drawing and its value to a high-school education.

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Drawing is another subject deserving of more attention than it receives ... There is no study which approaches drawing as a means for training the eye and for developing the powers of observation ... To artisans, drawing is a necessity if they would ever rise above the crudest forms of manual labor. For some kinds of ideas, drawing forms the only adequate means of expression. Drawing fosters the pupil’s inherent love of the beautiful in form and color, and assists him to appreciate some of the grandest conceptions of human genius which are embodied in art. Drawing then, on account of its practical value to the industrial classes, its value as an educational instrument of great effectiveness, and its power in developing the higher forms of enjoyment and culture should be particularly emphasized throughout every grade of the high school course. (Nova Scotia 1905, 136)

Unfortunately no other supervisor in the province shared McKay’s insights or enthusiasm. The inspectors’ and supervisors’ reports for 1901 and 1904, while commenting on the instruction in other subjects, do not mention drawing. Nevertheless, the Department of Education specified a place for drawing in the public school course of study, albeit an ambiguous one. It was to be considered as part of the “3 Rs,” coupled with writing and allotted thirteen minutes a day in the school timetable (Nova Scotia 1901, xx). Even for ungraded rural schools with one teacher, drawing and writing were to be taught each day using “slate or paper from blackboard or cards” with more advanced classes using “copy books and drawing books” (ibid., xxii). Moreover, drawing is mentioned elsewhere in the same report under “the necessary rudiments of learning” for a “good elementary course,” which should “leave room for optional subjects” that could be “adapted in different places to local requirements and to the particular aptitude and qualifications of teachers” (ibid., xiii). According to the department, every school ought to include in its curriculum: Reading writing and arithmetic. The English language with the elements of grammar and exercises in English composition. The outline of British (Canadian) geography (and Canadian) history. The rudiments of physical and experimental science. Some acquaintance with good literature and the learning by heart of choice passages from the best authors.

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Drawing, needlework (for girls) and for boys some other form of manual instruction.” (Ibid., xiii)

So if drawing is also a part of writing, it should be covered twice! More likely, drawing, and art in general, were considered “optional.” Drawing was also to be a required subject from grades eight to ten and the tables in the reports list a number of students taking it in each school or county for each grade (ibid., Part 2, Tables 10 to 12). In other words, students are enrolled in drawing classes and time allotted on the timetable, but whether they are taught drawing on a regular basis is doubtful. At the turn of the nineteenth century, writing was not the only school activity that served to confuse the role of drawing and art. This was the time of the surge of interest in manual training. The practical and manipulative arts and active learning pursuits for children and youth were receiving attention. In 1891 a manual training school in woodwork opened in Halifax and in 1893 a manual department opened at the provincial Normal School in Truro, which had been in operation since 1855. J.W. Robertson, a Dominion agricultural commissioner and educational reformer, and Sir William Macdonald, the Montreal tobacco magnate, were among the most zealous proponents of manual training in public schools. In order to demonstrate the benefits of such instruction, Macdonald offered in 1900 to equip manual training centres and pay salaries of manual training instructors for a period of three years in each of the provinces (Dunae 1992, 55). According to H. Johnson (1968, 86), “twenty such centres were opened from Halifax to Victoria enrolling seven thousand children” and employing “teachers trained in England ... At the end of the three year experimental period the centres were turned over to the local authorities to incorporate into their school systems. It cost Macdonald over 4 million dollars but it was a dramatic and effective injection of a new element into the public school curriculum which was soon extended into the high schools.” In Nova Scotia, as in most other provinces, the money was gratefully accepted. At the time there was no apprehension about receiving donations from the profits of the tobacco industry to support public education. A Macdonald School was opened in Truro at the Normal School and became the training school for Macdonald Teachers of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. While manual training and Macdonald Schools were not specifically responsible for drawing and art or

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for the training of teachers in these subjects, the Macdonald fund mandate seems to have been broad enough to include these subjects on occasion. As the principal of the Normal School reported in 1904, “To aid our graduates in their efforts to encourage drawing, the administrator of the Macdonald fund, Prof. Jas. W. Robertson has, at Miss Smith’s2 suggestion, offered to defray the cost of supplying twenty-five sets of colours and brushes to some twenty-five public schools. The offer, I hardly need say, has been greatly accepted” (Nova Scotia 1904, 61). Alexander McKay was also the secretary of the board of directors of the Victoria School of Art and Design (vsad)3 and, along with the famous Anna Leonowens,4 was one of the founders. McKay also used the annual reports of that institution to air his views. As part of his 1905 report for the art school at the conclusion of an historical sketch of the vsad, he wrote: My interest in the teaching profession leads me, in closing, to ask to be allowed one thought more. In our report for 1897 we stated that one prominent object of the school was to prepare teachers for the teaching of industrial drawing in the public schools. Aristotle said that “children should be taught to draw, that their perceptions of beauty might be quickened.” All children may not be able to learn to draw well, but nearly every child can learn to recognize and appreciate the merit of good pictures. There are very few, or none, who could write plays as Shakespeare wrote, but there are many who can learn to read and enjoy Shakespeare’s plays. In ancient Greece every free man was able to criticize and appreciate art. The people did not wait for the opinions of the supposedly initiated persons. Every artist felt the stimulus. If the vsad is the means by which art is to permeate the city and the country, it must operate through the school teacher, exhibit works of art to the pupils, send out to them art loan collections and within these walls prepare good art teachers. When art is thus introduced through the schools, its refining influence will extend to the homes and elevate them in all that relates to good taste and morals. (McKay 1905, 136)

McKay placed a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of the art college in particular and the arts in general. It is clear that at this time he conceived of drawing as much more than industrial or “freehand” drawing (although it begins there) and his vision encompassed the aesthetic dimension of drawing as well. Indeed, he equated drawing with

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art, which included what was then known as “picture study.” According to Soucy, picture study “was taught in the province’s schools from the early 1900s. Once a week, students discussed an artwork and memorized information about it. Picture study was intended to promote good taste through an appreciation of beauty and to impart a lesson in morality through the painting’s story. Artworks deemed especially appropriate for these tasks were Barbizon School peasants and Raphael Madonnas” (Soucy 1987b, 8). Such exemplars could be found in the Boston-based Prang art education books, which were first adopted in Nova Scotia in 1900 (Clark, Hicks and Perry 1890; Soucy 1987b, 3). While including picture study, the Prang books emphasized drawing and form study with chapters devoted to painting, crafts, colour theory, and design. But the most pervasive prescribed texts were the ones by Casselman (1894), McFaul (1892), and Augsburg (1901). McFaul and Casselman were drawing masters at the Toronto Normal School. Their texts replaced the Walter Smith books yet still consisted of drawings for students to copy, following a sequence from straight lines, curves, and combinations to ornamental design, block letters, stylized formal motifs, shading, simple perspective, the figure, and landscape. D.R. Augsburg’s drawing series (1901) was introduced in Nova Scotia in 1906 and versions continued to appear on the province’s textbook list well into the 1930s. These books included exercises in copying pictures in various media (pencil, watercolour, chalk, pen and ink) and exercises in copying pictures, although students were instructed to change the eye level or position. While these authors stated that drawing’s ultimate goal was “expression of thought,” Soucy points out that “the objectives of the authors were not necessarily those of the teachers: “the actual role of drawing texts was similar to that of penmanship copy books. Both types of books provided models to be copied accurately, both were believed to require the same mental and psychomotor skills, and both were used to keep one group of students busy while the teacher worked with another group. This was especially important in ungraded classrooms that is, one or two room schools with many levels of students in a class” (Soucy 1987b, 4). In spite of McKay’s efforts and the availability of textbooks, the teaching of drawing and art in the public schools was sporadic at best and the art school’s enrollment declined steadily, reaching a low of twelve in 1916, the year of McKay’s retirement.5 Later that year the new principal of the vsad, Arthur Lismer, remarked on the remaining

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directors’ lack of interest and energy (Kelly 1982, 13). Lismer began visiting elementary and secondary schools in the city and surrounding areas gathering recruits for his Saturday classes for children, which he saw as a way of engendering and communicating interest in art education. The art school had offered Saturday classes in one form or another since its inception, but Lismer brought a new populist point of view that regarded art as a central part of life for all people. Lismer’s three years in Halifax were hardly long enough for his ideas to blossom in the school system but he certainly left the Halifax art school in a healthier state and set the stage for his successor, Elizabeth Nutt, who, like Lismer, trained at the Sheffield School of Art in northern England. Elizabeth Nutt was both an author of art education texts (1916, 1935) and a painter in the English romantic landscape tradition. In her books and teaching she advocated the arts-and-crafts movement’s ideas on design and composition popularized by Walter Crane in England and Arthur Wesley Dow and Denman Ross in the United States and promoted in the American magazine School Arts. But it was not until the late 1960s that these ideas had any significant impact on public school art in Nova Scotia (Soucy 1987b, 7).

ontario While Halifax tentatively employed a drawing teacher in 1904 and 1905, the Toronto School Board had employed a superintendent of drawing, Arthur Reading, since 1880. Reading’s role was to oversee the introduction of a series of drawing books in the city of Toronto that the province’s Department of Education hoped would improve and standardize instruction. Not coincidentally, Arthur J. Reading is credited as the author of the series called The High School Drawing Course. Linear drawing, rigid and semigeometric, had been prescribed in Ontario schools since 1865 when Egerton Ryerson introduced the subject after his return from a survey of schools in Europe. As in Nova Scotia, the exemplar was the South Kensington system. Reading’s series of five books, in general use in Toronto schools by 1887, contained exercises in mechanical drawing and freehand copying; they were designed to develop draftsmanship in grade school students, to be taught by regular classroom teachers, and above all, to be practical. In the ten-year period that followed, the books, with their blank pages and exercises and pictures to be copied, were introduced to the lower grades including grade one and kindergarten, completing a five-book

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series that offered a unified and standardized course of study spanning all grade levels from Junior and Senior First to Junior and Senior Fifth. Drawing instruction in Toronto met the approval of the likes of Lucius O’Brien, a member of the Ontario Society of Artist’s Committees that established the Ontario School of Art, and an occasional instructor at the school. O’Brien, later president of the Royal Canadian Academy “expressed astonishment and pleasure at the ingenuity and taste displayed by the pupils, and in usefulness he placed the course next to the three R’s” (Cochrane 1950, 214). Known as a painter as well as an educator, O’Brien authored his own text, the Canadian Drawing Course (1885), covering elementary freehand, object, constructive, and perspective drawing and aiming at a national audience. A coauthor of the series was J.H. McFaul, he taught drawing at the Toronto Normal School. In 1892 the minister of Education commissioned a sequel, called the Public School Drawing course, of which McFaul was the sole author. A companion series, the High School Drawing course by A.C. Casselman, who succeeded McFaul as drawing master at the Toronto Normal School, was published in 1894. As Soucy notes, these texts replaced Walter Smith’s books “as the prescribed text in many provinces, including Nova Scotia” (1987b, 2), and are probably the “copy books” referred to in the annual reports of Nova Scotia’s Department of Education in the early 1900s. In 1900 the Toronto School Board took the bold step of appointing a woman as director of drawing (Toronto, Board of Education 1900). The position was a pet project of Chief Inspector of Schools James L. Hughes, who, like Alexander McKay in Halifax, was a strong advocate of drawing in public school education. He was also a supporter of a teacher who had served for nineteen years in his system, Jessie P. Semple (1859–1938), a prize-winning student during the 1870s at the (Toronto) Collegiate Institute. Apparently, “one of the inspector’s greatest gifts was that of discerning people’s potential abilities” (Cochrane 1950, 96). Miss Semple, as she was known, was first the director, then supervisor of drawing and then the supervisor of drawing and art, all names for the position she held from 1900 until her retirement in 1925. Her appointment marked the end of copy-book drawing and the beginning of art for the Toronto system. Excerpts from her 1900 report indicate a shift in tone, direction, and attitude: “On entering upon my duties as Director for Drawing for the Toronto Public Schools, in January, I found that very little systematic work in this subject was being done in classes. The teachers on the staff deserve

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5.2 Jessie P. Semple, Supervisor of Art, Toronto School Board 1900–1925 (Collection of Toronto School Board Museum and Archives)

great credit for their co-operation with me, in placing the work on a basis more in accord with modern educational ideas” (Toronto Board of Education 1900, 43). By “modern educational ideas” Jessie Semple meant de-emphasizing copybooks, introducing free drawing of objects, drawing from nature, and teaching design, decoration, and colour work. These ideas and methods, heralded as maxims of the “New Education” and derived from the American arts-and-crafts movement under the influence of such British artists and critics as William Morris and John Ruskin, were disseminated to teachers in after-school meetings and Saturday morning classes. The language that Semple uses in her report indicates a new aesthetic sensitivity: “In all classes good taste has been developed by the judicious selection and artistic arrangement of objects

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singly and in groups, by due attention to the size and placing of the drawing with regard to the space it is to occupy on the paper, by proper space relations and by expressive rendering” (ibid., 44). By 1904 Jessie Semple was reporting as the supervisor of drawing and art work. She wrote about the purposes and accomplishment of her program. The aim of the work has been to develop in the pupils habits of observation, to foster good taste in the selection and arrangement of objects for the work, to give power of expression in suitable mediums, and to cultivate creative imagination in pictorial and decorative work. The results show steady improvement, especially in the colour work, the progress in decorative design in the senior classes, being particularly noticeable. We hope, later on, to correlate this department of the work more closely with manual training and domestic science, by designing decorations for the objects made in those classes. (Toronto, Board of Education 1904, 35).

Miss Jessie Semple was aware of developments elsewhere in the fledgling field of art education. The board of education allowed her time to visit the 1904 International Exposition in St Louis, Missouri, which gave her “an opportunity of seeing art educational work from other countries and also studying the art ideals of those countries as manifested in their fine arts and manufactures” (ibid., 35). In 1907 she attended the Eastern Arts Association Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. On returning from St Louis she introduced Prang texts as reference books for teachers. In addition, she would have been aware of The School Arts Book, an influential American publication published by Henry Turner Bailey that “emphasized drawing from nature, lettering, and the design of craft objects in metal, leather and wood, revealing a moderate influence of Morris” and the look of art nouveau (Wood 1986, 352). Semple’s insight and attitudes were considered progressive and she did much to inspire a new enthusiasm for art in the Toronto school system. It appears that in Toronto, art and manual training were allowed to develop in tandem. This greater public awareness of art in education was achieved no doubt by the annual exhibitions of student work that she organized not only in selected schools but also “at the Granite Rink under the auspices of the Central League of School Art.” The League was an organization devoted to raising funds to acquire art and “artistic pottery” to be “distributed amongst the schools for use as

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drawing models and as schoolroom decoration” (Toronto, Board of Education 1906, 35–6). Exhibitions were also held at City Hall and the Industrial Exposition, later known as the Canadian National Exhibition. Miss Semple explained that “the work was not done for exhibition but culled from the ordinary work done in the classes during the year” (ibid., 36). Jessie Semple’s work in Toronto schools became well known and she and her assistant, Miss Margaret Moffat (appointed in 1913), were invited to contribute to the preparation of the textbook called Ontario Teachers’ Manuals: Art (1916). She was also known for her quiet but determined support of other women educators. She was a founding member, along with eight others, of the Lady Teachers’ Association in 1885 (later the Women’s Teachers’ Association). In Toronto the Lady Teachers’ Association worked with the Equal Suffrage Movement in their common struggles. In those days before they had the vote, when women were called either “ladies” or “females” and were expected to be either inferior or superior (in an idealized sense) but not simply equal, it took courage for women to express their views publicly.

british columbia The third person I want to introduce as providing a window on aspects of art education in the early twentieth century is not a system or subject supervisor but a typical classroom teacher in a rural one-room school. Winifred J. Gabriel6 (1886–1978) sat for and passed the July 1904 examinations at Victoria Centre High School. The exam included a two-and-a-half hour freehand drawing assignment in which the candidates were “required to make an enlarged freehand copy of the given bottle” (British Columbia Archives, Public Schools Report, 1904). Her name is included in the list of successful candidates in the Public School Report (psr for 1904). So at age eighteen Winifred Gabriel received her teaching certificate (second class) and spent the year from September to June teaching at two different schools on Vancouver Island, one in Crofton and the other in Sandwick. As in Nova Scotia and Ontario, elementary school teachers in British Columbia were expected to teach all subjects in the curriculum, including drawing, which was introduced as a branch of education in 1872. The first mention of an authorized text is in the Public Schools Report of 1885 – Walter Smith’s Freehand Drawing. In the psrs, otherwise known as “the Inspectors’ Reports,” drawing was usually listed under the caption

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5.3 Winifred Gabriel, 1907 (Collection of Harold Pearse)

“The following subjects may be taught” (see for example British Columbia Archives, psr 1886). Indeed, in Nova Scotia and British Columbia one could be licensed to teach for three years upon graduating from high school. Completion of the two-year Normal School program conferred a permanent license. As the inspector’s report attests, Winifred was ill prepared for her first teaching experience: “The order and discipline are very poor. The teacher and pupils frequently carry on an animated dialogue, one contradicting the other. In a short time the pupils will run the school. The classes are both very backward in all the subjects” (British Columbia Archives, psr 1904–05, a24). A year after she had left the Sandwick school, the inspector notes: “All pupils very backward in drawing; classes to get necessary drawing books; prospect of improvement in school” (ibid., psr, 1905–06). Winifred Gabriel’s experience was typical of the many poorly prepared

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and inadequately supported but temporarily licensed young female teachers who taught in one-room rural schools in British Columbia in the early twentieth century. School inspectors frequently lamented the low examination scores and inferior quality of education in rural schools and attribute the cause to the fact that junior and intermediate certificates can be obtained without Normal School training. In the words of inpector A.C. Stewart: “If to teach successfully a rural school of twenty to thirty pupils, with its multiplicity of classes and subjects, is a tax on the ability, energy, tact and general skills of the best Normal (School) trained teacher, where will the young, inexperienced and untrained teacher appear? They are simply helpless ... They are simply keeping school” (ibid., psr 1904, 1905). The situation regarding the teaching of drawing and art is just as disheartening and is neatly summed up by J.D. Gillis, Inspector of Schools for Inspectorate No. 3 (Nelson, British Columbia), the district where Winifred Gabriel taught in the Spring of 1906: “Unfortunately, however, there are some teachers who think that nature study and drawing are a waste of time. Their efforts to teach these subjects consist in getting children to memorize a few nature facts, and to make a few crude copies of figures in the drawing books. There could be some excuse for their neglect of these subjects if the other subjects were well presented and carefully taught” (ibid., psr 1906–07, a35). Had Miss Gabriel wished to improve her skill in drawing and the teaching of drawing and aspired to a posting in an urban school, she would have had to attend the province’s Normal School in Vancouver, established in 1901.7 As a teacher in training in the first decade of the twentieth century she would have studied with the man who set the teachers’ examination and wrote the Canadian Drawing Series workbooks. From its opening until 1910, the drawing master, actually called the “science and art master” at Vancouver Normal, was David Blair, a staunch South Kensington alumnus. Blair had spent the previous seventeen years in New Zealand where he headed first the Canterbury College School of Art in Christchurch and later the Wanganui Technical School (Chalmers 1984). In 1902 Blair is listed as Art Master, Instructor in Drawing and, in addition to teaching both theoretical and practical drawing at the Normal School, supervised the teaching of drawing in the Model School. He also appears to have become active in inservice work ... The first edition of Blair’s Canadian Drawing Series was published in 1902. Each workbook in the series sold for

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ten cents. Still loyal to his own South Kensington training, he included only geometrical and freehand drawing (ibid., 72).

Blair was emphatic that “he prepared his series to assist teachers in training the hand and eye, rather than the aesthetic faculties of the pupil” (ibid., 72). His only concession to newer practices was to insert colour and design in the 1907 edition of the Canadian Drawing Series, coauthored by John Kyle,8 the supervisor of drawing in the Vancouver Public Schools, who replaced Blair in 1910 at the Normal School. Blair and his successors, Kyle and W.P. Weston,9 all trained in Britain, which insured that art education in British Columbia in the first quarter of the twentieth century was indeed British. The situation was somewhat more eclectic in Ontario, or more specifically, Toronto, which under the direction of Jesse Semple and her adaptation of developments from the United States that included process-oriented, childcentred approaches, more quickly evolved from its South Kensington and British origins. Nova Scotia, among the first jurisdictions to enshrine drawing in public education beginning with Walter Smith’s textbooks and continuing well into the 1930s with Augsburg’s drawing books, was slow to show the influences of the art-and-crafts or childart movements in its schools in spite of the residencies of Arthur Lismer and Elizabeth Nutt.

conclusion If we could travel back in time to 1904 and take a sampling of school art or drawing programs in scattered parts of the country, they would have more in common than we might first imagine. The issues and concerns would also be more familiar than we might think. Both then and now, drawing (read art) is promoted in official government documents as being essential and valuable for producing desirable “learning outcomes” (to use today’s language). It is regarded by school boards as optional, however, and its presence in schools (at all levels) is sporadic and inconsistent. Drawing (art) is more likely to be offered in urban than in rural schools, and the resources available for drawing in urban schools tend to be more plentiful than for their rural counterparts. Drawing is considered first to be practical, a useful skill, and only secondarily as something desirable for its own sake (a cultural refinement). If fundamentally practical (like writing, manual training, computer graphics), it can be taught as part of another subject (like

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language arts, industrial arts, or computer technology). In both eras, public institutions strapped for funds from government sources “greatly,” and gratefully, accept support from corporate sponsors, be they MacDonalds (tobacco or hamburgers) or Coca Cola. Inadequacies in the art education training of classroom teachers and insufficient numbers of specialist teachers typify both eras. Today in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia, as in 1904, drawing (art) is considered as “core,” or part of the “3 Rs,” at the elementary level. Therefore it is the responsibility of the classroom teacher to incorporate the study of art into the schoolday for a prescribed period of time. It is believed that with minimal preparation (if any), the general elementary classroom teacher can credibly teach art. While acknowledged as important and “required” at some levels, art was branded early on as “optional” at others. Then as now, the classroom teacher receives little preparation in the subject and rarely is a specialist teacher available. In these respects at least, the mould was cast in the early twentieth century. So, what are the implications for art education as we enter the twenty-first century? I would not want to suggest that the twentieth century need not have happened, but the situations in both 1901 and 2001 are alarmingly similar. What has changed? The role and influence of women in society and hence in education has changed dramatically. The education profession (and art of course) is more inclusive not only of gender but of class, race, and ethnicity. The development of electronic and digital media has profoundly affected both school and popular cultures. Nevertheless, while the nature and substance of emergent technologies are different in every era, the impact on each of technological change is significant. Just as the rationale for teaching art was undergoing a transition as the twentieth century dawned, so too the rationale for art education at the beginning of the twenty-first is in flux. Perhaps in the twenty-first century art education will fulfill the destiny promised in 1904.

Recto Running Head

6 Modern Art and Child Art in Quebec: The Symbiotic Relationship between the Art Field and Child Art suzanne lemerise and leah sherman

This study deals with the origins of the modernist approach to the teaching of art in Quebec.1 In a 1990 article, “Cultural Factors in Art Education History: A Study of English and French Quebec, 1940–1980” (Lemerise and Sherman 1990), we traced the development of the “new art education” in Quebec in the postwar period. We showed how the initiative moved from individual reformers to professional associations, and from the English milieu to the French. Subsequently, we have described the contribution of certain professional artists to this development (Lemerise and Sherman 1997). In this chapter we shift our focus from the educational field to the art historical and examine the construction of the concept of child art in the context of the rise of modernism in Quebec. We will look for manifestations of this movement in the art field where the involvement of artists, art critics, and art institutions, such as museums and schools of art, gave rise to a symbiotic relationship between child art and modernism. We will try to answer the following questions: who were the artists and what did they say and do? Who were the critics and what was their role in constructing the concept of child art? What was the effect of exhibitions in the recognition of children’s pictures as art? How did the art institutions contribute to the valorization and legitimization of child art? And what were the national and international influences that led to the changes in the concept of child art and the teaching of art in Quebec?

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First, we will look at the principal findings of previous research done on the origins of child art. We will then situate our study in the context of the particular path taken by the evolution of modernism in Quebec. We will trace the chronological development of the relationship of child art and the modernist movement through three decades covering the years between 1920 and 1948. The 1920s saw the roots of child art. In the 1930s there was a growing interest in child art in the art field. The 1940s saw an explosion of initiatives, by artists and by art institutions and art critics. By the 1950s the energy had moved from the artistic to the pedagogical scene.

bac k g ro u n d to t h e s t u dy The relation of child art to the rise of modernism in the first decades of the twentieth century has been explored by researchers in Europe and in North America. Several recent works by Boissel, Fineberg, and Stankiewicz reveal the seminal role that children’s art played in the evolution of modern art. Many of the masters of modernism such as Kandisky, Klee, Larionov, and Miró collected children’s drawings. Fineberg’s classic book The Innocent Eye, Children’s Art and the Modern Artist (1997) presents graphic examples of how children’s pictures inspired many of these artists’ works, serving as a metaphor for spontaneity and authenticity, fundamental human qualities valued by the modern movement. Boissel (1990) talks about the value placed on children’s art by avant-garde movements such as the Blaue Reiter group in Germany, who drew inspiration from the essential human energy found in the art of children and in primitive and folk art. They identified with the aesthetic qualities of children’s spontaneous drawings, exhibiting them alongside their own work. Stankiewicz (2001) explores the relationship of child art to modernism in the United States and finds a similar symbiotic relationship between the two. There was a concurrent awakening to modernist aesthetic values stimulated by the Armory Show in New York in 1913, which brought the works of the Post-Impressionists, Cubists, and Futurists to the attention of American artists, and the recognition of the artistic value of child art. Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer and gallery owner, mounted the first serious exhibition of children’s art in the us giving their work equal status with the works of artists like Matisse. As Stankiewicz says “Most visitors to Stiegliz’s 1912 exhibition saw similarities between the children’s work

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and modern painting: simplicity, freshness and vitality, purity of vision and romantic wonder” (Stankiewicz 2001, 31).

modernity in quebec For a definition of modernity and modernism and an account of its particular evolution in Quebec, we depend on Esther Trépanier’s comprehensive Peinture et modernité au Québec, 1919–1939 (Painting and Modernity in Quebec, 1919–1939). According to Trépanier, it took two decades before avant-garde movements influenced the development of a clearly modernist approach. This differentiated Quebec from other regions where a break with tradition and the academy occurred at the outset of the twentieth century. In Quebec, because of strong nationalistic and regional traditions in art, the movement started later and was distinguished by a long transitional period. Trépanier describes three phenomena that explain the eventual departure of artists in Quebec from tradition and regionalism: “The progressive decline of representation, priority given to free and subjective expression, and an interest in a new formal exploration without a doubt hastened the emergence of a modern aesthetic” (Trépanier 1998, 20). Trépanier’s thesis takes into account artists and art critics, be they of French- or English-speaking origin. According to the author, there was no clear separation between the English and French modernist art worlds during these years; both were engaged in the same battle for a “living art.”2 Trépanier ascribes an influential role to the art critics who were able to grasp the particular issues that the new art embodied and initiated the public to the new international art tendencies. Their critiques helped to establish a language with which to talk about children’s pictures, a language common to the discourse on the emerging changes in the art world at large. We found many references to the discovery of children’s art by artists and art critics in Trépanier’s book. We noted as well that artists of many different leanings shared an interest in child art because of a common concern with promoting freedom of expression and greater subjectivity. They perceived common ground in the values of spontaneity and authenticity that international modernism laid claim to. In reviewing the literature concerning the origins of child art, we found ideas that linked child-centred art education with modern art, psychology, and ethnography. Trépanier helped us to see that to place

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these ideas in the Quebec context required an understanding of specific historical events, different to those described by Boissel, Fineberg, and Stankiewicz. In this chapter, we take into account the principal actors and events that facilitated the valorization of children’s pictures as art, and new approaches to teaching art in Quebec. We pay attention to the work of artists who taught children in their studios and in community settings and institutions, as well as to their public statements and writings. We consider exhibitions of children’s art and the institutions that supported them. Like Trépanier, we emphasize the role of the art critics who commented on and wrote about these exhibitions bringing the new values into the public discourse. Our attention is focused on several influential individuals who came from the art world rather than from a pedagogical context: artists, art critics, and museum officials. We see how the energy of the art world in its struggle towards modernism infused the field of art education.

the 1920s: the roots of child art in the art field The artistic scene in Quebec in the 1920s was dominated by conservative elements. As Trépanier noted, several artists were challenging the dominant traditions of regionalism and religion and were beginning to be influenced by the work of the European Impressionists and PostImpressionists. In Ontario, the Toronto-based painters called the Group of Seven were breaking with European tradition and developing a school of painting inspired by the Canadian environment and a new sense of Canadian nationalism. They saw their work as bringing a spirit of creative adventure and a consequent disregard of outworn convention to Canadian cultural life. Inspired by the energy and creative spirit of the Group, two Quebec artists, Anne Savage and Arthur Lismer, introduced new approaches to the teaching of art to children and adolescents. We can begin the story of the symbiotic relationship between the modern art movement and the emerging interest in children’s paintings and drawings in Quebec with the example of Anne Savage and her connections to Arthur Lismer. Savage was an artist-teacher who made a significant impact on both Canadian art and art education in Quebec (Sherman 1992). She began her teaching career in 1922 at Baron Byng High School in Montreal. As a student at the Art Association of Montreal

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from 1914 to 1918, she studied with Maurice Cullen and William Brymner. They introduced her to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and most significantly to the then groundbreaking work of the Group of Seven. Savage identified with this new movement and became one of its enthusiastic proponents. One of the members of the Group was Arthur Lismer, an English expatriate who became an early exponent of child art and an international leader in the field of art education. In 1922 Lismer was viceprincipal of the Ontario College of Art, where he set up courses for children and for teachers. Savage, finding her way as an art teacher and sensing that the official curricula and drawing books did not reflect her artistic values, sent a collection of her students’ work to Lismer for his comments. His response was enthusiastic and in a letter dated 11 August 1922 he praised the results of her teaching as “demonstrating that the teacher has to be the aesthetic inspiration for the student” (cited in McDougall 2000, 48) and commented on the colour, grouping (composition), and imaginative, childlike quality of the drawings. Two years later, the artist and art critic Bess Housser, writing in The Canadian Bookman, commented on a subsequent exhibition of Savage’s children’s work on view at Lismer’s summer school for teachers: “There is an innate feel toward rhythm and colour, and an almost eerie sense of beauty and rightness” (Housser 1924, 185). She connected the aesthetic qualities of the children’s work with English art critic Roger Fry’s writings about the formal qualities in Epstein’s modernist sculptures. Because there was no training program for art teachers, and because the official provincial curriculum was loosely applied in the English schools, it was possible for Savage, an artist without formal pedagogical training, to enter the school system. At Baron Byng High School, she was fortunate to have the support of a sympathetic principal who appreciated the value of art in education. He allowed her the freedom and flexibility to organize the timetable and provided her with the materials and equipment to implement an innovative program that included painting as well as drawing. She brought the artistic model into the traditional school curriculum, inspiring her students to think like artists. Although she was an exception, she paved the way for the changes that were to follow. It took another thirty years before her belief in the creative potential of all children was shared by other educators. It appears that Savage was a unique case. The integration of modernist artistic values into her teaching of adolescents was a precedent

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to be followed in the next decade by the work of the artists we will discuss. There is no evidence to indicate that there was a pervasive interest in new ideas about art education in Quebec during the 1920s.

the 1930s: the growing interest in child art by the art field If the 1920s were lean with regard to the development of a modernist view of child art and the teaching of art, the 1930s saw dynamic changes. As Trépanier pointed out, many influences and events modified artistic values within the artistic milieu, affirming the increasing desire to be “modern.” It was during the 1930s that the movement for a “living art” increased. Artists painted in ways that reflected international artistic values. They exercised greater choice in subject matter by depicting cities in a contemporary fashion. They abandoned commissioned portraiture and freely painted individuals and nudes. In fact, the whole question of an artist’s right to subjectivity became important. These tendencies were supported by art critics, French and English alike, who wrote favourably about artistic innovations. It was within this context of appreciating “living art” that we witnessed a validation of child art by artists and art critics. Artists opened art classes for children where they would have freedom of expression and organized or participated in national and international child art exhibitions. Art critics, who promoted the recognition of modern art, also wrote repeatedly about the discovery of child art. While Lismer was setting up his art school at the Art Gallery of Toronto (1927–1938), which became the location for advanced art education in Canada, an important force in the initiation of child art in Canada came to Montreal in the person of the German artist Fritz Brandtner. He brought with him from his studies at the Danzig Civic Gallery a “knowledge of the modernists, Hofer and Beckman, Modigliani and Picasso, Grotz and Feininger” (Duval 1945, 26). Brandtner was a rebellious spirit, critically aware of the social and political problems and changes in German society during and after World War i. Many of his artistic works reflected his socialist beliefs and dealt with anti-war themes; others were strongly designed expressionist interpretations of Canadian landscape and industrial subjects. Brandtner left Winnipeg for Montreal in 1934. He joined a group of left-wing

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artists and intellectuals who saw art as a dynamic process inherent to life and who were concerned with the artist’s role in society as an agent of change. A leading figure in the group was Dr Norman Bethune, a surgeon and part-time artist who championed the cause of the anti-fascists in Spain and later won fame for his work in China. Bethune and Brandtner shared the belief that art had the power to “transform man’s relationship to the world” (Trépanier 1998, 203) and that it was important in releasing the creative potential of children. In his journals Brandtner wrote about his ideas of the importance of art making for children: “Art is Youth’s land of enchantment creating it, he (the child) discovers a wonderland of beautiful forms, patterns, colors. Exploring it, he finds himself and by this self discovery fulfills the aim of art education”3 (cited in Honor Robertson 1993, 65). Brandtner had been inspired by the work of Franz Cizek in Austria and earlier European educators such as Froebel, who believed in fostering creativity in children. A fellow artist, Marian Scott was influenced by the new concept of childhood and pedagogy that also formed the basis of Lismer’s work. In 1936 Bethune established the Children’s Art Centre in his Montreal apartment with Brandtner and Scott as teachers. The centre offered classes to children mainly from underprivileged backgrounds. Consistent with Brandntner’s desire to make art a part of the life of both privileged and underprivileged children, he provided them with opportunities to paint freely, and to explore the city and its surroundings. Sylvia Ari, a Montreal artist, remembers attending the art classes when she was twelve years old. It was an exciting place to be: “You could paint whatever you liked, which was very different to school ... Bethune gave the children milk and cookies and took us downtown in his car to art galleries where we saw paintings by French artists. Brandtner sent our paintings to exhibitions ... One of my paintings won a prize. It was because of the art classes that I decided to be an artist.”4 After Bethune’s departure, Brandtner and Scott ran the centre until 1950. In the fall of 1936 they showed the children’s work at the National Produced in Canada Exhibit held in the Sun Life Building in Montreal. The artist and critic John Lyman commented enthusiastically on the “spontaneity, imaginative freedom and freshness of vision” of Brandtner’s children’s work. He connected the paintings from the art centre to the new ideas about teaching art to children pioneered by Franz

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Cizek in Vienna saying, ”Art for children ... [the] sympathetic encouragement to give intuitive expression to their experience is claiming more and more the attention of educationalists” (Lyman 1936, 24). In 1937, at the Paris World’s Fair, the children’s paintings won three of the six prizes in the children’s art exhibit (probably the prize remembered by Sylvia Ari). In reviewing the Produced in Canada exhibition the following year, he referred back to the children’s work exhibited in 1936. Lyman undertook the task of bringing to light the symbiotic relationship between what artists like Brandtner and Scott were encouraging children to do, and their own experiments with modernism. He wrote: The vivid spontaneity and naive directness with which the children produced their imaginative experience took all the starch out of the perfunctory academism which overshadowed the adult section. Apparently the lesson was not lost on the directors of the Made in Canada Exhibition, for this year they have entrusted Fritz Brandtner with a show reflecting the vital tendencies of Canadian painting today – a painting that is neither a repetition of outworn formulas nor a sort of hand-made souvenir photography, but an embodiment of personal thought and feeling. (Lyman 1937, 27)

Lyman was an important influence on the development of modern painting in Montreal. He had studied with Matisse in Paris and spent many years abroad, absorbing and practising the Post-Impressionist approach. Returning to Montreal in 1931, he became the central figure in a move away from the nationalism of the Group of Seven to an international approach inspired by the “School of Paris.” In 1939 he organized the Contemporary Art Association/Société d’art contemporain, which became the focus of modern painting in Montreal for the next ten years. Saturday Morning Art Classes at the Art Association of Montreal In 1937 Dr Charles F. Martin, president of the Art Association of Montreal, invited Savage to start Saturday morning art classes for children. With the help of a five thousand dollar grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which was supporting educational programs in museums across North America, the Art Association took the opportunity to extend its educational activities. The objective of the educational

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program was “to develop a creative interest in painting, drawing, and modelling and to stimulate more enthusiasm in the arts in general” (Art Association of Montreal 1937, 9). Savage welcomed the opportunity to teach in the museum setting and brought her artist friend Ethel Seath, who taught art at The Study, a private school, to teach a class in clay modelling. With the help of Seath and Paige Pinneo (an artist-teacher who later taught in a high school), she organized an art program that soon attracted many children. The program was based on a belief in creativity and the value of art in daily life. In 1940 she sent an information sheet to parents where she outlined the aims of the Saturday classes: “Our aim is to encourage and develop creative expression in children and to cultivate an early contact with art ... the intensification of life, to perceive not merely to see, to give children a love of all things that grow...and to find interest and delight in just looking.”5 In the 1930s similar initiatives to organize opportunities for children to paint freely were taken in the French artistic milieu. Two painters with flourishing artistic careers, albeit with very different artistic styles, took an early interest in children’s pictures. They were Jean-Paul Lemieux in Quebec City and Paul-Émile Borduas in Montreal. At the same time, in 1937, Maurice Gagnon, an important art critic, wrote about the art of young children. Jean-Paul Lemieux and the Fine Arts School of Quebec Jean-Paul Lemieux fiercely defended modernity at the beginning of the 1930s. Following a stay in France, he became an ardent proponent of the artistic visions of Picasso and Pellan in Quebec. His many articles dealt with the need to revise academic models in order to modernize pictorial art. Lemieux was an independent painter, not affiliated with any particular school of painting. He was especially known for his snowy landscapes that were inhabited by hieratic characters. His personal interpretations of the visual world helped validate subjective painting in the early days of modernism in Quebec. In 1937 Lemieux was hired as a painting teacher at the Fine Arts School of Quebec. He inaugurated Saturday morning art classes for children, first at the Fine Arts School and then at the facilities of the Museum of Quebec. They ran until his retirement in 1965. In 1937 he participated in an exhibition that was organized by the National Art Gallery of Ottawa, entitled Pictures by Children, which we will discuss later. Having visited France, he was probably exposed to its

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6.1 Jean-Paul Lemieux, artist and professor at the School of Fine Arts of the City of Quebec, giving a Saturday art class at the museum of the province. February 1947. (Archives du Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. The photo is a copy of the 1947 original)

exciting modern art world and to the enthusiasm that spontaneous child art was creating in Europe. He wrote in 1937 that in his Saturday morning art class “drawing from imagination is taught with the same methods found in Paris, Vienna and the United States” (Lemieux 1937, 3). Lemieux was especially admired in the 1940s and 1950s by the press in Quebec City. His work was referred to as the “instinctive school of Quebec.”6 He continued to send children’s art to international exhibitions, like the one in Paris at the Museum of Luxembourg in 1947 where one of his young students received a special mention. Lemieux’s classes for children would not have been possible without the aid of Jean-Baptiste Soucy, the director of the Fine Arts School. Soucy supported Lemieux in his enthusiasm to reach as many children as possible and surrounded him with teachers and collaborators who shared his ideas about art instruction. Paul-Émile Borduas as Teacher in Private and Public Schools Paul-Émile Borduas had a dual career as artist and teacher. He was known as the leader of Automatism, the avant-garde art movement of the 1940s and was an ardent defender of abstract art. In the thirties, in

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order to earn a living, he began teaching in several schools and developed an interest in a different concept of drawing instruction than was traditionally practised in the schools. In an article entitled Projections libérantes (Liberating Projection), written in 1949, Borduas described the difficulties he encountered between 1931 and 1939 when he tried to implement his new pedagogical ideas. He taught in five Montreal public schools and at the StSulpice Classical college. Excerpts from a French manual of G. Quénioux (1912), who defended the respect for children’s expression, were found in Borduas’s course preparation notebook. Borduas wrote: “Quénioux’s program is suggested for Paris schools where students are given total freedom of expression as compared to current methods of drawing instruction in all schools as well as fine art schools. This is a starting point to allow future conquests” (Borduas 1987, 417 ). Borduas ran into difficulties with the school authorities when the new-found freedom he offered to his students resulted in behaviour problems. In his view: “Children’s drawings (done by students at the Colleges and in public schools, where I went to the bottom of the scale in order to fight the current methods of instruction and without official success) are the only proof that the road we are on will lead us one day to victory – be it a hundred years after my death” (ibid., 411). In the 1940s Borduas obtained a teaching position at l’École du meuble (an applied arts school) and left the adolescent teaching milieu. He was free to pursue his passion for children’s drawing by participating in a number of Saturday art classes; which we will discuss later. Maurice Gagnon Maurice Gagnon, along with Gerard Morisset, was among the first art historians of Quebec who was trained in France’s École du Louvre. Upon his return to Quebec Gagnon wrote many articles promoting modern art, and in 1937 he obtained a position teaching art history at l’École du meuble. Gagnon became very involved in modernist art circles and he maintained a close ten-year relationship with Borduas. Both men taught at the same institution and pursued similar goals for transforming the training of artists. In 1937 an article entitled “L’Éducation Artistique de l’Enfant” (The Artistic Education of the Child), written by Gagnon, was published in a popular magazine. The article focused on the importance of fostering in children, even at a very tender age, interest in works of art in order

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to beautify life with art. What is so remarkable about this article is its unconditional support for the ideas of the philosopher Robert de la Sizeranne that a child is a poet, explorer, alchemist, and fencer. Gagnon takes it a step further in saying that “from many points of view artists are children. They have candor, emotions that are always refreshingly youthful. They mutually understand one another” (Gagnon 1937, 8). We find here in summary, the essential ideas that mark the discovery of child art by the art world.

the role of the national gallery of canada Earlier, we referred to the role of the Art Association of Montreal and the Fine Arts School of Quebec in initiating and supporting art classes for children. Under the direction of Harry O. McCurry and his staff, the National Gallery of Canada disseminated children’s art through travelling exhibitions in Canada and internationally and arranged for children’s work from other countries to come to Canada.7 Sponsored by the institution vested with the authority of a national gallery, these exhibitions gave credibility and legitimacy to the conception of children’s pictures as art, hanging in galleries alongside the works of contemporary artists. They also encouraged the artists teaching these children, often in isolated settings, to feel part of a larger national movement The first of these exhibitions was mounted in 1937 and circulated throughout Canada. It was called Pictures by Children. The forward to the catalogue was written by Arthur Lismer whose contribution of fifty works from his children’s classes at the Art Gallery of Ontario was by far the largest of the eleven teachers represented. Quebec was well represented with twelve from Brandtner’s art centre, ten from Anne Savage at Baron Byng High School, fifteen from Ethel Seath at The Study, and twelve paintings from Jean-Paul Lemieux at the Fine Arts School of Quebec. McCurry relied on Lismer for support in organizing the children’s exhibition. Lismer used the opportunity in the foreword to the catalogue to make the case for the significance of child art. “It is perfectly right that art galleries should show children’s drawings and paintings as well as historical, primitive and modern art of all ages and countries ... in recent years we have found out that the things they do ... are striking manifestations of the artist nature in mankind ... prototypes of the artist in man’s age long effort to express the world” (Lismer 1937–38, foreword).

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6.2 Cover of the catalogue to the exhibition Pictures by Children, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1937–38

He goes on to talk about the relationship of child art to adult art, reaffirming the connections made by Fineberg and others. “Child art and adult art are different although there are signs that today’s expressions in art are approaching the imaginative and simple character of the child as artist” (ibid.). The 1937 exhibition was shown at the Montreal Art Association from 15 October to 2 November 1938 and at the Fine Arts School of Quebec from 23 April to 30 April 1938. It drew the attention of John Lyman and also of Robert Ayre, the art critic for the Montreal Star. The art critics Henri Girard and Reynald wrote articles in the French press. John Lyman situated it in the international movement in child education and commented favourably on the few examples of the new pedagogy in Canada. He cited the work of Lismer in Toronto, and especially of Savage at Baron Byng High School, because of the fact that she was teaching in a public school. He made an impassioned

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argument for a new art education that would counter the ”widely held superstition” that art was a luxury, and that it was restricted to photographic representation to be appreciated by an elite, and that “art in the school is a polite accomplishment of no practical value.” He quoted Lismer’s foreword in the catalogue. Lismer saw art as a natural expression that had been prevented by traditional education’s emphasis “on the intellectual and documentary, or written process of learning at the expense of the development of the eye and the hand as extensions of personality and as ways to a happier and enjoyable life” (Lyman 1938, 24). Robert Ayre was one of three critics of Canadian art featured in a study by Hélène Sicotte of the University of Quebec in Montreal, the other two being Walter Abell in Nova Scotia and Graham McInnes in Toronto (Sicotte 1989). Their approach was both social and progressive, and they did a great deal to forward the modernist project in Canada. Ayre in Montreal played an important role in the support of child art and art education in Quebec. Ayre’s critique of the 1937 exhibition took up the cause of child art to counter some of its critics in the traditional art world who saw it as a threat to serious art. He cited Cizek and Lismer in emphasizing that it was not the purpose of art education to train artists but rather to liberate the child from the classroom and make art a joy of life rather than “a stereotyped drudgery like the multiplication table.” Ayre also compared the “freshness, jest and innocence and daring” of the children’s pictures to the work of “sobre academicians, stale with tradition and learning” (Ayre 1938, 21). Ayre was to play a larger role in the 1940s, when he took on the cause of art in the schools. Henri Girard was a significant intellectual figure at the end of the 1920s and into the 1930s. He worked as an art critic for several magazines and daily newspapers and espoused the new ideas about poetic realism in painting. He praised artists for their temperament, emotion, and soul. Girard was open to international tendencies and believed that his role as an art critic was to be part of the cultural development of the nation and the project to make art professional, defeating the pervading amateurism. Girard was fascinated with childhood and the 1937 exhibition. He identified the participants of the exhibition and the contribution of Lismer, whom he quoted. He enthusiastically described the childlike qualities of the art as being primarily lyrical, fresh, spontaneous, and honest. He added: “The spectator has the impression of finding paradise on earth,” and he proceeded to describe

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some of the artwork. Finally, he compared the children’s images with those from the Middle Ages, a period that was in his view so different from “our time which is rational and practical” (Girard 1938, 2). Reynald (the pen name of E.R. Bertrand) was an art critic at the newspaper La Presse during the 1930s. He was open to modern concepts and strongly encouraged urban subject matter in painting as opposed to the predominantly rural subjects of the day. He denounced the xenophobia of French-speaking Quebec in his articles and wished that Quebec could be more open to modernism for a revival of Catholic arts. Like Girard, Reynald was excited by the exhibition and described specific groups that participated in it. He entitled his article “Les enfants, ces petits modernes” (Children, Those Young Moderns; Reynald 1938, 34). He affirmed that the work from Quebec, under the direction of Jean-Paul Lemieux, had a “delicious accent of clericalism” while the contributions from the Montreal Children’s Art Centre, directed by Brandtner, “provided spirited urban illustrations.” The spontaneous drawing of children was a well-known phenomenon by then, so Reynald took the opportunity to promote it as a result of a new method of instruction. He encouraged readers to recognize how close children are to nature and completely free from adult constraints, which allows them to express dreams and internal reality. Moved by the mystery, frankness, and honesty emanating from child art, he linked it to “the angst plagued messages of modernistic painting. He implored artists to become childlike and to rediscover childhood spirituality that enriches the soul drained by civilization” (ibid.). McCurry followed up the 1937 exhibit with another in 1939 from the London County Schools specially arranged for the National Gallery by Marion Richardson, then inspector of art for the London County Council. By circulating these exhibitions and a subsequent one from the British Council, the National Gallery placed its exhibitions of Canadian children’s work in an international context, inspiring the further development of modernist art teaching. The decade of the 1930s was crucial to the development of support for child art. In addition to the artists who organized children’s art classes, there were the critics who made their fascination with children’s artwork public, connecting them with the new styles of painting being explored by modern artists. A common theme running through the writings of the art critics we have cited echoes the findings of previous writers. That is the connection made between the qualities found

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in child art and those valued by modern artists: spontaneity, freshness, lyricism, honesty, and freedom from adult restraint. There are many instances of critics like Reynald who encourage artists to become more like children. In this decade, the francophone public school system was not receptive to the tentative experiments made by Borduas whose approach challenged the foundations of traditional education. In addition, we need to recognize the significant role played by the art institutions, especially the National Gallery, and other museums and art schools. Their initiatives and support helped to bring national and international attention to this new form of children’s picture making.

the 1940s: an explosion of individual and institutional initiatives The 1940s saw the emergence of dynamic forces in the artistic milieu where modernistic art movements competed for official recognition. Polarizing tendencies became evident and fostered the formation of groups of artists with competing demands that were sometimes opposed to one another. There was the group of young automatists affiliated with the painter Borduas who promoted French surrealism and preached the primacy of abstract painting. The publication in 1948 of a manifesto called Le refus global (The Global Refusal) signed by Borduas and the automatists’ group created a shock wave in Quebec society, not so much for its artistic considerations as for its attacks on the clergy and its political power in Quebec. There was also a small group of artists clustered around the painter Alfred Pellan, who had recently returned from France with canvases where colour was the subject matter. In 1948 this group openly attacked the radicalism of the automatists by publishing the manifesto Prisme d’yeux (Prism of Sight) signed by Jacques de Tonnancour. There were many other artists who promoted a subjective approach to art while avoiding the cliques and closed groups. The promoters of modern art met with opposition from traditional artists who felt disavowed by the living art. In 1944 twenty-four French- and English-speaking artists addressed a petition to the president and board of directors of the Art Association of Montreal protesting against the Spring Exhibition. They denounced the art of the exhibition as being childish and ridiculous. They ended their short attack

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with the following statement: “If our great industrialists, our intellectuals brought to the world of art the common sense they invest in their businesses, they would not be easily deceived by these false prophets, and our children would not be lead directly into madness.”8 These attacks did not stop artists from publicly endorsing major changes in art and in society. In 1949 ideological quarrels and infighting resulted in the dissolution of the Contemporary Art Society/Société d’art contemporain. This dissolution also marked the end of the alliance between the modernistic French- and Englishspeaking artists. In spite of that, the primacy of abstract art gained ground in Quebec; art critics, galleries, museums, and some collectors ensured its reception and diffusion. Contemporary art won the battle against traditionalism. The British Council Exhibition of British Children’s Drawings In 1941 McCurry arranged for the exhibition of children’s drawings organized by the British Council to be circulated in Canada. This exhibition was significant in several ways. It was shown in Ottawa from 16 September to 7 October, in Montreal from 10 October to 10 November and subsequently in St John and Toronto. As the first of its kind that it had organized, the Council chose an exhibit of children’s pictures to represent the life and thought of the British peoples during wartime. In addition to portraits of ordinary people and local events such as a parade, there were detailed drawings of war scenes such as an air-raid shelter and an aeroplane crash. The British Council’s programs were aimed at exporting cultural values and validating the English lifestyle that had been under siege during the war years. Child art became a metaphor for the importance of the individual in a free society. In the introduction to the catalogue, Herbert Read, a prime organizer of the exhibition, traced the history of the child art movement back fifty years in England to pioneers like Ebenizer Cooke and James Sully. He gave the Austrian artist-teacher Franz Cizek a key role in “demonstrating the aesthetic and psychological advantages of releasing the creative impulse which is present in all children.” In addition he said that “during the same period of forty years, a growing appreciation of primitive art and revolutionary developments in modern painting have helped to bring children’s art within the general range of aesthetic appreciation” (Read 1941, 7).

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With the circulation of the Council Exhibition in Canada and the United States, Read’s philosophy became a source for the Canadian art critics and stimulated them to engage in the discourse that had validated the child art movement internationally. Arthur Lismer and the Art Association of Montreal In 1940 the Art Association of Montreal invited Arthur Lismer to head their enlarged education program. With the arrival of Lismer in 1941 the Art Association became the centre for exhibitions and publicity about child art. With a ten thousand dollar grant from the Carnegie Corporation, the Art Association embarked on a “programme which would co-operate with the schools, universities and art societies in the city and province, and thus foster a greater interest and activity in art appreciation” (Art Association 1940 9). As director of education, Lismer set up an education program built on and continuing the work he had instituted in Toronto. He found that the Saturday morning classes initiated by Savage were a well-established program that could easily be integrated into his Children’s Art Centre. Lismer ran a dynamic program that in addition to the Saturday classes included visits by hundreds of school children to the association’s exhibitions (for which he was the principal guide). He was very active in the community, lecturing at teachers’ conferences, art associations, and various organizations and writing for magazines and newspapers. As he had done at the Art Gallery of Toronto, he wanted the Children’s Art Centre to “become an experimental station where an experienced staff studied and encouraged the manifestation of personality in young boys and girls as expressed through their drawings” (Lismer 1945, 629). His intention was always that the findings of his experimental centre would serve as a model and find its way into the official school program. Like Read, Lismer emphasized the educational significance of child art rather than its aesthetic connections with modernism: “In Canada we are not preoccupied with the relation of child art to modern painting, except that we recognize its prototypal [sic] appearances. The major preoccupation ... is to fit the child into society by releasing creative energies early in life” (ibid.). His art centre became the location for the training of teachers for community centres, recreation centers, and extra-curricular classes all over the city and suburbs. Although his teachers were not qualified to

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6.3 Arthur Lismer with children at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, c. 1951. Lismer, © 1951, National Film Board of Canada

teach in the public schools, he did influence the schools indirectly, as mentioned above. As he hoped, the results of his pedagogical experiment found its way into the school system. One of the teachers he taught in Toronto, Betty Jaques, joined the staff of MacDonald College, the school for Teachers at McGill University in 1945. For many years she fought from within the system to bring the new pedagogy and a recognition of child art into the teacher-training curriculum. In the 1950s she succeeded in having the Department of Education update the English handbook for the teaching of art to reflect the new pedagogy and child art. One feature of Lismer’s children’s program was a series of annual pageants celebrating various cultural and historical themes. These were carefully orchestrated performances by Lismer and his teachers for

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which the children made costumes, props, and backdrops. Self expression was subjugated to social objectives. As he claimed, “we are aiding him [the child] by techniques of construction, by producing his plays, by introducing him through his own dramatic expressions to sympathetic understanding of other lands and other people, which seem to us a legitimate and worthwhile extension of his drawing” (ibid., 119). Important to the success of the centre was the underlying directing force provided by Audrey Taylor, whom Lismer brought with him from Toronto. Although less well known as an artist and under Lismer’s shadow as an educator, Taylor was an important example of the symbiotic relationship between child art and modern art. A former student of his at the Ontario College of Art, Taylor was hired by Lismer in 1933 to teach at his art centre. In Toronto and then in Montreal, she took over most of the details of running the centre, organizing the pageants and collecting student work for study. It was not until the 1960s that Taylor received public recognition for her own work as a sculptor. She produced her assemblage of discarded metal objects from odds and ends collected from junkyards. Critics remarked that her approach was spontaneous, somewhat naive and childlike. Ayre, in a review of an exhibition of her sculptures at the McGill School of Architecture in January 1962, wrote: “Miss Taylor uses her scraps with wit and taste – this may reflect her years of teaching children – the vision of the innocent eye, alert to correspondences, quick to see that one piece looks like an ear and another a mouth ... it is the art of the simile” (Ayre 1962). Unlike Lismer, who identified with the child and the creative process but whose own paintings were not inspired by children’s pictures, Taylor was able to foster the creative growth of the child and invest her own work with the same spirit. The Influence of a Foreign Art Critic: Father M.-A. Couturier During the 1940s, the French-speaking art milieu saw a dynamic growth and maturation accompanied by an explosive interest in modern art and child art. In 1940 the arrival in Montreal of Father Marie-Alain Couturier, a French Dominican priest, helped to forge a new vision of Christianity in the province of Quebec, which was bogged down by a conservative and dominant clericalism. He preached vigorously for the revival of sacred art in Quebec. Moreover, he gave

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public lectures on the “tendencies of modern art,” upholding young artists eager for change. In 1945 he published a book entitled Art et catholicisme (Art and Catholicism) in which he railed against the pedantry of religious academic art and against teachers of drawing that deform students. He placed his hope on the “simple gifts of the people” to renew art: “For [these simple gifts] are alive in themselves: the paintings and drawings of children in this country are marvellous. The works of the young pupils of Borduas in Montreal and of Lemieux in Quebec City, have a force, an audacity and indisputable taste, which puts all professors and artists of a certain age to shame with” (Couturier 1945, 88). Four French Artists and Art Classes for Children Many artists who were interested in modern art organized classes for children. Activities and initiatives multiplied. As noted earlier, PaulÉmile Borduas took part in organizing Saturday art classes in 1939 at the École du meuble where he taught, and in 1941 he opened children’s art classes in his workshop. Irène Senécal, a painter and professor at the Fine Arts School of Montreal, inaugurated art classes in 1942 for underprivileged children that were supervised by volunteer women in two libraries. The artist Suzanne Duquette, also a professor at the Fine Arts School of Montreal, created classes at her art school in 1943, inspired by Lismer’s program at the Art Association.9 Géraldine Barbeau, a painter and ceramist, invested a lot of energy in the creation of classes held in church halls and inaugurated art activities for nursery schools. She was strongly encouraged by the French art critic Father Couturier to set up classes for children. In a public talk she gave in 1945 to parents of her young students, published posthumously in 1954, she described her classes as having a “workshop climate.” Although the talk was very long, moralistic, and religious, it was unique and exemplary because it described the freedom in her classes, as well as the young students’ enthusiasm and efforts that resulted in colourful creations. In the face of indifference, if not opposition, from public school authorities, a generation of artists became aware of their responsibility to educate young people about the modern methods of expression. Moreover, as Borduas confirmed, the freedom and richness of children’s expression supported modern artists’ search for subjective expression.

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At Notre-Dame College, an Experiment in Art Education Brother Jérôme Paradis was an artist who followed in the footsteps of Borduas. He taught drawing at Notre-Dame College and the ideas of Borduas led him to change his teaching. In 1941 Borduas helped him to plan a new method of art instruction in the regular classes of NotreDame College. Then, Brother Jérôme founded Saturday art classes that were open to young Montrealers. Between 1941 and 1948, the exhibitions of Notre-Dame College were enthusiastically commented on by several art critics and in particular by Maurice Gagnon. While commenting on the annual students’ exhibition in 1942, Gagnon explained that the new approach to drawing was not for young artists in training because “drawing is a means of regaining one’s self-control” (Gagnon 1942, 26). He wrote that the “first rays of childhood”, the pure beauty that results from it and is lost in old age, is confronted by the conventions of imitation and its pressures: “First a poet, the child becomes a scholar, from instinct, he becomes an intellectual” (ibid.). Gagnon linked this exhibition with the one of British children’s art at the gallery of the Art Association of Montreal. In spite of strong support from Gagnon and the modernist artistic milieu, Brother Jérôme soon ran into difficulties. Resistance to his teaching methods was felt in the religious community and soon the college’s reputation was put into question. In fact, in 1944 the college’s administration received a letter from a Montreal business man that contained the following comments: “Why teach young people, in whom one wants to foster good taste, these caricatures of art: cubism, impressionism, surrealism? Even if these things are taught to the Anglo-Saxons, I hope that in Quebec we will be able to provide Latin instruction and fine French taste will slice through the excesses of unbalanced individuals such as Salvador Dali and his followers”10 The publication of the manifesto Refus global by Borduas in 1948, with its rebellious content and demands to be freed from the yoke of the clergy, increased the religious community’s opposition to Brother Jérôme. Depressed, he requested a leave of absence from his superiors stating: “I have been bullied, I have seen so much posturing in the face of things I know to be absolutely right from an artistic point of view! In spite of the certainty I have about children’s drawing, all the motivation has dissolved in me” (Rumilly 1969, 153). Brother Jérôme resumed his teaching activities at Notre-Dame College in 1960. During the length of his tenure at the college, he

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6.4 “Children Make Modernist Art,” Montreal Daily Star, March 1949.

received many favourable reviews and comments from the art field. Between 1942 and 1948, the exhibitions he organized were covered by many art critics. At the same time, the press was involved in covering exhibitions of children’s art. For example, an exhibition of children’s art organized by Lemieux at the Museum of Quebec in Quebec City in 1948 received five reviews from art critics. In 1949 an exhibition by Senécal, at the Art Association, of works done by students at the Saturday classes in children’s libraries also inspired five articles. One article was entitled “Children Make Modernist Art.” It said that “several of the exhibits in a quite modernist style, are as good as some from the works shown by older people in other exhibitions.” The reviewer also noted that the best art was made by children as young as

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seven years old. He commented that “while the painting is done seriously, it is play and not work.”11 Robert Ayre and Maurice Gagnon as Art Educators Art critics in Quebec continued to link children’s art with modern painting well into the 1950s. At the same time, some art critics went further than reviewing children’s exhibitions. In addition to praising children for their freedom and creativity, they had an underlying desire to raise the level of public taste and create an audience for modern art. Two critics in particular, Robert Ayre and Maurice Gagnon, saw themselves as educators and through their writings became vocal agents for change in the schools. In the 1940s Ayre extended his influence as a critic promoting the integration of art into the public school. In many of his reviews, he included references to the new art education exemplified by Cizek and Lismer, juxtaposing it to the emphasis on teaching techniques generally found in schools. In reviewing an exhibition in 1952 of the work of the British art teacher Marion Richardson, he went into detail about her teaching method and the role of the teacher, who should be stimulating the child to express his own ideas. He said that ”the teacher should be aware of laying down a technique that might be divorced from the child’s own vision” (Ayre 1952, 6). Ayre also believed that it was the role of art education to foster aesthetic and creative values in non-artists to prepare them as consumers and appreciators of art. This was a natural outgrowth of the earlier efforts of art museums to bring children into their settings, not only to give them opportunities for creative activities but to expose them to artists’ works, a practice that was emphasized by Lismer at the Art Association of Montreal. In this regard, Ayre was excited by the efforts of the Montreal artist Louis Muhlstock to bring original artworks into the schools and he devoted two issues of his column in the Montreal Standard to this program. An exhibition of Muhlstock’s paintings at Mount Royal High School in 1940 was followed by an exhibit of works loaned by the artist Adrien Hebert and others. Ayre published excerpts from essays written by students in response to these exhibitions (Ayre 1940). The students valued the opportunity to be exposed to art and saw it as adding beauty to their lives. French artists and art critics also saw art education as a necessary component in preparing people to take part in the cultural life of the

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community. Maurice Gagnon was the most ardent promoter of a cultural approach to art education. In 1945 he published a book entitled Sur un état actuel de la peinture canadienne (On an Actual State of Canadian Painting). He devoted an entire chapter to art teaching (Gagnon 1945, 45–65). He emphasized the significance of exposing young people to contemporary paintings and recognized the initiatives of several private boy’s colleges that organized exhibitions of “living art.” Gagnon also cited the exemplary work of the Art Association and of Lismer; he named several artists and teachers who had pioneered the new method of teaching art. He then denounced the official programs of drawing and the teachers who promoted imitation and technical processes. He affirmed that drawing “is one of the first displays of a child’s spirit and personality” (ibid., 56). He also emphasized the importance of spontaneity, intuition, and sensitivity since they gave rise to “sumptuous colorists”; and he gave advice to teachers of drawing, charging them to allow their pupils to work freely. In the 1940s modernism asserted itself in the field of art in Quebec. At the same time, there was an explosion of francophone initiatives exploring new approaches to art instruction. These initiatives were accompanied by strong criticism of official programs of drawing in the schools of the province. Museums, in particular the National Gallery of Ottawa and the Art Association of Montreal, lent their legitimacy to child art and at the same time validated the development of new methods of art instruction.

In investigating the relationship between modern art and child art in English and French Quebec, we have looked at the construction of the notion of child art in the context of the rise of modernism during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. As shown above, artists and art critics played an important role in understanding and validating modern art and its connection to the art of children. In general, artists used children’s drawings as justification for their own need to break with academic conservatism. They saw in children’s untutored spontaneous expression a parallel to their search for new aesthetic and formal solutions to painting that emphasized the power of colour. The art museums took on the role of providing support and credibility for this new vision of childhood. In addition to organizing and conducting art classes for children within the institution itself, they became the site for national and international exhibitions of children’s

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pictures. The resulting exchanges and publicity brought Quebec into contact with the international movement of child art and provided opportunities for becoming an active participant in it. The international exhibition program also allowed for outside influences to affect artists and teachers of art. Lismer and Brandtner were both inspired by the work of Cizek in Austria. The exhibition of Cizek’s children’s work in Toronto in 1927 exposed the public to what children could do, paving the way for the setting up of children’s classes in Canada. Exhibitions of the work of children taught by English art educators, including R.R. Tomlinson and Marion Richardson, inspired Anne Savage and later Irène Senécal. In their contributions to the catalogues of children’s exhibitions in the 1940s, Herbert Read and Arthur Lismer placed the emphasis on the educational importance of art education in the social and psychological development of the child. Their writings shifted the discourse of the child art movement from its relation to the aesthetic and spirit of modernism in art itself to its educational significance for all children. It then became possible for the school system to incorporate the educational function of art education and co-opt it for its own goals. In reflecting upon Lismer’s pivotal role in the successful promotion of child art in Quebec, we asked ourselves why the early initiatives of francophone artists to change the way art was taught met with such resistance. In proposing a new methodology of art education, Lismer did not actively challenge the school system. He saw his art centre as an experimental lab whose findings would eventually find their way into the official school curriculum. He was to be proven correct with regard to Quebec’s Anglophone school system. It had always been open to influences from the United States and England, experiencing a gradual change towards advocating more freedom in the teaching of art consistent with an increasingly child centred curriculum. By the time Lismer retired in 1968, there were many advocates of child art supported by an international movement and the official school programs included his pedagogy, in theory if not always in practice. It was different for the first francophone artists attempting to change the way art was being taught. The established educational system they were dealing with was closed to any attempts at reform. The artists themselves were part of a generation actively seeking social and political change. The francophone art milieu did not limit itself to the validation of a new art education but vigorously attacked the school system and its traditional ways of teaching drawing. The problems

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experienced by Borduas in the schools and by Brother Jérôme in the college were examples of the difficulties faced by teachers who wanted to make basic changes to the existing programs. They anticipated the ruptures that occurred in the art milieu with the shift to abstraction and their proposal for a new art education became associated with more far reaching cultural reforms that threatened the school authorities. The artists went too far too soon. In the 1940s the Quebec art field itself saw the alliance forged between English and French artists to achieve modernism give way to the victory of abstraction by the francophone artistic milieu. The critic and writer Maurice Gagnon provided an agenda for the inclusion of art into the changing French school system. It was Irène Senécal, influenced by Tomlinson, Read, and Richardson in the forties and then by Lowenfeld and Piaget in the fifties, who furthered Gagnon’s philosophy of art education and introduced it into the public schools. She was instrumental in changing the paradigm of the child art movement to an art education model, based primarily on the psychology of child development. She forsook the notion of the child as artist and the artist as child. The symbiotic relationship between children and artists gave way to the integration of art into the general school program. Our intention at the outset of this study was to see how the particular story of the rise of modernism in Quebec affected the way in which the child art movement evolved. Although sharing much with international developments, we found the cultural and artistic history of the art field in Quebec did indeed provide a unique context for the emergence of child art and its eventual integration into the field of education.

Recto Running Head

7 Social Reconstruction, Visuality, and the Exhibition of Democratic ideals in Canadian Schools, 1930–19501 e. lisa panayotidis

I believe that art has such sympathy with cheerful freedom, open-heartedness and reality, so much she sickens under selfishness and luxury, that she will not live thus isolated and exclusive ... on such terms I do not wish her to live. William Morris2

In this chapter, I discuss how discourses on social reconstruction through the arts in pre- and postwar Canada drew from earlier currents at the turn of the century when the intellectual and artistic ideas of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and particularly of William Morris, recast the meanings of “art” and “artist” and the role of the educated “arts audience.” Given the historical contingency of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Canada, the creation of a culturally enlightened audience at mid-century was not surprising. Partly, it was precipitated by the fact that advocates of reconstruction through the arts and the audiences to which they spoke were already inculcated in the socialaesthetic philosophies of the Arts and Crafts Movement, through provincial school systems. Further, social reconstruction discourses, in their quest to redefine a social and cultural landscape scarred by war and economic destitution, have much in common with early nineteenth- and twentieth-century initiatives to redesign society in response to what earlier advocates deemed the socially alienating and deleterious effects of industrialization and urbanization.3

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Canadian schools, meanwhile, were crucial in disseminating social reconstruction discourses. It was in schools, after all, that future citizens of the new postwar world were both linguistically and visually indoctrinated into the ideals of good citizenship and the meaning of individual and collective social responsibility. Student populations were overtly enculturated into specific predetermined values, subjected to what Nelles calls “politics by other means” (1999, 12). These social, political, and aesthetic initiatives coincided with reconceptualized art education curricula in the schools that were enacted to foster individualistic notions of independent thought, confidence, flexibility, and adaptability – all elements of what was deemed the democratic personality. Prior to the war, citizenship was determined by political practice and tradition; now, post-1945, to the social reconstructionists, citizenship was defined according to individual attitudes and the particular characteristics of one’s personality. Children’s malleable personalities, however, were subject to the interventions of the state. Visually and verbally, this point was well made in the photo-mural exhibition entitled “This Is Our Strength,” sponsored by the Wartime Information Board and the National Film Board, which noted: “As the Child Grows so is the Nation Formed.” Canadian schools became sites in which cultural politics were played out and where images were considered a powerful instrument of propaganda. While the attempted enculturation of student populations, especially in regard to social and political initiatives, was a consistent feature in twentieth century schooling, there is an important and hitherto unexamined critical relationship among Canadian school arts curricula, visual culture, and national agendas in this reconstructionist discourse. This study offers a critical interpretation of Canadian historical and cultural notions of citizenship, identity, and cultural nationalism – particularly of how they were drawn from earlier social aesthetic discourses. I frame my study in contemporary notions of visual culture and the theoretical premise that visuality, like language, is a medium through which politics (and identification, desire, and sociability) are conducted. Taking full account of historical and cultural contexts, institutional structure, agency, and the force of ideas, I illustrate how social reconstructionist art exhibitions and images functioned as politico-ideological visual narratives that displayed particular and normative forms of cultural representation and identities. This approach is crucial in understanding the social field of the gaze, and the way in

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which our subjectivities, identities, desires, memory, and imagination are elicited through the visual world around us. The pictorial turn, as W.T.J. Mitchell and others call it,4 suggests an even more rigorous and critical analysis of visuality, one that differentiates between “unmediated vision as seeing the world” and “mediated vision as seeing images.” Images and their contextual spaces are treated here as a constellation of signs, symbols, and codes that may read as texts as they function within a specific historical and cultural set of conflicting forces (Bourdieu 1993). These texts do not embody meaning but are informed by the interests and desires of the viewer and by the social relations between the perceiver and the perceived. Images, artifacts, and the spatial environments are powerful shapers of attitudes, prejudices, hopes, and desires. Consequently, visual culture is theorized as an active means by which society is structured and by implication is involved in a whole set of power relationships that exist within society. In the present study, I use interdisciplinary approaches and theories to rethink our traditional explanations of the relationship between schooling, nationhood, cultural relations, and aspirations to create a distinctive type of Canadian citizenry in the pre- and postwar period.

social reconstruction In the economic malaise of the early 1930s in Canada, with its attendant personal, community, and national introspection, social reconstructionists both inside and outside government looked for a way to reconstruct and rejuvenate the economy and society by culturally unifying the country through a common set of individual and communal values within pre-existing political jurisdictions – individual, family, neighbourhood, community, society, and finally international (Horn 1980). Social reconstructionists brazenly postulated the grandiose possibility of a new world order that although driven by the precepts and aspirations of social reconstruction was also nation-state neutral. Reconstructionist ideas in theory ignored national borders in the hope of eliciting a mutual international social and geopolitical respect and harmony. As Walter Abell, editor of Canadian Art, noted: “Before the war, each democratic country had shut itself off from other countries, [it] had walled itself in to protect what it had made, and subsisted on its isolation and consequent complacency, blind to the mounting dangers which threatened it. Therein lay so great a danger that it brought the war down on our heads.”5

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Throughout the West, the economic and social upheaval of the depression provided a forum in which the ideas of social reconstruction gained increasingly vociferous adherents drawn from among various levels of government, business, and industry, intellectuals, educators, cultural workers, and artists, to name just a few. The conflagration of world war turned this forum into a hotbed. Central to this now-vigorous social reconstruction discourse, not only in Canada but in Great Britain and the United States, was the notion that the production, study, appreciation, and consumption of art were the panacea for society’s ills. Capital C culture, reconstructionists argued – and more specifically the arts – had a significant part to play in the reorganization of the home front and the world, both in a practical way and in philosophical contemplation. International goodwill, meanwhile, could be achieved through a better understanding of the naturally endowed creativity of the individual. Reconstructionists often cited the novelist E.M. Forster’s belief that “Art was the moral order of the universe. It affects everything we do and see and experience ... it ennobles the mind and spirit ... its universal language is a bond with other peoples and an inspiration to future generations.”6 Extending Forster’s notion, reconstructionists argued that visual culture affects every aspect of our environment: “Its power is at work even when we lay out a garden in an ordered, harmonious way, when we arrange the furniture in a room so that it satisfies something within us beyond the needs of physical comfort. In the way we dress and walk and meet people. Indeed, in the degree that we are civilized and responsible beings.”7 Artistic work meanwhile represented a microcosm of a functioning democracy. It was argued that “a great work of art is, in one sense, a picture, a replica of a functioning democracy, in that it excludes no phase of reality, but rather includes them all in an organic whole.”8 Circulating art exhibitions and concerts, books, exchanges of student artwork, and creative artists across national borders, all supported by the newly organized unesco, became one way in which reconstructionists hoped to elicit mutual international reconciliation. Canadian artists were conceived as having a particularly important role to play in this new aesthetically defined world order. The magazine Canadian Art reported in 1948 that the Canadian delegates to unesco, Herman Voaden and the sculptor Elizabeth Wynn Wood, “took the lead over many other countries in recognizing the right of creative artists them-

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selves to participate directly in the organization of cultural relations between nations” (“Coast to Coast,” 139). After all, Wynn Wood argued: “If we wait until an international post-war planning committee prepares a World Utopia we cannot blame them if they do not know that Canada is other than acres of wheat. We must put our aesthetic resources forward” (ibid.). These crosscultural endeavours aimed at forging positive international relations assumed a transference of cultural value systems and normative experience, as well as the capability of images and visual constructs neutrally to represent a fixed reality of the world. Besides stressing a new internationalism, Canadian social reconstructionists believed that taking a lead by advancing a new foreign policy characterized by mutual peace and harmony would go hand in hand with a united Canada, one that would have its own unique moral identity in the world.9 Canadian social reconstructionists came to link their conception of the democratic personality, as individualist in nature, exhibiting free expression, autonomy, and creativity with that of the artist and the practice of artistic expression. As Walter Abell noted, “In the idea of democracy ... the arts have a greater scope for development and can thus make a greater contribution to the life of the people than under any form of government we have known.”10 In contrast, a non-democratic personality, in this case the “totalitarian personality” characterized best by the Nazis and Fascists, was defined by reconstructionists as “repressive and angry,” brandishing feelings of loneliness, isolation, powerfulness, and most certainly as having few creative expressive outlets. Social reconstructionists were always quick to point out how important the arts, and especially imagery, were to a society: “In order to create [their] state the [Nazis and the Fascists] ... had to drive out of their countries, or put in concentration camps, or murder their best creative individuals in the arts. That was the first essential before they could enslave and brutalize their people.”11

liberal humanism and “c”ulture Adopting dominant liberal humanist notions of Culture and its role in the development of the productive and moral individual, reconstructionists maintained that “C”ulture played a privileged role in the development of the individual as it offered a means to realize to the fullest a unique yet shared human nature. Assuming that Culture transmits the best ideas and values of a particular age, ideas that

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thought to transcend all social and cultural differences were, not surprisingly, highly potent after the turmoil of the depression and the war years that followed: “There is little doubt that a large part of our trouble, of our sickness of soul ... has come about because we have looked to and relied upon science, economics, trade and politics for the solutions of our problems, when in their very nature these can be no more than mechanisms, the means for the solution of any human problem.”12 Cultural discourses that argued that the arts had been bypassed as crucial and life-saving determinates of culture carried an air of neutrality and matter-of-factness that often hid their more blatant political intentions. Significantly, Culture was seen as creating social cohesion and a sense of national identity: it offered a way for citizens to learn to act in the operations of the state – at least those mechanisms that were open to them. Forging social cohesion and a national identity was not only a requirement of the existing national and international condition but a key theme of English liberal humanist thought since the midnineteenth century. Promoted principally by poet and school inspector Matthew Arnold and social-art critic John Ruskin, this theme influenced Canadian intellectual thought and cultural practices in the late nineteenth century into the early decades of the twentieth century. Arnold’s thesis, somewhat more circumscribed in relation to class relations, argued that unless the working classes were provided with access to Culture there would be anarchy and, even worse, a socialist revolution. Common cultural values, Arnold presupposed, produced a consensual morality. It was John Ruskin and William Morris who claimed the arts as the most meaningful activity of human existence. Indeed, they argued it was a veritable democratic right; thus, not only should it be practised in everyday social relations but aesthetic decisions should be exercised in all aspects of life, particularly on broader questions of labour, education, and social policy. “Access” to Culture, especially the arts, was seen as a “basic and ineliable right” by both liberal and socialist thinkers while exclusion from this realm of enlightenment was considered a spiritual and intellectual impoverishment. “Art for All” became a common refrain, as did the argument that art was fundamental to the moral, intellectual, and aesthetic development of all individuals who aspired to citizenship in the “good society.”13 Reconstructionists pointed to these values as necessary for all citizens to fulfil their role in the democratic process.

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A 1944 article in Canadian Art by Holger Cahill, former national director of the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project in the us (1935–1943),14 highlighted similar initiatives south of the border. Taking a historical perspective, Cahill looked at shifting social relations between the artist and the public, and particularly the growth of “democratic cultural programs” prompted by the depression, which made clear that “unless the organized community stepped in, the arts would enter a dark age from which they might not recover (Cahill 1944, 104).” Cahill’s broad democratic interest in the arts arose in the aftermath of the First World War and was spurred on by two interrelated sources: the growth of leisure time and the efforts of “artists, teachers and museum directors to make art one of the channels of this newly acquired leisure” (ibid.). The result, Cahill noted, was that “generations of men and women began to discover its [sic] need for art; for its need that stirs the world to new advances” (ibid.). Cahill credited nineteenth century art and social art critics John Ruskin and William Morris in particular and progressive educators such as John Dewey for this rising tide of interest. Key to Cahill’s understanding of the arts was that art must be “original” and not a copy or reproduction, for “if our democratic interest in the arts is to grow and to deepen, it must turn with ever greater emphasis toward original creative art” and production over mere consumption (ibid., 106). By mid-century the arts and culture were at the core of a notion of citizenship that was thought to be central to the individual, communities, society, and the nation. Canadian artists saw a privileged place for themselves within the art-centred discourses of social reconstruction. Defined in part through the nineteenth-century Romantic ideas the artist in this period was seen as an individual gifted with innate talent and transcendent vision, and an interpreter of spiritual and aesthetic values. Artistic productions meanwhile were seen as a bridge between the social and material world and the realm of creative intelligence and spirit. Given the importance of creativity and the arts to democracy, social reconstructionists believed that artists’ inherent nature made them the most apt to set (aesthetic) standards in a community, the country, and the entire civilized world. Artists, buoyant from their successful involvement in the war effort, envisioned themselves as having an integral role to play in the new postwar Canada. Artistic production during the early and middle years of the war was instrumental not only in commissioning thousands of artists to work as documentary artists, photographers, and propaganda

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makers but also in shaping through visual images a national response to the war at home and abroad. Through initiatives such as the National Gallery of Canada’s silkscreen project designed by leading Canadian artists – and funded principally by the Department of Defence – an attempt was made, in this case, to decorate Canadian serviceman’s drab military quarters, and to remind soldiers of the home they left behind and the need to rededicate themselves to the war effort and the fight for democracy. Many of the silkscreen images were also displayed in Canadian schools, prompting one critic to suggest that the silkscreen images did much to entice the young to enlist!15

Within this era of shifting social, sociological, and psychological definitions of popular democracy, artists mobilized as a vibrant and efficacious professional group who wanted to protect and promote dominant culture. Represented in professional organizations, artists’ collectives, and provincial and national institutions, artists employed the language, ideals, and visual practices of social reconstruction in an effort to promote a particular form of cultural nationalism and identity. Artists argued that Art was an essential component of life and that they by consequence were vital to the very wellbeing of the nation. In the seminal text “Reconstruction through the Arts,” Group of Seven member Lawren Harris, now president of the Federation of Canadian Artists, linked reconstruction agendas through the arts (Harris, 1944). Harris began his article by provocatively claiming that “the greatest need in Canada is for a unity of spirit over and above the great diversity of life ... the arts, because at their best they include the religious spirit and because they touch the life of every individual in some degree, can be most effective in creating Canadian unity” (ibid., 185). For Harris, who drew on his Theosophical understanding, dualisms such as harmony and unity required a creative impetus and cultural interplay that, if absent, would cause dissension, separation, and disintegration. The “good” was engendered in the “cultural interplay” among individuals, communities, or countries. One of the key interplays, Harris reasoned, was that between the artist and the layman. Their dynamic union was crucial to what Harris imagined as a national culture that would be fostered through the provincial school systems. Harris set out a plan for a submission brief on behalf of a number of national art bodies, detailing their desires with regard to building a strong national culture through the arts to the government’s Special

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Committee on Reconstruction and Re-establishment, struck in Ottawa in late 1944. In a summary brief presented to the Special Committee by sixteen representatives of cultural societies, one of the main recommendations was for “Canadian unity through practice and participation in the Arts by the people. The Arts being universal, transcend racial, political and economic differences, class interests, and sectional prejudices. Furthermore, the Arts would provide a better understanding between different parts of Canada; and between the urban and rural areas [of the country].”16 Clearly, artists viewed social reconstruction as a way to situate themselves in the economic national fabric and to give value and meaning to their productions. In advocating social reconstruction through the arts, artists and educators were professionalizing and institutionalizing Canada’s cultural industries and its workers. At the very least, they were seeking what they came to see as the golden chalice – a statefunded program of patronage for all cultural workers. The establishment of new organizations and assemblies – such as the Ontario Association of Teachers of Art (established in 1941; eventually it became the Ontario Society for Education through Art); the Canadian Society for Education through Art (1955); and the Conference of Canadian Artists in Kingston (1941) led to the formation of the Federation of Canadian Artists (1941); Canadian Arts Council (1945); and the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences (1949–1952), highlighting the way visual culture was socially, culturally, and economically institutionalized. The economic component of arts production cannot be underestimated, as Elizabeth Wynn Wood noted in her article “A National Program for the Arts in Canada” (1944). One of the social implications of art – and particularly design – was its economic usefulness. Significantly, advocates of social reconstruction through the arts reinvigorated the visual and performing arts with essential meaning. Craft, design, documentary photography, and the emerging medium of film took their places alongside the traditional fine arts to define and give form and expression to the modern world.

the arts and the public With its promotion of individualism, contemporary visual culture was seen as a way to aggressively challenge pernicious Fascist doctrine particularly in the way it linked the democratic personality of the individual

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to the artist’s endemically transcendent creative practice. Rebuilding democracy through the arts required the participation and widespread support of the entire citizenry. Public participation was not only a philosophical ideal but a very practical requirement. The traditional pre-war top-down elitist paradigm whereby the public was viewed as ignorant consumers of artistic production who could not tell good from bad art did not encourage people to see art as a vital constituent of everyday life at all levels of society. As a 1945 brief by the Ontario chapter of the Federation of Canadian Artists suggested: “Art is not the exclusive possession and hobby of the rich – [or artists in this case – ] but rather the necessity of every democratic citizen who seeks the good life.”17 In the early 1940s reconstructionist artists and educators such as Lawren Harris, Elizabeth Wynn Wood, and Peter Haworth, along with art historians like Walter Abell and John Alford, to name just a few of the central figures, proposed a national program for revamping Canada that featured the involvement of artists in every facet of Canadian life, including cultural industries such as handicrafts, design and urban planning, industry and manufacturing, art education, and political discussions of national culture. They conceived of a world in which every aspect of visual culture in society was touched by the artist’s hand: stamps, coins, book and textbook illustration, greeting cards, restaurant menus, packaging of products, leaflets, programs, advertising posters, to name only a few. Artists at mid-century were involved in a variety of community-oriented activities – urban planning, industrial design, and a resurgence of the handicrafts – that helped them artistically to envision the postwar world. All these activities became part of travelling exhibitions regularly shown at galleries, community centers, and, more often than not, school libraries and gymnasiums. The challenge to provide housing and new civic amenities like garden parks, rural halls, and community centres as well as postwar memorials and markers brought planners into dialogue with artists and architects eager to merge the “scientific” work of the planners with their artistic visions. In a series of important photomural exhibitions that sought to represent images of the new world to ever-growing crowds of Canadians, artists presented their views on the “improvement” and “beautification” of the natural and constructed environment for public consumption and discussion. Though exhibitions like Campbell Merrett’s “Planning with the People” suggested a collaboration of interests, it is clear that the visual images organized in elaborate and orchestrated

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displays already offered specific options from which the public could pick and choose. Urban and rural planning was also conceived by many as being a uniquely Canadian initiative. Thus, Prime Minister MacKenzie King was strongly rebuked by many reconstructionists when he invited a French planner, Jacques Greber of Paris, to help in the planning of Ottawa. Disgruntled critics like Merrett saw a curious contradiction in Canada, which proclaimed its new nationhood yet “turned to the Old World for plans – for development of Ottawa along lines similar to Washington” (Merrett 1945, 18). Underlying the theory of reconstruction in urban design was faith in the power of the visual environment to reform societal relations and bring about social cohesion, and a whole plan for living. Along with urban and rural planning initiatives, artists sought to broaden their relationship to Canada’s industrial sector. The encouragement of “good” original design in industry – i.e., mass-produced goods that exhibited simplicity, fine proportion, and functional utility – was paralleled by the notion that there had to be closer cooperation between artist and manufacturer and a fusion of their talents and philosophies. This fusion depended on the artists being more than mere cogs in the wheel of technological progress, oblivious of how their work was utilized. In the absence of a consistent patronage structure, advocating a union between art and industry would also serve to supply thousands of artists, many of whom were involved in Canada’s war-art industry, with at least part-time or contractual income. Once again, in 1946 the National Gallery of Canada presented an exhibition, opened by C.D. Howe, the minister of Reconstruction, entitled “Design in Industry.” The exhibition sought to “emphasize the rightful place of the Canadian designer in the production of consumer goods.”18 Interestingly, if some artists did not want to design for industry others found it a theme worthy of artistic representation. Artist Frederick B. Taylor proposed that heavy industry was a “terrific” subject, full of infinite potential as a subject for the visual arts. “I am amazed,” he wrote, “that more artists are not already dealing with it. My pictures inform the public and they inform the workers, and increase understanding and respect between the public and the industrial sector” (Taylor 1945, 32). For Taylor, images of industry represented visual images of the “progress” of the twentieth-century science and technology coupled with a heroic fascination with the “worker.”

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Taylor’s task, as he understood it, was “to interpret Canada to Canadians” (ibid., 32). The representation of labour in the visual arts was in fact fast becoming a popular genre. In 1947, for example, the Labor Arts Guild organized a competitive art exhibition, “British Columbia at Work,” that portrayed the workers and working life of the province. This exhibition involved both amateurs and professionals and showed entries in oils, watercolours, pastels, sculptures, wood carving, and commercial posters. It was based on the assumption that the combined forces of artist and worker can exert a decisive influence on cultural progress. This, the organizers noted, was the representation of “a true Canadian culture of, for, and by the people” (Sutherland 1945, 6). Underlying this exhibition was an attempt to immortalize the contribution of the labour movement to the Canadian war effort and to claim for artworkers a significant place in the new postwar economy. Lastly, artists also became involved in community-oriented arts activities through the encouragement of handicrafts. Handicrafts included both the home arts and studio crafts – in other words, crafts done by “amateurs” in the home and “professional” artists in the studio. The production of the handicrafts industry was, it was believed, destined to fulfil a number of specific economic aims: to provide goods for the civilian market; to absorb human labour once released from military service; and to attract tourists. Elizabeth Wynn Wood also supported the argument that skilled hands were a national asset as was the peace of mind of the craftsman. Another voice advocating the importance of art, Muriel Rose, asked the question, “Is there a place for handicrafts in the machine age?” In her article “Crafts in Contemporary Life” (1943) she noted that crafts products were a permanent enrichment to the whole community.19 According to Rose, crafts were a response to the deadly uniformity imposed by the factory system and the trivial bric-à-brac production that had tainted the value of crafts in the minds of some people. For Rose, form, material, and a respect and reverence for the object could not be learned from a book as it was almost spiritual in nature. Handicraft production had practical considerations beyond the intellectual and cultural musings and policy of various artists and reconstructionists. Crafts were also seen as a way to rehabilitate returning troops and war personnel who had suffered some physical or emotional disability due to the traumatic effects of war. Military and civilian hospitals,

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community centres, and mental health institutions organized small groups or clubs of men and women to learn a craft for their own psychological improvement or as a new skill for a potential new career. For example, at the “Number One Centre” in Gordon Head, near Victoria, British Columbia, director Anthony Walsh encouraged returning military men to decorate the centre’s walls with murals depicting Canadian life and unity. These initiatives did not go unnoticed: Lawren Harris, in his role as president of the Federation of Canadian Artists, visited the centre and gave his blessing to the project, declaring it a forerunner of much that might be done in community centres in the postwar period. The practice of craft, particularly in communities, allowed for quiet contemplation and reflection upon a prosperous and peaceful future.

arts, crafts, and design What becomes clear in the discourse on the arts’ intimate link to reconstruction agendas and the subsequent exhibitions, which visually reiterated these visual narratives, is how they drew nostalgically on earlier Arts and Crafts ideas about the relationship between the purity and sanctity of art and the morality and soundness of society. In part these discourses may be seen as vestiges of a claim to historical heritage and ethnic supremacy in an increasingly multicultural world and as indicators of a newly conceived relationship between the citizen and the state.20 In the early part of the twentieth century the Arts and Crafts Movement and its promotion and production of the handicrafts, design, and the visual arts became an essential element of social and political transformation. Many advocates of social reconstruction through the arts at mid-century had been schooled directly in the movement’s social-aesthetic tenets and philosophies as they were taken up in Canada and disseminated by a series of artistic associations such as the Womens’ Art Association of Canada (waac, established in 1892), the Hamilton Arts and Crafts Association, and the Arts and Crafts Society of Canada. The Arts and Crafts discourse of these artistic associations was set within the period of Canada’s economic urban and industrial transformation. Industrialization in Canada brought unemployment, deskilling, and social instability. Government as well as the manufacturing and business communities understood the possibility of uniting art with industry to improve products, which in turn

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created a healthier and more vibrant economy in which labourers enjoyed an improved standard of living. Art became the handmaiden of industry, as described by Eric Brown, the first director of the National Gallery of Canada. “Art was inseparable from commerce because commerce is largely dependent upon design of every kind, which art only can supply.”21 At a time when workers were beset with labour insecurity, the Arts and Crafts Movement’s twin maxims of “joy in labour” and “the nobility of the worker” became an extremely important philosophy that contrary to historical interpretations, remained somewhat intact in school curricula and in the work of artist-teachers and amateur and professional craft associations. Significantly, the movement’s aesthetic theories were incorporated into the social and political reform agendas in the early decades of the twentieth century and into the very fabric of Canadian cultural life. Canadian Arts and Crafts promoters, especially women’s groups such as the waac, took a leading role in advocating art, particularly the handicrafts, as “important national products” both for economic revenue and for cultural and educational edification. The association conceived of artistic production and widespread appreciation of both handicrafts and fine arts as essential to any progressive civilization, vitally contributing to a nation’s economic prosperity and social betterment. Over the next two decades, the waac and other groups became vigilant proponents of social-aesthetic values and ideals in all facets of everyday life especially as they applied to promoting Canadian women in the arts and, by extension, women’s role in the nationbuilding process. Though outside the realm of political structures and male power bases, the association attempted to incorporate feminine experience, expanded notions of domesticity, and aesthetic theory into the prevailing political ideologies of citizenship and nationhood. Aesthetic goals were recast as national ideals, and women’s success in the public forum was conceived of as societal success through work for art in the community (Panayotidis 2002; McLeod 1999). Elite cultural nationalist ideologies in Canada over the last eighty years originate from this early anti-modernist quest to reshape the home, community, and nation into a preindustrial version of the “aesthetic good society.” Paradoxically, these same forces also gave rise to a challenging of traditional gender and power relations, reconceptualizing women handicraft producers and promoters as “speaking” subjects and the “aesthetic” as the political means by which to speak and act on behalf of the national good.

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It is vital to situate the tenets and ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement and writings of William Morris in Canadian reconstruction discourses. This is not to create a progressive lineage of the movement but to ascertain how history, art, and identity became interlinked in an explanation of the role of arts and artists in society. Like social reconstruction through the arts, the Arts and Crafts Movement attempted philosophically, socially, and politically to redesign society – particularly through craft and design. The historical influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Canada is paramount, especially in that advocates of reconstruction through the arts and those audiences to which they spoke were already inculcated through the school system in the socialaesthetic philosophies of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The Arts and Crafts Movement that arose in England and was later exported to Canada created a tradition of artistic and cultural soundness in early twentieth-century Canada that not only shaped our notion of cultural nationalism but remains, I would argue, to this day, especially in the very legitimacy of art and artists and their role in the educational system and society. The expansive debates about art, education, and nationality, and about artist-educators’ contributions to Canadian thought, are fundamental to an understanding of Canada as a nation and as a cultural and social idea.

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8 More Than an Improvement in Drawing: Art Learning in One Vancouver Secondary School, 1920–1950 d. wendy stephenson In 1920 the supervisor of drawing for Vancouver, British Columbia, reported that the drawing programs of Kitsilano and Britannia high schools were not meeting expected high-school standards. This supervisor, Charles Scott, stated that an improvement would not likely occur in the schools until qualified drawing teachers were available.1 The provincial art textbook of 1924 required high-school art students to draw repetitive motifs, simple objects, and stylized forms from nature, study traditional lettering and colour theory, and use flat watercolour tones (Scott, et al. 1924, 141–67). By mid-century, however, programs of study allowed for much more, and students at Kitsilano Junior/Senior High School were producing proficient and diverse student artwork in a variety of media. The intent of this chapter is to suggest some of the ways in which this additional art learning was accomplished. Located on the more affluent west side of Vancouver, the new amalgamated Kitsilano Junior/Senior High School opened in September 1927 on the existing high-school site. It began with a population of 1,275 students, eight hundred of whom were in grades seven and eight.2 At that time art was considered to be part of a well-balanced education. By 1950 achievement in the arts at Kitsilano conferred equal status with achievement in sports, and the Golden Flame award for visual arts carried as much prestige as a Big Block award in athletics. Students who received recognition in both art and athletics have

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confirmed this.3 During these years the visual arts at Kitsilano seemed to gain support from having an equally strong performing arts aspect to its school culture. From the 1930s onward, the school was a consistent winner of, or contender for, awards in provincial drama festivals and operetta competitions. These awards included recognition for painted scenery and stagecraft. The Kitsilano Boys Band and the Kitsilano orchestra also won many honours for the school.4 Many former visual arts students have spoken highly of drama teacher Miss Nolan without ever mentioning a physical education teacher or a sports coach. The role of this arts culture at Kitsilano in encouraging the visual arts became apparent to me only after I became aware of the dissimilar school cultures in Britannia High School and Vancouver Technical School.5 Multiple interviews with former students of Britannia, provided by Clive Cocking in a book illuminating the school’s history (Fond Memories, 1985), reveal that Britannia’s school culture before 1950 stressed academics and sports over the arts. Interviews I undertook with former Britannia students, along with information provided by the school’s yearbooks, substantiated this. Also, with its musicals and orchestra, Britannia paid significantly less attention to visual arts than to the performing arts. Irene Alexander, who was at Britannia in the mid-1930s, described to me how her art teacher, Donald Flather, recommended her for a scholarship to the art school at the end of grade ten. She won the scholarship and transferred to the art school, which accepted students who had reached sixteen years of age and had completed grade ten. Presumably Irene’s Britannia teacher assumed that she had more to gain by going to the art school than by continuing to take art at Britannia. Anna Wong, at Britannia in the 1940s, who subsequently taught art at the art school, acknowledged that visual art at Britannia was “underappreciated.”6 This seems to be true of other Vancouver secondary7 schools considered during the larger study of which this study is part. Across the city, Vancouver Technical School opened in its new facility in 1928 with a total population of 1,100 by 1930.8 Originally serving boys in grades nine, ten, and eleven, it had expanded by 1933 to include grade twelve. Van Tech remained an all-boys’ school until September of 1940. It had a vocational preparation mandate and it enjoyed full sports participation in citywide leagues.9 At least by the mid-1930s, capability in visual art was considered part of the professionalism required of the design aspect of applied courses (Bill Wong,

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pers. com. 2002). This is despite the absence of design as a stand-alone course in the school’s curriculum before September 1935.10 A course entitled art was not offered until September 1946.11 With Van Tech’s new school facility providing proper shops, a linoleum-cutting club was instituted in the 1931–32 school year to make up for the art course that was “denied” the school.12 This club was to teach the drawing, cutting, and printing of linoleum blocks for those interested in commercial art. The 1934 yearbook reports that a small textbook had been produced by the printing department for the use of members of the linoblock club.13 By 1939 this club had thirtyfive members.14 For years, members produced near-professional prints that were showcased in Van Tech’s yearbooks. Despite the existence of the linocutting club, the principal, Mr James G. Sinclair, despaired of having no regular art course in the curriculum. Beginning in the 1933–34 school year, he sponsored an art club during after-school hours. A student in the yearbook explained that Mr Sinclair’s purpose in doing this was “to teach us the rudiments of freehand drawing, a subject he is well qualified to teach.”15 In acknowledging that there was no art course, Bill Wong, who graduated in 1939 and later attended art school in the evenings, said: “It’s true there was no one art course, but everything we did there related to art. I could see that very well.” He explained that design was taught in all the applied courses he took including metalwork, woodworking, printing, and drafting. In these, he said, “you had to figure out your own design of what you were going to make”(pers. com. 2002). Britannia High School was significantly smaller than Kitsilano Junior/Senior High School and Vancouver Technical School, particularly after the two larger schools had moved into their new facilities. Initially Britannia was a high school only; it did not include the lower grades, so art was not a requirement (Cocking, 1985, 23). For this reason fewer students took art and Britannia had only one full-time art teacher at a time. Former art supervisor James U. Gray said of Britannia’s art teacher Miss Rollston: she had a “fantastic attitude and commitment” (pers. com. 2002). But a single teacher, however capable, cannot match the strength and momentum of several art teachers in creating a climate conducive to excellence in art production. Kitsilano had three full-time art teachers on staff concurrently during the 1930s and 1940s. Britannia, called East Vancouver High School until 1910, is in a working-class area of East Vancouver that became ethnically more

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diverse from the mid-1930s to the present. During the Second World War when the Japanese were evacuated to internment camps away from the coast, Britannia’s entire champion junior rugby team was disbanded since only three white members remained (Cocking 1985, 45). Apparently in the 1930s and 1940s, Britannia was perceived by westside students as “tough,” but that is not how Britannia students themselves felt about their school or their neighbourhood (ibid.). And Britannia was primarily a neighbourhood school. As one of Vancouver’s earliest schools, it was lacking in some of the facilities and equipment that were taken for granted in schools in richer neighbourhoods of the city (ibid., 1985, 61). By contrast, Vancouver Technical School, located further east and further south, served any boys wanting a technical education who were able to get to the school on foot or by bicycle, public transportation, or, in a few instances, private automobile. The energy and stress involved in getting there is humorously depicted in a 1939 cartoon by Bob Banks in the school’s yearbook.16 Photographs and names appearing in the yearbooks from that time suggest a more ethnically diverse population drawn, as it was, from a larger area of the city. In a later yearbook, Principal Sinclair acknowledged that Van Tech had a “mixed” population, adding that, “there has never been any discrimination evident along racial lines.”17 One former Van Tech student from the 1940s, a Caucasian, whom I interviewed did not agree with this and said he thought Britannia had a more tolerant view of minorities than Van Tech (Henry Zitko, pers. com. 2003). Van Tech was perceived by one former student from the mid-1930s as a rough school. He remembers some Van Tech boys locking a male teacher whom they thought to be too feminine in a cupboard (Mac Nelson, pers. com. 2002). Judging by the strong respect former Britannia students have expressed for their teachers, it seems unlikely that this could have happened at Britannia (Cocking 1985). Rough though it may have been, Van Tech staged an annual Shakespearean play as well as operettas and musical performances. Not everyone who wanted to, however, could be involved in these productions. Bill Wong, for example, could not participate in extra-curricular events at school because he was studying hard to get into engineering at university, and in the late afternoons and on Saturdays he attended Chinese school. He also worked in his father’s tailoring shop and helped with fundraising, clothing drives, and other work in his community to support his father’s compatriots who were affected by the

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Sino-Japanese war. It is difficult to know to what extent other students of Asian descent at Van Tech, or even Britannia, would have been similarly preoccupied after school hours and thus unable to participate in extra-curricular events. Presumably this would not have been so evident at Kitsilano with its predominantly white middle-class student population living close to the school. Much art learning was done in after-school activities. For some, after-school participation could thus be viewed as privileged. It is heartening to read in the student yearbook, The VanTech, the comments of the principal, some teachers, and students complaining over several years that they had no regular art course in the curriculum. In September 1935, a design course was finally introduced into the regular curriculum.18 It was taught by a Mr Wishart, former teacher of woodworking, metalworking, and machine shop, who subsequently taught drafting. In September 1939 artist-teacher J.W.G. (Jock) Macdonald joined the staff and became the design teacher. A member of the Canadian Group of Painters, his work was represented in the National Gallery of Canada and in several other notable collections.19 He had taught design and commercial art at Vancouver’s art school for six years and similar subjects in the short-lived British Columbia College of Art. A Van Tech student’s cartoon showing Macdonald painting at an easel20 suggests that students perceived him as more of an artist than a designer. When Macdonald took over Van Tech’s art club, the club’s goal was “to study branches of art relating to the fine arts – not limited to the practical arts – and to do decorative panels for the school.”21 It was September 1946, however, before a Van Tech teacher received the title “teacher of art.”22 Yet by the early 1930s some students at Van Tech were producing competent student art, especially graphic art. Their artistic ability is especially evident in the near-professional standard of some of their illustrations in the yearbooks and in the linoblock manual that students produced in the print shop.23 Considering the basic differences between Kitsilano, Van Tech, and Britannia suggests the potential of a school’s culture to stimulate and encourage art learning in the school. Kitsilano and Van Tech, for different reasons, reveal the potential for art learning in the secondary school in and out of the classroom. During the financially difficult times of the depression and war years, Britannia stressed achievement in academics, as many students aspired to become the first professionals in their family (Cocking 1985, 38). Participation in sports, mean-

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while, was deemed to be an important character builder (ibid., 15, 16). Indeed, academics and sports were emphasized, almost to the exclusion of learning in the visual arts, which seems to have been limited to specific art courses and the poster club sponsored by Britannia’s art teacher, Miss Rollston.24 In my examination of the yearbooks of ten secondary schools in Vancouver to 1950, Kitsilano was one of only two schools that devoted as much as a page to a report on the students involved in visual arts.25 Considering the amount of space routinely devoted to sports in all high-school yearbooks, this stands out as a significant indicator of the recognition of the visual arts at Kitsilano. In short, the differences in goals, school cultures, and attitudes to visual art at Kitsilano, Vancouver Technical, and Britannia seem to have affected the options available to students for art learning both within and outside of the classroom. This chapter relies primarily upon interviews with the students of art teachers who worked at Kitsilano Junior/Senior High School prior to 1950. It also includes the views of some educators who were in a position to know something about art education at the time. Relevant views of some students who attended Vancouver’s art school and were aware of the specialized training that preservice high-school art teachers were receiving there also provide some insight. Extant school artwork and visual images by students reproduced in student publications provide information and visual proof of the kinds of art that were being taught at Kitsilano Junior/Senior High School. Focusing on this one school’s art learning from the 1920s to 1950 may provide greater insight into aspects of art teaching and learning in Vancouver than one could gain from a broader look at the dozen or more secondary schools in the city at that time.

teaching milieu In May 1925 the Survey of the School System, more commonly known as the Putman Weir Report, was made available to the British Columbia public. This 550–page document, produced by bc’s Liberal government, was a survey of provincial schools as well as a formal introduction to the concept of progressivism in bc schools. Among the major recommendations relevant to art programs in secondary schools were proposals to end both rote learning and reliance on a singlesubject textbook. Hands-on classroom experiences were promoted. In

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addition to theoretical knowledge, courses were intended to emphasize practical, applied work as they prepared students for their vocation and life, not just for university entrance. The aim was to create a wellrounded cultured citizen with loyalties to both Britain and Canada (Putman and Weir 1925, 38). The report also recommended, for the first time in bc, the separation of junior high school students from both the elementary schools and senior high schools. The junior high years, constituting grades seven, eight, and nine (also referred to as middle school), were to be the exploratory years wherein students were to determine the interests that would later launch them into their life’s work. To avoid social unrest, the Putman Weir Report aimed to keep students in the school system longer, even beyond the new minimum leaving age of fifteen. School art, something primarily enjoyable, was seen by the authors as a way to maintain students’ interest in staying in school and to create a more cultured citizenry. While the report stressed work preparation as a socially efficient goal of the school system, the authors did not intend to change the social strata of society (ibid., 57). Seen as non-threatening in this regard, art was promoted in the curriculum as a valuable part of the junior high school program. Specific to art programs, the report proposed the implementation of mandatory art courses in grades seven and eight. Art for the higher grades was to remain optional. Teachers were to continue to teach existing art skills but also stress the increased use of colour. The report also encouraged further study of art history, especially the acknowledged art masters (ibid., 92). Kitsilano as an Exemplary Junior High School Kitsilano was provided with its new building in September 1927 specifically to explore the concept of the junior high school. In this amalgamated junior/senior high school, approximately two-thirds of the students were in grades seven and eight (Waites, McQueen, and Pattison 1941).26 The Putman Weir Report stated that the purpose of the students’ first two years in junior high was to find the “line for which he [sic] is best suited.” The third year, grade nine, was to allow for more practical work so the pupil could pursue the “activity or trade which he proposes to follow in after life.”27 Through to at least the mid-1930s, the junior and senior high-school classrooms at Kits were segregated by floor, though the labs were

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shared by students of all grades (D. Howard, R. White, pers. coms. 2001; E. Williamson, pers. com. 2002). Some of the original wooden structures continued to be used beyond the period of the study. Fresh from a government position in the Department of Education and committed to supporting the progressive aims described in the Putman Weir Report, H.B. King (later Dr King) was appointed principal of Kits in 1924 to work towards the amalgamated Kitsilano Junior/Senior High and the new building (Waites, McQueen, and Pattison 1941, 106). His mandate was to make the institution exemplary as a progressive school while serving the new goals of the junior high concept. James U. Gray, who was a student at Kits from 1941 to 1943 and who later became an arts supervisor in Vancouver, has said Kits was “a very fine school.” It was one of the first schools in bc to set up individual timetables for students, having instituted this practice when it opened in 1927 (D. Howard, pers. com. 2001; J. Gray, pers. com. 2002). Kitsilano’s Facilities and Equipment The art rooms flanked the main entrance of the school, one at the north-east corner and one at the north-west corner. Joy Coghill (Kits graduate, 1946), a recipient of the Order of Canada for her lifetime contribution to Canadian theatre and television drama, pointed out the significance of the location of the art rooms, which were visible to all entering the school. “The art rooms were right there, not hidden away at the back. You couldn’t overlook the fact that art was being taught in the school. Somehow the highly visible location suggested its importance too.” Hamish Cameron (Kits graduate, 1950) also noted the importance of the location as an indication of status. Another Kits student, Russell White, who attended in the mid-30s, has suggested that murals in progress outside the art room made it even more apparent that art was a presence in the school. Despite starting out with all the most advanced equipment and facilities in the new building in 1927, Kits continued with upgrades to ensure that it had the best of what was available. Somehow Principal King was able to get approval to carry out renovations to the school in the early 1930s despite the financial hardships of the depression years. John Wytenbroek,28 who recently did a study of Dr King, said that the upgrades were done in 1934–35 just before King left and “were seen as part of King’s legacy” (pers. com. 2002). Wytenbroek himself

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arrived at Kits in 1935, entering grade seven, and he took art for two years while heading for a future in business. In 1927 the art rooms were regular classrooms; they had no sinks and the small regular desks with their sloping tops were on runners bolted to the floor. The mid-thirties upgrades, however, put sinks in the art rooms and changed the desks to flat individual tables with larger tops. By that time also, teachers had access to projectors to show coloured lantern slides, which were not part of the teaching equipment in the art room during Kits’ first year in the new building (D. Howard, R. White, pers. coms. 2001; J. Wytenbroek, pers. com. 2002). These physical changes paralleled the expansion of traditional art courses focusing on drawing and design. At year’s end in 1927, S.P. Judge, Vancouver’s supervisor of drawing, reported: The establishment this year in September of Junior High Schools at Templeton Drive and in Kitsilano, has given an opportunity for more practical co-operation between the drawing and craft work, and interesting work is being accomplished along these lines in both schools. This had been a long felt need in Grades vii, viii, and ix, and these experiences will undoubtedly give the pupils a broader outlook and understanding of the connection of their work with the home, commerce and manufactures.29

I have not found a former Kits student who was able to describe any of the “craft work” being done in a regular art class at Kits around this time, although crafts (projects using three-dimensional materials) were done in the applied art course required of home economic students and in some student-chosen clubs that were scheduled as a regular part of the school week (E. Williamson, pers. com. 2002; D. Howard, pers. com. 2001). From 1927 on, preservice art teachers in bc were required to take a so-called crafts course in their program at Vancouver’s school of art. This was taught by Grace Melvin. The calendar, known as The Prospectus, lists the media that the crafts program included: “Pottery and ceramics; embroidery and needlecraft; leatherwork; colour-prints; etching; block printing on textiles; commercial art, advertising and commercial layout; lino-cuts; wood-engraving; wood-carving; lettering and illumination; wood decoration; modeling.”30 This suggests that Vancouver’s specialist art teachers could have been exposed to such classroom work and been in a position to teach related skills to their own students where equipment and materials

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were available. Three of four of Kits’ main art teachers during the time of this study took preservice teaching at Vancouver’s art school in the late 1920s. The Teachers In heading the new amalgamated school, King was able to hand pick the teachers on his staff (J. Wytenbroek, pers. com. 2002). Two of the art teachers, Miss Margaret Lewis (1929–63) and Miss Moira MacDonald (1938–60), on staff during the period of this study, had long tenures at Kitsilano, giving remarkable stability to the art program. Two other teachers, Vito Cianci (1933–42) and Jack Shadbolt (parttime 1927; full-time in 1931–32 and 1935–37), also contributed in notable ways after the opening of the new amalgamated school. Jack Shadbolt. King was daring enough to appoint one very young art teacher who had only high school art training and no experience in teaching. Jack Shadbolt, born in 1909, later became a renowned bc artist. He took manual arts at Victoria High School, which was recognized for its effective art training and supportive arts culture under the principal Ira Dillworth, who was known for his personal encouragement of Emily Carr (P.L. Smith 1976, 45). During the summer of 1927, just before taking up his teaching position at Kitsilano, Shadbolt attended summer school for teachers at the Provincial Normal School in Victoria studying under Harry Dunnell and meeting William Weston (Watson 1990, 8). In an unpublished manuscript by Margaret Morris Shadbolt is reported to have said that while at Kitsilano he went to art school one morning a week and that “Mr Scott let him in, he knew a lot more than he could show, and could talk about art” (Morris 1978, 72). In keeping with this, Shadbolt also observed that “teaching is 9/10ths about asking the right questions” (ibid., 72). S.P. Judge, supervisor of art in Vancouver Schools from 1924 to 1941 and himself a part-time art teacher at Kitsilano Senior High in the early 1920s, wrote a letter of reference for Shadbolt in August 1937 when Shadbolt was leaving his teaching position at Kitsilano. Judge refers to him as a “progressive teacher” and mentions that he had served on provincial art curriculum committees.31 One student in Shadbolt’s art class in his first year of teaching at Kits (1927) was relieved to find that his approach was not prescriptive. Rather, he set out specific goals and then allowed students to determine

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how to accomplish the objectives on their own (D. Howard, pers. com. 2001). It was a relief to this student that Shadbolt did not require students to master a stroke-free wash before proceeding with other work. This had been required by her former art teacher, as specified in the official art text. It states, “The pupil will first master the laying on of flat washes ... before proceeding to the drawing exercises” (Scott et al. 1924, 18). The concept of teacher as guide, rather than as authoritarian figure is generally considered one of the characteristics of a progressive approach. This progressive stance is revealed in a blurred, but still identifiable photograph32 taken by an interviewee (D. Howard) that shows Shadbolt looking like a nineteen-year-old brother as he poses casually in the snow with some Kitsilano students from his 1927–28 art class and friends on a spring weekend expedition to Hollyburn Mountain. Apparently on such expeditions, Shadbolt and the “more responsible members of the class” sketched on the way over to the North Shore on the ferry as well as on the mountain when the weather was good (D. Howard, pers. com. 2001). Outdoor sketching was in keeping with the tradition of William Weston, who taught at the Provincial Normal School33 in Vancouver and at the summer institutes at Victoria, which is where Shadbolt met him (Morris 1978, 72). Weston had in-service teachers in his classes painting and drawing landscapes outdoors. In his 1933 bc art text, Weston also encouraged outdoor work: “The summer and fall months are the best for Nature Drawing, especially out of doors. This is the time to provide material for the design lessons which can be carried on during the winter months” (Weston 1933, 15). At Kits in the 1930s, Shadbolt was seen as an inspiring, gentle, and patient teacher, even to those who perceived themselves as having no talent. John Wytenbroek identified Shadbolt as a sympathetic art teacher who never made students feel ashamed of their lack of ability in art class: “In the time that I had him, I never felt that I was wasting his time.” He was in Shadbolt’s art class in grades seven and eight from 1935 to 1937. He remembers working there with square coloured pastels, pencil, conté; painting in watercolours and poster paint; and shaping papier mâché into three-dimensional forms. According to Wytenbroek, Shadbolt had a passion for his subject that was obvious to his students, although he did not present himself as an emerging artist: “There was a respect there that bred mutual respect.” Far from dreading or wanting to avoid art class, Wytenbroek remembers the

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class for its “sense of peace.” He elucidated: “You paid attention. You did not play around. You got involved in your work, and that was because of the person Shadbolt was” (J. Wytenbroek, pers. com. 2002). This opinion of Shadbolt at Kitsilano is contrary to one art school student’s image of Shadbolt at the art school in the late 1930s. There she found him apparently self-serving and “more interested in gathering followers than in teaching” (I. Alexander, pers. com. 2001). Russell White, who took art at Kits from 1933 to 1936, found Shadbolt unflappable and objective in his approach to students. White let Shadbolt know that he was a nephew of Emily Carr’s, a fact that did not seem to impress Shadbolt. During an exercise in drawing from observation, White (who admits he thought this was a “smart-Alec” thing to do) chose to draw the brewery across the park within sight of the art classroom window. Unperturbed by the subject matter, Shadbolt merely critiqued the drawing, saying, “White, make the verticals vertical.” This student realized that when he corrected the verticals, “the whole drawing fell into place.” White says this was the most important principle that he ever learned about drawing and he was able to use it to improve his photography as a member of Kits’ camera club. White described group murals done, in Shadbolt’s class, on large paper by students working in the corridors outside the classroom. Asked whether all students or just the best artists in the class worked on these murals, White answered, “They were more likely just done by students who could be trusted, unsupervised, not to throw chalk in the hallways” (pers. com. 2001). Shadbolt’s former students Dorothy Howard, Russell White, and John Wytenbroek confessed to having had no prior knowledge of what was being done in art outside of the school or appearing in city art galleries. Apparently to them, downtown seemed like a long ride on the streetcar. Wytenbroek, however, remembers receiving some knowledge of a wider art world through the art reference books in the classroom and Shadbolt’s lantern slide shows. Wytenbroek credits Shadbolt’s slide presentations with his appreciation of contemporary Vancouver architecture, which developed at a time when the Burrard Bridge, the new city hall, and the Seaforth Armouries were all under construction. “Shadbolt’s whole thrust was to help you enjoy what you were doing or to enjoy art generally. He would show slides, explain why something was good, and that sort of thing” (J. Wytenbroek, pers. com. 2002).

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Miss Margaret Lewis. Miss Lewis was central to the Kits art program having been on staff there as an art teacher from 1929 to 1963,34 after attending Vancouver’s art school from 1926. She provided much stability and continuity through her long tenure. The photos of her in The Kits yearbooks (Thraex, 1946, for example) consistently show her with a big smile, confirming her students’ comments that she was a warm person with a sense of humour. She was apparently well liked by all her students. Even Kits’ art students who didn’t have Miss Lewis as a teacher remember her with respect. She was particularly supportive of students who showed a serious interest in art (H. Cameron, P. Snelgrove, S. Ursulescu, pers. com. 2002). James U. Gray, who took art at Kits as a student from 1941 to 1943 and later became Miss Lewis’s supervisor, said of her, “She was the kind of person who made a difference in students lives” (pers. com. 2002) Miss Lewis was active in creating a Vancouver art teachers’ association, which eventually became the bc Art Teachers Association (bcata). Gray said that in this capacity she once created a display, with Jim (J.A.S.) Macdonald, of native masks for teachers, thus extending the interest in native art promoted at the Vancouver art school. Miss Lewis promoted this interest in her students as well. James Gray has said that on another occasion she did the same in creating an exhibition of Norris cartoons, demonstrating that she took cartooning seriously as an art form from which students could and did learn (pers. com. 2002). Peter Snelgrove, Kits art student from 1939 to 1944, kept in touch with Miss Lewis until 2000 when she was almost one hundred years old. He has seen sketchbooks she kept recording her summer trips to Europe with her sister and her excursions with the Alpine Mountaineering Club on the local (North Shore) mountains. Snelgrove is not aware of Miss Lewis’s ever showing her sketchbooks in class when he was there, but some of her art students took up her sketchbook habit. Stephen Ursulescu, who graduated from Kits in 1950 and had studied art with Miss Lewis for several years, became a committed sketcher. In his final year he drew almost daily, often with other “field drawing buddies” (pers. com. 2002). They sketched in various locations throughout the west side of Vancouver (see for example fig. 8.1). The extensive portfolios of artwork that Ursulescu has maintained from this period of his life document this activity. Miss Lewis also taught applied art to female students majoring in textiles for home economics. She taught this in her regular art class-

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8.1 Sketch of Roeddi house, Jericho Beach, Vancouver, 1950, by Stephen Ursulescu. From personal portfolio of Stephen Ursulescu, North Vancouver, bc Copyright 1950 by Stephen Ursulescu. (Reprinted with permission)

room at the north-west corner of the school, in the same wing as the home economics rooms. Students unhesitatingly considered this their art course. It covered many of the same structural elements as the regular art courses (proportion, balance, rhythm, contrast, unity, emphasis, colour, stylization, pattern) even while these principles were being applied primarily to clothing and home decorating. In this class in the mid-1930s, Williamson remembers designing and producing an embossed and painted soft leather purse and a smocked dress for her younger cousin (E. Williamson, L. Charlesworth, pers. coms. 2002). In the 1940s the course was based on a manual and teachers’ guide that Grace Melvin, craft teacher from the art school, and Mabel Allen, Irene Green, and Margaret Lewis together produced for the bc Department of Education (1940–41). The workbook enabled home economics students to keep all their applied art projects and information together over their three-year program. They drew and painted their designs and did their planning directly on these pages. One student from the late 1940s remembers walking a few blocks to a cloth shop

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to obtain free samples of material to glue into her book next to her proposed dress designs (L. Charlesworth, pers. com. 2002). Miss Lewis’s knowledge and talents as a teacher were also made available to students through the various art-related clubs that she supervised at Kits through the years. These clubs are discussed below. Miss Moira MacDonald. Photos of Miss MacDonald in Kits yearbooks (see Thraex for 1946) show her looking somewhat severe in her dark tailored suits, so she seemed more like a conservative teacher than an artist. Nevertheless, she was an effective art teacher and “had a sense of humour if you knew how to get at it” (Stephen Ursulescu, pers. com. 2002). Through the use of reproductions and with explanations accompanied by sweeping gestures, she introduced her senior art students to the simplifications of abstraction and the vitality of modern art (H. Cameron, pers. com. 2002). Students also listened to music to come up with scenes that were suggestive of the music. Examples from Hamish Cameron’s portfolio of classroom art, done in Miss MacDonald’s class, suggest that students did this without falling into the apparently meaningless colourful patternmaking in response to music that seems to have been embraced by students elsewhere in Vancouver in the 1940s. A Point Grey Junior High student who otherwise admired the modernist approach of his art teacher, Miss Jessie Faunt, couldn’t see the point of the large, painted-to-music colourful patterns that were done in art classes there (R. Turner, pers. com. 2001). In the mid-1940s at Kits, Miss MacDonald started her beginning art students (grades seven, eight, nine, ten) with a prescribed course that provided basic art rules. A student of both Miss MacDonald and Miss Lewis explained, “Art was not do-your-own-thing. We studied the golden mean. We had a grounding. We learned that certain proportions looked better than other proportions so it was somewhat of a classical base” (S. Ursulescu, pers. com. 2002). Hamish Cameron’s extant class workbook from grade ten (dated 1948) shows that to that level Miss MacDonald was basically using the approach provided in bc’s two prescribed textbooks.35 Cameron referred to this as the formal learning of art class. Some of the features of Miss MacDonald’s course included a study of lettering in classical proportions for capital and small letters; basic colour theory; drawings of cylindrical containers and boxes from varying eye levels, exercises in one- and two-point perspective of buildings, gardens, vistas, and tile flooring.

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This approach to learning design shared many elements with an applied arts course in Alberta outlined in the Applied Art Manual of Distance Education (Alberta 1926). It was also similar to an earlier grade twelve Alberta art course taken in Victoria High School in Edmonton in 1923 by Dermott McInnes (who graduated in 1923). I have been able to look in detail at his complete art course workbook from that time. Hamish’s 1948 sketchbook, which contains much of his daily class work, also includes charcoal drawings of animals and birds, observed figures at work and in action and figures from memory; sketches of interiors, airplanes, ships, and cars and local scenes; charcoal portraits; cartoons and caricatures; and night scenes. The work in this sketchbook was done in pencil, pen and ink, paint, and charcoal. Miss MacDonald, in marking Hamish Cameron’s grade ten art workbook, shows that she expected precision and the following of instructions. In one exercise showing a skeletal doorless building illustrating the principles of two-point perspective, she questioned “Doorway?” In a drawing of a house in a similar exercise, she noted: “Not upright. Your verticals are not at right angles to floor.” On another exercise showing a formal garden, she commented, “Hedge too large for garden.” Hamish’s classroom art from a later grade, but still with Miss MacDonald, shows studies of trees and scenes in watercolour and tempera (some painted outdoors), atmospheric scenes inspired by music, a study in Chinese brush strokes depicting bamboo shoots and vistas, and rapid caricatures of classmates, including one of a boy asleep with his arms crossed and his feet up on a table labelled “Action in an artclass,” suggesting an expanded subject matter over that in the basic textbooks. Mr Vito Cianci. Vito Cianci taught art at Kits from 1934 to 1942. He was known as the photography enthusiast of the school, always “carrying his camera everywhere.”36 A casual photograph of him in the Kits yearbook (see The Cadet for 1942) shows an active, stylishly dressed young man. He sponsored the photography club and looked after the photographic needs of the yearbooks. Art student Peter Snelgrove, at Kits from 1939 to 1944, explained that in Cianci’s class you “knew who was boss.” Yet this teacher took a personal interest in students who were seriously interested in art. For instance, Mr Cianci recognized Peter’s strength in art (Snelgrove said it was the only subject that he consistently got As in) but also seemed to consider him

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somewhat disadvantaged in that he came from a single-parent home (a view that Peter himself did not share). Mr Cianci and the librarian, Miss Creelman, looked out for him. Together they took Peter to plays and other cultural events in Vancouver, and Miss Creelman visited Peter and his mother at home. One day Peter was called down to the school nurse’s office where he was told that he and his mother were to receive a turkey hamper for Christmas. His reaction? “I was outraged. I said, ‘Why don’t you give it to someone poor?’ I never felt poor in my life.” But when he told his mother he had turned down the hamper, she responded, “You fool!” (Snelgrove). Help came in a more acceptable way to Peter in his final year at Kits. Mr Cianci arranged for Peter to be interviewed by a commercial art firm as a prospective apprentice. He bundled up work that he’d done in art class and his cartoons for the yearbook (see an example in fig. 8.5) and went off to the interview. That led directly to his life’s work as a graphic designer (P. Snelgrove, pers. com. 2002). The Latin Teacher. In the 1940s art students felt the influence of the Latin teacher, Miss Beveridge, in several ways. Far from being preoccupied only with conjugating verbs, Latin students learned a great deal about Roman culture partly through the many illustrated books in the Latin classroom. Students created projects and did drawings and paintings that demonstrated their understanding of that culture. Stephen Ursulescu remembers making a siege tower, and he demonstrated to me the fully functional scale model of an early cannon with mechanical trajectory that he made in Latin class. Some students who took both Latin and art painted a large frieze around the top of the Latin classroom. This included Ursulescu and Jim Genis, who later taught at the art school (Ursulescu and Cameron, pers. coms. 2002). The frieze, which ran the length of two walls above the moulding, depicted the inside of a Roman bath. This large image incorporated faux marble and depicted flame standards, trompe l’oeil doorways, and other Roman interior decoration. Also, one Kits yearbook (Thraex, 1946) had a Roman theme revealing how other students expressed the inspiration of Roman culture in their artwork (see fig. 8.3). The Librarian and Library Kitsilano’s library from the mid-1930s had a notable collection of art books, many of which had been part of a Carnegie award won by Kits

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8.2 Unsigned cartoon by Rolph Blakstad depicting Roman chariot driver that appeared in the Kits yearbook, Thraex (n.p.), 1946. Vancouver: Kitsilano Junior/Senior High School. Copyright 1946 by Rolph Blakstad. (Reprinted with permission)

in a mural-making contest; Kits was apparently the only school in Western Canada to receive this award (J. Gray, pers. com. 2002; M. McCrae, pers. com. 2001). McCrae described working with a group of students on this potentially permanent mural with a native art subject. They painted it on the walls just outside the gymnasium door. Later, when a couple of these former students, by then on staff at Vancouver‘s art school, heard that a Kits principal had ordered that the mural be obliterated, they were angry (M. McCrae, pers. com. 2001). The book collection was the only evidence that the mural had existed. Folio-sized reproductions of Egyptian drawings were part of the library’s art resources, something other school libraries were not likely to have had. They were images with which Stephen Ursulescu was impressed. Rolph Blakstad, who graduated in 1947, has indicated that

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art books were probably the most important source for his art learning, including books from Kits’ library and a variety of other sources (pers. com. 2003). Kits’ librarian, Miss Creelman, influenced serious art students by recognizing and encouraging their particular interests. She led students to special art books and allowed them to utilize resources that she kept in her library office off the main reading room. At least two students felt they were specially privileged when Miss Creelman gave them access to her office and the books and publications that she kept there. Compulsive cartoonist Hamish Cameron dared to draw cartoons during mandatory study periods in the library that were supervised by Miss Creelman. He explained, “She was tall and she could see a long way,” so he was “caught” doing this. Rather than reprimanding him, however, Miss Creelman called Hamish into her library office and introduced him to The New Yorker magazine with its variety of cartoons. He began collecting The New Yorker a couple of years after leaving Kits and has every issue since then. Cartooning remains a major artistic interest for him today. During his senior year at Kits, Hamish did a cartoon almost daily to record the most striking experience of his day, an activity he kept up for several years. One series of such cartoons features the Fraser Valley flood of 1948. In grade ten, having been recruited as an able-bodied youth during the floods, which occurred just outside Vancouver, Hamish worked for several days filling sandbags to build dykes to hold back the water. He did several cartoons at the time (see fig. 8.3) to capture the experience of helping with flood control. Production of the Yearbook Annual production of Kits’ high-school yearbook was another way in which students had additional access to teachers’ expertise. Through the period of this study, Miss Lewis was most often the sponsor supervising the art aspect of the yearbook, with Mr Cianci in charge of the photography, but others were involved as well. Art students did illustrations for the yearbook that served several purposes: they provided a visually appealing cover; carried the theme of the yearbook; and served as decorative dividers delineating various sections of the publication (graduates, sports, social activities, literary features, etc.). They also provided amusement, generally through cartoons, or simply showcased the talents of some of the art students in the school.

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8.3 Sketches of the 1948 flood in the Fraser Valley drawn by Kits grade ten student Hamish Cameron. From the personal portfolio of Hamish Cameron, Vancouver. Copyright 1948 by Hamish Cameron. (Reprinted with permission)

The 1930–31 yearbook, the first one that Kitsilano students produced, featured a pen-and-ink sketch of the school as a title page (see fig. 8.4). It is signed by “class 8” student Helen Reeve. It shows a horse ascending above the school, which is situated on an undifferentiated globe. The image seems to reveal a pride in this up-to-date, modern school. While the lines radiating out of the school suggest optimism and vitality, the floating or flying horse, in its attempted “ascent”, betrays a somewhat lifeless stance. This parallels the message to graduates by Principal H.B. King in which he acknowledged the lack of opportunities for graduates. But he encouraged them in saying, “Periods of depression are not new. They are always followed by an advance and an ascent and your opportunities will soon come.”37 One theme carried throughout the 1942 yearbook (The Cadet) reflects the fact that, during the Second World War and the Korean War immediately following, cadet training was a force at Kitsilano Junior/Senior High School. The annual utilizes caricatures of young would-be soldiers in training (see fig. 8.5). Peter Snelgrove and Heidi Sato created a variety of caricatures of cadets carrying signs with specialized lettering to serve as section dividers. These cadet cartoons

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8.4 Pen-and-ink sketch by class eight student Helen Reeve appearing as a cover on Kits’ yearbook, The Annual, 1930–31. Vancouver: Kitsilano Junior/Senior High School. Copyright 1931 by Kitsilano Secondary School. (Reprinted with permission)

were among the images in the portfolio that Peter took to the job apprenticeship interview that got him started in his career as a graphic artist.

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8.5 Caricature of young cadet by Peter Snelgrove, used as a section divider in Kits’ yearbook, The Cadet (n.p.), 1942. Vancouver: Kitsilano Junior/Senior High School. Copyright 1942 by Peter Snelgrove. (Reprinted with permission)

Pen and ink, brush and paint, scratchboard illustration, prints, and photos integrated with artwork were featured in Kits yearbooks. The graphics were generally in black and white; occasionally they were in coloured ink or on coloured paper. The 1949–50 Kits yearbook used silkscreen illustrations both on the cover and as section dividers; some used coloured ink on coloured paper. Stephen Ursulescu designed the prints for this yearbook. He had learned the silkscreen process while working with a sign-painting company during the summer of 1949, after grade eleven. From that time onwards, silkscreen seems to have been an art medium used in senior students’ art classes (James U. Gray, pers. com. 2002), although the yearbook cover for 1930–31 was silkscreened and the poster club had been doing silkscreen printing before 1939 in “the little shack behind the old-building.”38 The 1939

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yearbook refers to silkscreening as a “new duplicating method which the club members themselves inaugurated mak[ing] possible large scale advertising.”39 Perhaps before 1949–50, the silkscreening equipment had never been moved from where the poster club worked into the regular art classroom. The cost of silkscreens and ink, or perhaps potential messiness, may have delayed the inclusion of this medium into the regular art courses. James Gray, a grade nine student of Kits’ art program beginning in 1942 and later superintendent of art, has stated that sometime after 1950, Miss MacDonald produced a manual on the use of silkscreen in schools published by the Vancouver School Board. Some of the illustrations in Kits yearbooks reveal that students there had access to art books for inspiration in style and technique. At least one image in the first yearbook shows the stylistic influence of English artist Aubrey Beardsley.40 As former students interviewed for this study (who attended Kits up to 1950) denied having contact with the city’s public art gallery, established in 1931, or with commercial art galleries, one assumes that book reproductions served as source material for learning various styles. In terms of awareness of native art, the exhibition of native masks organized by Miss Lewis, her personal contacts, and events at the school helped students become aware of bc native art. The 1936–37 annual confirms a long-standing interest in native art at Kitsilano; it established The Haida as the official name of the yearbook. Student decision makers, explaining why they chose this name, stated that it would make the annual immediately recognizable as coming from the West Coast of Canada. It would also associate their school with the “tradition of fearlessness and honor” of this “most highly civilized of the tribes” with its “fierce and warlike” attributes and “high moral code.”41 The cover image, incorporating a symbol referred to as a “Haida monster,” was apparently based on an image from a mural in the main hall.42 This symbol is unselfconsciously juxtaposed with a crown and the image includes the wording “Coronation issue,” acknowledging Canada’s loyalty to Britain. Native images in the yearbooks rose to a professional level in Stephen Ursulescu’s 1950 silkscreen cover and section dividers. These were based on his study of authentic First Nations designs. Through Miss Lewis’s personal contacts, she arranged for Stephen to study books on native art by getting him a pass to the stacks in ubc library as well as in the Vancouver Public Library and Museum at the

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8.6 Silkscreen image of a First Nation’s symbol of a bird by grade twelve student Stephen Ursulescu, appearing as a section divider in Kits’ yearbook, The Haida (n.p.), 1950. Vancouver: Kitsilano Junior/Senior High School. Copyright 1950 by Stephen Ursulescu. (Reprinted with permission)

Carnegie Centre. She also introduced Stephen to Mr Frank Smith, a private collector of native artifacts. Through study and examination of cedar boxes, hats, other carved objects, and prints, Stephen did drawings that he later converted into sophisticated native designs some of which became the silkscreen prints that appeared in the 1950 yearbook (see fig. 8.6). Miss Lewis’s ability and willingness to reach out to the larger community was an invaluable benefit to Stephen. It is worth noting that Stephen’s native images appeared in the Kits 1950 year-

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8.7 Illustration of the old man who lived in a saddleshoe, by Rolph Blakstad, appearing in the Kits’ yearbook The Gosling (n.p.), 1947. Vancouver: Kitsilano Junior/Senior High School. Copyright 1947 by Rolph Blakstad. (Reprinted with permission)

book just as First Nations artist Bill Reid, renowned as a leader of the native art revival, was investigating the art of his Haida ancestors in 1951 (Sheehan, 1985). The yearbook at times also showcased student talent beyond the functional requirements of the annual. A wonderful book illustration by Rolph Blakstad (see fig. 8.7) appears as a humourous take-off on the story of the old woman, as old man, who lived in the shoe.43 This

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child-ridden image is as professional as high-school student art gets. Multiple images by Blakstad appear in Kits yearbooks beginning in his tenth grade, whereas most art images in yearbooks were done by students in their senior year. Blakstad’s images contain either his fish logo or his name logo (“Den Glade Sunnmøring”), or both, suggesting that he was taking himself seriously as an artist even from this early grade. Inclusion of his illustrations in the yearbook suggests his fellow students were also taking him seriously as an artist. During his grade twelve year ending in June 1947, Rolph Blakstad provided the pen-and-ink cover design to the Kits yearbook. It was an image of a goose, and the yearbook correspondingly changed its name to The Gosling. When asked about the name change, Ursulescu commented, “Blakstad had enough status to be able to do that” (pers. com. 2002). It is interesting that this talented artist was perceived as having that kind of power, but according to Blakstad it was Miss Creelman who decided the theme that year – nursery rhymes and mother goose; hence the name and image. The following year, with much discussion and commitment, the student council reinstated the name Haida “as a permanent fixture.”44 Clubs From the time that the amalgamated Kits Junior/Senior High opened in 1927 until at least the late 1940s, Kits had a time slot in the curriculum for required clubs, as did some other Vancouver secondary schools. Students had to choose an activity, which was presented under the direction of a teacher with a particular interest and skill. At Kits these clubs covered a wide choice of activities. Students could join the stamp club, physical training club, electrician’s club, girls’ metal club,45 printing club, art club, darkroom service, mapmaking club, etc.46 Other voluntary clubs were available to interested students outside class time. At Kits, some of these voluntary art-related clubs included the cartooning club, poster club, decorating club, photography club, stagecraft and scenery club, and mural club. Through these clubs students had additional exposure to art-teacher sponsors and thus received further training relevant to art. Cartooning Club. Miss Lewis’s respect for cartooning as an art form and as a serious vehicle for art learning has been mentioned. She was for some years sponsor of Kits’ cartooning club. When former art

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8.8 Cartoon by Rolph Blakstad depicting the embarrassment of arriving at a social event inappropriately dressed. This appeared in the Kits yearbook, The Gosling (n.p.), 1947. Vancouver: Kitsilano Junior/Senior High School. Copyright 1947 by Rolph Blakstad. (Reprinted with permission)

teacher Allistair Ross joined the staff at Kitsilano after Miss Lewis retired in 1963, Ross found a portfolio of Norris cartoons in her art classroom. Apparently she had used this as a resource in her teaching. This may have had a significant impact professionally on at least one art student at Kitsilano. Roy Peterson, who took art at Kits in the early 1950s, took over from Len Norris as cartoonist when Norris left the Vancouver Sun. Peterson also does a monthly cartoon for Maclean’s Magazine that illustrates the Allan Fotheringham article on the final page.

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Some of what one can learn through cartooning is apparent in earlier yearbook examples. One from the 1946 yearbook shows a would-be gladiator driving a chariot in various stages of falling apart47. This cartoon (fig. 8.2) reveals a complete grasp of the effective use of emphasis, point of view, perspective, scale, space, exaggeration, the depiction of speed, and the simplified anatomy of the human body, lions, and horses. Some of these principles were addressed directly in art class, as one can see in Hamish Cameron’s sketchbook (1948). But students learned from outside sources too (R. Blakstad, pers. com. 2003). Another cartoon by Rolph Blakstad (fig. 8.8) expresses what has been a common fear among high-school students: that of arriving at a social event inappropriately dressed. Beyond capturing this wellknown experience, the cartoon provides much useful social information about the time regarding class, race, gender relations, stereotypes; attitudes, and customs, including the wearing of a corsage, generally given by one’s date, as a mark of a special occasion; types of clothes and hairdos; all within a prestigious modern interior. On seeing this I thought perhaps that Miss Creelman, the librarian, had also introduced Rolph to New Yorker cartoons. Far from copying a New Yorker cartoon, however, Blakstad said of the young people he had depicted, “This was us.” Nevertheless he seems to have achieved a standard equal to that of New Yorker cartoons when depicting his own gang. Poster Club. The poster club, sometimes sponsored by Mr Cianci and sometimes by Miss Lewis, augmented what students were learning in class about lettering and design. In the 1936 yearbook a photograph shows five members of the poster club standing in front of some examples of their art, which incorporates images and lettering in varied styles “to announce coming events.”48 Said to be overworked, these intense and serious-looking clean-cut boys look smart in their shirts, ties, and sweaters, and the write-up mentions the hazard of getting paint on their new trousers.49 The image suggests that these boys (no girls?), despite “their artistic temperament,” intended to become designers in advertising and industry rather than the proverbial starving artist in a garret. More than one interviewee described commercial lettering as a respected and valued skill (Snelgrove, Cameron, Ursulescu, pers. coms. 2002). Members of the poster club in the 1940s as well as in the art classroom learned one-stroke lettering. Hamish Cameron retains the

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image of several boys, with Stephen Ursulescu in the centre, lined up along the board doing very competent, rapid one-stroke lettering. In the late 1940s, Stephen Ursulescu, Jim Genis, and Ian MacIntosh were recognized as being the “stars” of sign painting (Cameron, pers. com. 2002). Using Toulouse-Lautrec as one model, Cameron said students doing posters learned to integrate appropriate lettering with images suitable to the message being conveyed. Beyond the basic capitals and lower-case letters taught up to grade ten (evident in Hamish Cameron’s classroom sketchbook) and commercial lettering, students were exposed to some traditional manuscript lettering. Textura gothic (also called old English), common in twelfth- to fifteenth-century Europe, appears frequently in secondary school yearbooks throughout Vancouver. Interest in such manuscript hands was likely passed down through art teachers studying at the art school with Grace Melvin in her applied art course, a requirement for would-be art teacher specialists.50 Melvin was a student of England’s Edward Johnston who was considered responsible for the revival of interest in manuscript hands, partly through his 1906 text Writing, and Lettering and Illuminating. This text appears in both reference lists in the two official bc art education texts (Scott et al. 1924; Weston 1933). According to J.A.S. (Jim) MacDonald, at the art school Grace Melvin taught “bloody lettering that went on and on and on.” The preoccupation with traditional manuscript hands in Vancouver high schools, however, could also have been aided by Speedball manuals that were readily accessible in schools from the 1940s (Ursulescu, J.A.S. MacDonald, pers. com. 2002). Note the two competent manuscript hands, textura gothic in the heading and bastarda, bottom left, appearing in the book illustration done by Rolph Blakstad in fig. 8.7.51 Decorating Club. Members of the decorating club often made large group-produced banners and murals for mixers to be hung in the gym. Many of these had cartoons on them revealing the life, personalities, and activities of the school. Peter Snelgrove (at Kits until 1944) remembers one particularly interesting banner featuring cartoons made for a dance. It read “School’s not so bad, it’s the principal of the thing.” Without humour, Principal Gordon directed the artists to cut off the last six words. Photography Club. Through the 1930s and 1940s, Mr Cianci usually sponsored the photography club. It generally served the needs of the

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high-school yearbook, the students photographing social and sports activities throughout the year to use in the annual. Russell White, at Kits from 1933 to 1937, remembers taking the photo of the front of the school to use in the annual, and he remembers lining up students in groups to photograph them for mug shots to use in the yearbook. He recognized using principles in the photography club that he had learned in art class (pers. com. 2001). Stagecraft and Scenery Club. Miss Lewis was often in charge of the visual aspects of theatre productions, including painted scenery, produced in out-of-school time. Apparently she recognized the value of an informal apprenticeship system as a way of offering Kits students additional art learning. According to Ursulescu, when The Mikado was being performed one year in a repeat of a not-too-distant previous performance, Miss Lewis made contact with Kits graduate Fred Hawkley, who had done an admirable job of painting the scenery for the earlier production of the same operetta. When I asked Ursulescu whether this meant that Miss Lewis was concerned with a professional end product at the expense of greater student participation, Ursulescu responded, “No, she just wanted us to learn more about set design and scenery painting and from Fred we did.” He added that fellow artist Alan Morrow “was my helper and biggest critic” in that project. Vancouver Technical School also seems to have invited back former students so that current students could see grads demonstrate their skills. Long-time printing department teacher Mr Lewis Elliott encouraged former graduates from the linocutting club to return to the school’s printshop to cut and print up-to-standard lino blocks that could be included in the yearbook. This enabled current members of the linocutting club to learn from more experienced designers. Inclusion of a print in the yearbook was somewhat prestigious. Mural Club. In the Kits 1936–37 yearbook, there is an image labelled the Mural Club52 that shows a mural on scaffolding depicting more than a dozen boys in a classroom at a cluster of tables (some of them with slanting tops). They seem to be actively engaged, presumably in planning some art project. The photo of the mural appears with no explanation as to who painted it or whether any of the boys featured in the mural itself are identifiable. Stylistically the mural is reminiscent of the realism of the public murals done under the federal government-supported arts program (wpa) in the United States during

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the depression. One therefore wonders whether the sponsor of this apparently all boys club would have introduced students to reproductions of some of the murals done in that capacity. This appears on the same page-spread53 as the poster club and the girls’ metalwork club where the students’ names are provided. My first thought was that the mural club may have done some competent work in representing student life at Kitsilano. But since then I have come to believe that Shadbolt himself painted this image of the boys in the mural club in action as a commission he did for a mural for Kits in 1935. Scott Watson’s biography of Shadbolt states that the subject he chose to depict for the Kits mural (now painted over) was an image of “everyday school experience” (Watson 1990, 12). If this is it, it gives insight into the working conditions of the mural club at the school. Learning from the Outside The art teachers seemed willing to find outlets in school art for what students learned outside of school. As mentioned, Ursulescu’s summer job working for a sign painting company after grade eleven enabled him to do competent silkscreening. Subsequently Miss Lewis allowed him to do extensive silkscreen printing for the 1950 yearbook so that other students would be exposed to his expertise. In one instance silkscreening was done in an all-boys art class (Cameron). Through that same summer job, Ursulescu had learned to use line-making scaffolding while painting mammoth signs. He adapted this practical knowledge for working on scenery for school plays and operettas. Ursulescu said he wonders whether anyone knew what to do with the apparatus after he left the school. Vancouver Art School Access – Direct and Indirect Up to 1955, preservice teachers wanting to specialize in art teaching had to attend Vancouver’s art school in addition to attending one year of Normal School. As well as taking the applied art course at the art school, these students were exposed to ideas about modern art that were being propagated by artist teachers and students interested in becoming full-time artists. A significant number of returned veterans from the Second World War attended the art school to become specialist art teachers, rather than practising artists, explained James U. Gray. He arrived at the art school in 1946. In discussing Grace

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Melvin’s teaching, he referred to her as “wee Gracie,” a name (spoken with a Scottish brogue) that seems to come up often when former art school students talk about Melvin’s classes. Gray noted that as an older group of male students, they were probably more difficult to reach so Melvin may have changed her teaching direction with them (pers. com. 2002). When Miss Lewis was head of the art department at Kits, a practicum student of hers, Jim (J.A.S.) MacDonald, was asked to teach a unit on abstraction to the students of Miss MacDonald (no relation). He taught his unit on abstraction based on the approaches that he’d seen at the art school as practised by both students and artist teachers there (Jim MacDonald, pers. com. 2002). Thus students of Miss MacDonald’s classes learned to see the essentials of form while leaving out the details. Hamish Cameron, who has been a long-time Vancouver lawyer, was in Miss MacDonald’s classes in the late 1940s. He said the ability to see the salient features of a scene or situation, a skill he was taught in Miss MacDonald’s classes on abstraction, has stood him in good stead over the years in preparing presentations for the Supreme Court of Canada. Examples of his watercolours from grade twelve show this ability to simplify. One of his images of the exterior of Kits school looking toward the northeast art classroom was done when Miss MacDonald took her art class outdoors. Another of Cameron’s watercolours shows his use of simplified Chinese-style brush strokes in depicting bamboo (see fig. 8.9). Done in Miss Macdonald’s classes, these watercolour sketches may have been exercises she had her students do to learn the principles of abstractionism. Like Miss Macdonald, Miss Lewis also took her classes outdoors to paint and draw around the school and in nearby Connaught Park (Snelgrove, Cameron, Ursulescu, pers. coms. 2002). Kits Students Attendance at the Art School Some students at Kits were influenced indirectly by the ideas that their art teachers had picked up at art school. Other students were influenced directly: they attended art school classes themselves. To fulfil the admission requirements students had to be at least sixteen years of age and they had to have completed grade ten to be able to attend day classes.54 Some students in Kitsilano’s art club in the 1940s boarded a bus

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8.9 Chinese brush strokes depicting bamboo in watercolour by Hamish Cameron from his portfolio of student artwork done in 1948. From the personal portfolio of Hamish Cameron, Vancouver. Copyright 1948 by Hamish Cameron. (Reprinted with permission)

together one afternoon a week to receive instruction at the art school (L. Charlesworth, pers. com. 2002). That was the activity they had chosen as a required club. Pauli Field explained that others of them had made arrangements whereby they attended the art school in the afternoons.55 Others attended the art school’s Saturday morning art classes, which were available to public school and secondary school students. Stephen Ursulescu, for instance, went to these classes for several years beginning when he was about ten years old. Such concurrent training in high school and at the art school creates difficulties in pinpointing exactly what a student learned at Kits compared to what he or she learned at the art school. Art Commissions for Kits Students Kits teachers were able to provide students with design commission opportunities. Miss Lewis arranged for Stephen Ursulescu to submit a

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design proposal for the exterior of a theatre in the Cariboo region of British Columbia. While a local person executed his design and while Stephen was not paid, he has said that doing this made him feel “like a real artist” in addition to being taken seriously as an artist by his teacher. On another occasion Miss Lewis asked Stephen and another art student, Cliff Miller, to paint scenes of peasants on her kitchen cupboards for which she supplied the materials. When I asked if he felt that in doing this he was being used, he laughed, “No, it was just great fun.” This was another case of feeling trusted by a teacher to do a professional job as an artist. Kits art students also painted pictures that were to be hung in Vancouver’s children’s hospitals.56 Consideration of Materials Despite the fact that pottery with bc clay was being taught in summer school for primary teachers in the mid-1920s,57 clay seems to have had only a minor presence at Kits prior to 1950. Peter Snelgrove said he thinks some claywork was being done in the school when he was there in the mid-1940s, but he did not do any himself. Hamish Cameron remembers being struck by the fact that at Kits clay came in powdered form and had to be mixed with water. This seemed unnatural compared to his memory of the clay he dug out of a creek near his elementary school on Vancouver Island to use in art class. He thinks that at Kits he or other students may have made small animals out of the clay, but clay was not used often and the work was not fired. Former supervisor James Gray thinks that clay was not generally included in secondary school art programs until well after the war. This is surprising given that in the United States during the depression and war years, clay seems to have been one of the most popular media.58 Gray has stated that Laura Wilcox, art teacher at Magee High School, was one of the first Vancouver secondary school art teachers to introduce and extensively use clay, but apparently she did so in the context of crafts not in the regular art course. J.A.S. (Jim) MacDonald says that by the time he arrived at Kits as a practicum student-teacher from the Provincial Normal School in Vancouver in 1950, there was a little round kiln in the art room into which you placed small items in tiers. Apparently it was not until 1963, when Allistair Ross replaced Miss Lewis upon her retirement, that pottery was introduced into the school program in any significant way (Allistair Ross, pers. com. 2002).

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During the 1930s and 1940s, the Vancouver School Board apparently thought that families “should not be burdened” by the cost of the supplies for their children attending school (James Gray, pers. com. 2002), and school boards could not afford to supply many materials until they recovered from the restricted wartime economies. Russell White, a student at Kits in the mid-1930s, remembers providing his own linocutting tools, watercolour paints, and square pastels, so students at the time did in fact supply some of their own art materials. Illustrations from the yearbooks suggest, and former students have indicated, that students in art classes by 1950 were also using pencil, pen and ink, conté, charcoal, pastels, and watercolours and tempera paint, scratchboard, linocut printing blocks, silkscreen, grease crayons, and, as mentioned, limited papier mâché and clay. Hamish Cameron, in summarizing the various media he remembers using in art class, declared, “We covered a lot!”

the period in perspective James Gray, former Vancouver art supervisor, and Bob Steele, former secondary school art teacher, both of whom subsequently became art professors at the University of British Columbia, have characterized school art in Vancouver prior to 1950 as a “dry period.” Nevertheless they agree that the period set out the “antecedent conditions” (Gray, pers. com. 2002) for the subsequent innovations. J.A.S. MacDonald, student teacher of Moira Macdonald and later ubc art education professor, did not disagree with this but in speaking of Kits and another West Side school, Magee, he said they had “impressive art programmes.” But he acknowledged that they “were isolated pockets of exciting art activity.” He added, “These programs were individually driven by the guts and determination of individual teachers such as Kits’ Miss Lewis and Miss MacDonald.” He went on: The principals could support, but not initiate, these art programmes. It was up to the drive and personality of the teachers to set up a good art program, one which provided an exposure of the major art activities to students: drawing, painting, fabric arts, and three-dimensional work, and to give students a chance to grow in whichever line interested them. It was also to find the gifted ones and then help them develop their art for its own sake, not necessarily with a vocational end in view. Their principals supported the art teachers by recog-

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nizing art as a necessary part of a well-rounded education. (J.A.S. MacDonald, pers. com. 2002)

So this so-called “dry period” served as a bridge from the earlier restricted drawing and design approach of the pre-1920s to the art programs of the postwar years. Art gained then when federal money began to be infused into the bc school system, starting in 1950 or 1952 and continuing until about 1965. These fifteen or so economically favourable years, years after the period of this study, have been labelled the “golden years in school art” (Steele, pers. com. 1999; Gray, pers. com. 2002). This rich period allowed for innovations. It continued until about 1965 when the negative impact of bc’s Chant Commission Report (1960), which lessoned the importance of secondary school art programs, began to take its toll (Gray, pers. com. 2002). Because commission officials perceived art as relatively unimportant, the Chant Commission took longest to address art as a subject.59 For this reason the so-called golden years in art as a school subject extended longer than they would have. Art courses thus gained by this delay in revisions by the Chant Commission, which ultimately relegated art to a much more minor roll in the secondary school curriculum than it had enjoyed from the mid-1920s to beyond the 1950s. As shown, art courses at Kits during the years from 1920 to 1950 employed a wider range of materials and art experiences than were involved with the previous drawing and design focus. For this reason “dry period” seems a somewhat ungenerous label. Perhaps the term “expansionary period” or at least “transition period” gives this necessary phase of secondary school art learning from 1920 to 1950 more its due. Despite having limited funding during this time, a time that encompassed the depression, Second World War, Japanese/Chinese and Korean War years, art was at least considered a valuable part of a good secondary school education in bc. Being valued as it was for the development of art skills and the formation of what might be called an “art appreciation sense” in a cultured person, art as a school subject did not have to be constantly defended or promoted. It did not suffer from the undermining of its role in the curriculum, as it has for much of the time since then. Also, despite the lack of money in the system, art in secondary schools, at least some schools such as Kitsilano, did manage to introduce most of the media that continued to be used to the end of the

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century and beyond. This period, therefore, was an important building block in art education in Vancouver secondary schools.

interviews In some cases, the dates and grades given below are approximations Alexander, Irene. Grades 9, 10 (mid- to late 1930s), Britannia. Personal communication, 28 May 2001 Basil, Bill. Grades 7–12, Kits; graduated 1940. Personal communication, 4 March 2003 Blakstad, Rolph. Grades 10–12, Kits; graduated 1997. Personal communications, June 2003 to September 2003. Cameron, Hamish. Grades 9–12, Kits; graduated 1950. Personal communications, 23 April and 1 May 2002 Charlesworth, Lyla. Grades 10–12, Kits; graduated 1949. Personal communication, 3 April 2002 Coghill, Joy. Grades 8–12, Kits; graduated 1946. Personal communication, 15 May 2002 Gray, James U. Grades 11, 12 (1941–43), Kits; art supervisor of Kits from 1950. ubc art education professor. Personal communication, 26 February 2002 Howard, Dorothy (1927–1932). Grades 7–11, Kits. Personal communications, 5 December 1999 and 11 March 2001 McCrea, Marionne. Graduated late 1930s, Kits. Personal communication, 31 July 2001 Macdonald, J.A.S. Student teacher of Moira Macdonald in 1950; ubc art education professor. Personal communication, 27 February 2002 McInnes, Dermott. Victoria High School, Edmonton; graduated 1923. Personal communication, 5 March 2001 Nelson, Malcom. Grades 9–12, Van Tech; graduated mid-1930s. Personal communication, 28 May 2002 Ross, Allistair. Kits art teacher starting 1963. Personal communication, 10 March 2002 Snelgrove, Peter (1939–1944). Grades 7–12, Kits. Personal communication, 14 February 2002 Steele, Bob. Chilliwack High School art teacher; ubc art education. Personal communication, 25 November 1999

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Turner, Ron (1938–40). Grades 7–9, Point Grey. Personal communication, 25 September 2001 Ursulescu, Stephen. Grades 7–12, Kits; graduated 1950. Personal communication, 7 February 2002 White, Russell (1933–37). Grades 7–10, Kits. Personal communication, 26 October 2001 Williamson, Eva. Grades 7–12, Kits; graduated 1935. Personal communication, 6 February 2002 Wilson, J. Donald. Education historian, former Professor of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia. Personal communication, November 1998. Wong, Anna. Grades 9–12, Britannia; graduated mid-1940s. Personal communication, 13 August 2002 Wong, Bill. Grades 10–12, Van Tech; graduated 1939. Personal communication, 7 September 2002 Wytenbroek, John (1935–1941). Grades 7–12, Kits. Personal communication, 20 February 2002 Zitko, Henry. Grades 9–12, VanTech; graduated mid-1940s. Personal communication, 16 May 2003.

Recto Running Head

9 Art Education in Ontario, 1950–2000: Unlimited Potential and Unfulfilled Promise roger allen clark

This chapter is devoted to an archival retrospective of art education in Ontario from 1950 to 2000. The retrospective paints an enigmatic portrait of both unlimited potential and unfulfilled promise drawn from a wide variety of archival source materials: provincial elementary curricula, provincial secondary curricula, support documents, research studies and publications, and professional organizations. Correspondingly, the portrait reveals a dynamic, kaleidoscopic collage of individuals, documents, and activities rather than a static, singular image. Before the retrospective can begin, however, we need to take a look at art education prior to 1950. The emergence of art as a school subject in the province of Ontario has been documented in the literature (Blackwell 1989; Clark 1994) and discussed in chapters 5, 6, and 7 of this text. Nonetheless, I shall give a brief overview to set the stage for this archival study.

the emergence of art as a school subject Art, as we understand the subject today, did not exist in the curricula of common schools in the colony of Canada West (after 1867, the Province of Ontario) during the latter half of the eighteenth century. The predecessor of contemporary art education was drawing, not drawing in the conventional sense of idyllic landscapes or life studies, but mechanical drawing intended to provide the industries of Canada

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West with skilled draughtsmen. While all common school subjects were compulsory, they were subdivided into three categories, cardinal, required, and other, with drawing falling into the least important other grouping. With the gradual introduction of higher grades into what we now call secondary school, two strands of superior education were developed, one for boys and one for girls. In each case, school subjects were inextricably linked to the gender expectations of Victorian society. Mechanical drawing continued to be provided for boys who attended technical schools, while girls were given classes in sculpture and painting in academic schools known as collegiate institutes. By the First World War secondary schools had ceased to be segregated by gender but the division between technical/vocational art and academic/visual art remained intact. From 1900 to 1950, the popularity of collegiate institutes and the declining importance of technical schools resulted in academic art becoming the curricular norm in Ontario. By the early 1900s common schools had emerged as elementary schools. In 1904 the Ontario Department of Education renamed drawing art and children were introduced to activities that emphasized ornamental design instead of tedious copybooks and geometric exercises. During the decades after the First World War elementary art curricula began to reflect John Dewey’s concept of active learning, Maria Montessori’s model of auto-education, and Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development.

provincial elementary curricula, 1950–2000 Fifty years is a long time. One might therefore expect any review of elementary art curricula in Ontario from 1950 to 2000 to be quite lengthy. Such an expectation, however, would prove quite incorrect. For all but the final seven of those years, three skeletal documents regulated the teaching of art in provincial elementary schools; indeed, the first two were put into regulation well before 1950. The Programme of Studies for Grades I to VI of the Public and Separate Schools (Ontario 1941) was initially written in 1938 and remained in force until 1975; its companion document, Programme of Studies for Grades VII and VIII of the Public and Separate Schools (Ontario 1942) remained in force for more than thirty years until 1975. These diminutive texts (each was five inches by seven and a half inches)

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regulated the teaching of all elementary subjects. Although the document governing grades one to six devoted only six of its 153 pages to art, its exhortations to teachers were very progressive; one might be forgiven for assuming that the following quotations were penned in 2000: The purpose of the experiences and activities in art should, then, be to develop in the children the power to see and enjoy the beautiful in nature and in art, and to cultivate in the children the ability by drawing, modelling, and constructing to express more and more successfully their own ideas. Art should not be thought of in terms of one or two “lessons” a week ... The interest of young children in drawing and in making things displays all the characteristics of an instinctive urge, and some part of every day might well be devoted to this form of activity. (Ontario 1941, 127)

In our own time when discipline-based art education is billed as something new and innovative, the document’s heavy emphasis on art appreciation is especially enlightening. In the section “Cultivating a Love of Beauty” the classroom itself is seen as an integral part of the art curricula: Much may be done to cultivate the children’s love of effective colour combination, just proportions, and pleasing arrangement by the silent but powerful influence of the room in which they live. The walls and ceiling should be harmoniously coloured, the furnishing of the room should be properly arranged, illustrative materials and displays of pupils’ work should be carefully placed, pictures should be hung with care, and the appearance of the room as a whole definitely though unobtrusively artistic. (Ibid., 129)

The document governing grades seven and eight devoted five of its 151 pages to art; an additional five pages were given to a section on crafts. The crafts section suggested more than seventy activities including some of rather dubious artistic merit, such as sharpening a bread or meat knife, patching hot-water bags and inner tubes, making a window stick for different levels, filling small holes or cracks in plaster, making labels for plants and school garden plots, making a bread board, making minor repairs and adjustments to bicycles, and, perhaps my personal favourite, making an extension cord. In 1975 the Ministry of Education issued The Formative Years, also known as Circular PIJI. Any teacher hoping for a greater amplification

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of elementary school subjects was disappointed. Although somewhat larger in dimension (six inches by eight inches), the new document required only twenty-four pages to regulate the content of all subjects from grade one to grade six; the newly retitled visual arts received two inches of text on page 18. According to The Formative Years students in art classes were to: (1) experience and respond to forms, events, and materials in the environment; (2) perceive qualities of form such as similarities and contrasts, surfaces, patterns, rhythms, cohesiveness, line, mass, space, and colour in natural and manufactured objects and materials; (3) clarify and express personal experiences and feelings in visual form through a variety of materials and activities such as modelling, construction, painting, and drawing; (4) share visual expressions and relate them generally to the work of other people. (Ontario 1975b, 18)

It is important to note the transition towards an instrumentalist philosophy in The Formative Years: experience and respond to forms, perceive qualities of form, clarify and express personal experiences and feelings in visual form, and share visual expressions. These are generic social taxonomies derived from developmental psychology; although references to art media, design, and appreciation appear they are not directly tied to the attainment of any artistic skills or aesthetic sensibilities. The long shelf-life of these three elementary documents can be partially explained by four decades of uninterrupted government by the Ontario Progressive Conservatives from 1941 to 1985, which provided a sense of ideological continuity in education. The unexpected election of the New Democratic Party in 1990, however, ushered in a new era of curricular reform. Premier Bob Rae set up the Royal Commission on Learning to make recommendations to the government, but even before the commission’s report was finished (1994) draft versions of The Common Curriculum, Grades 1–9 (1993) were widely circulated across the province. The Common Curriculum, Grades 1–9 continued the trend begun in The Formative Years away from essentialist subjectbased curricula; the new document envisioned only four core program areas: Language; the Arts; Self and Society; and Mathematics, Science, and Technology. Art education existed only as one component of the arts along with music, drama, and dance. Although specific learning

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outcomes for grades three, six, and nine were provided, the need for applicability across the four disciplines produced ephemeral hybrid outcomes that seemed strangely unrelated to any of the constituent subjects. With the return of the Progressive Conservatives in 1995 the Ministry of Education was once again caught in an ideological firestorm. Eager to undo the legislative legacy of the former government, the Conservatives immediately instigated wholesale curricular reforms from kindergarten to grade twelve. In 1998 the ministry released The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–9: The Arts. Although the umbrella grouping of The Arts remained, each subject received discrete disciplinary attention. Curricular content was prescribed for all eight grades within three strands: knowledge of elements, creative work, and critical thinking. This return to a more discipline-based philosophy was also reflected in the Achievement Levels rubric, which was divided into four sections: Understanding of Concepts, Critical Analysis and Appreciation, Performance and Creative Work, and Communication.

provincial secondary curricula, 1950–2000 Those familiar with the Byzantine nature of education administration in Ontario will understand how difficult it has been to separate art documents into the seemingly simple categories of elementary and secondary curricula. Certainly, it is true that elementary grades have traditionally involved kindergarten to grade eight but many local boards of education, especially those in Metropolitan Toronto, operated junior high schools that included grade nine well into the 1980s. Adding to the confusion are the long-established teaching divisions: primary (Kindergarten to grade three), junior (grades four to six), intermediate (grades seven to ten), and senior (grades eleven to thirteen/Ontario Academic Courses). Teachers are licensed upon graduation from faculties of education in two teaching divisions: primary/junior, junior/intermediate, or intermediate/senior. Thus, the intermediate division (grades seven to ten) occupies a bifurcated place in the elementary/secondary sequence with grades seven and eight considered part of elementary education and grades nine and ten seen as part of secondary education. Recently, however, there have been notable exceptions to this practice. From the mid-1980s to the early 1990s secondary subject guidelines included grades seven and eight; then, from the early to mid-1990s elementary

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guidelines not only reclaimed grades seven and eight but briefly included grade nine. The fluid nature of the intermediate division is clearly seen in the 1968 ministry document entitled Art: Intermediate. No specific grades are mentioned anywhere in the text although the two photographs of artwork, one from a student in grade nine and the other from grade ten, suggest a secondary school application. Studio activities are divided into drawing and painting, ceramics, dioramas and model making, display, graphic arts, metal arts, printmaking, photography, puppetry and stagecraft, sculpture, and weaving and creative stitchery. Art: Intermediate urges teachers to adopt a thematic approach and offers twenty units as exemplars including such pearls as The Empty Room and What to Put in It; The Open Window and the Kitchen Sink; A Face to Hide Behind; Hell and Damnation; Death and Glory; and The Artist’s Zoo. In Ontario grade thirteen was not originally considered to be the final year of secondary school; rather, it was supposed to be the first year of university, offered locally to increase access to postsecondary education. Art was only added to the grade thirteen curriculum in the early 1960s (Ontario 1944, 1959). Art: Senior Division, Grades 11, 12 and 13 (Ontario Ministry of Education 1962) was the first art document to include grade thirteen as part of the senior division. This guideline adopted an essentialist philosophy and mandated three-part courses of study consisting of practical work, design, and history of art. In 1976 a new senior division guideline was issued entitled Towards Visual Awareness; the title was chosen to draw attention to the ministry’s unilateral decision to adopt visual arts as the official subject name. The previous guideline’s emphases on studio and design were retained, but the history of art emphasis was saddled with the hopelessly inelegant heading of “The Artist, the Craftsman, and the Designer, Past and Present.” Towards Visual Awareness continued the thematic mantra first introduced in Art: Intermediate while managing to avoid the 1968 guideline’s penchant for unintentionally hilarious titles. In the early 1980s widespread criticism related to the lack of academic rigour and widely divergent content in some grade thirteen courses prompted the Ministry of Education to revise all subject guidelines. Visual Arts: Intermediate and Senior Divisions (1986) reflected many of the new ministerial regulations. For example: (1) course contents for

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grades seven and eight were considered part of the intermediate/senior division; (2) discrete courses of study were devised for three levels of difficulty: basic, general, and advanced; (3) grade thirteen courses were replaced with Ontario Academic Courses designed to satisfy university entrance requirements; and (4) special series courses were designed to supplant traditional comprehensive courses. The 1986 intermediate/senior guideline adopted the principles of discipline-based art education and was organized around design, studio, history, and special projects; the time allocation for each of these four constituent blocks varied by level of difficulty, that is to say basic, general, or advanced. As part of the renewed focus on art history a master list of 120 artworks was prepared; one female artist was included – Louise Nevelson, for her 1962 sculpture Total Obscurity. It is worth noting that the master list was developed by a female university professor. Visual Arts:Intermediate/Senior Divisions (1986) was, in turn, superceded by two documents: The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9 and 10: The Arts (1999) and The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 11 and 12: The Arts (2000a). Whereas the 1986 guideline required 163 pages to outline ministry expectations for art, the new pair of guidelines needed only a combined total of 151 pages to detail ministry expectations for art, dance, drama, and music. Typically, each course description involved a single paragraph for calendar copy, and three pages devoted to overall and specific expectations for Theory, Creation, and Analysis. The lower half of the intermediate division, grades seven and eight, returned to the elementary panel. The former basic, general, and advanced courses were replaced by open courses in grades nine, ten, and eleven and university/college preparation courses in grades eleven and twelve. The skeletal nature of these two documents can be seen in the following quotation wherein the Ministry of Education uses a grand total of four whole sentences to update art teachers on the very latest pedagogical trends: Teaching Approaches It is important that students have opportunities to learn in a variety of ways: individually and cooperatively, independently and with teacher direction; through hands-on activities; and through the study of examples followed by practice. There is no single correct way to teach or to learn. The nature of the

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arts curriculum calls for a variety of strategies for learning. The strategies should vary according to the curriculum expectations and the needs of the students. (Ontario 2000a, 8)

Period. End of quote. Surely, the Ontario Ministry of Education could be expected to offer art teachers more insight and guidance than that in 2000.

support documents, 1950–2000 The preceding quotation from The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 11 and 12: The Arts (2000a) shows how the Ministry of Education’s penchant for brevity has remained virtually intact throughout the decades between 1950 and 2000. As a result, support documents have been issued sporadically to help art teachers transform ephemeral ministerial regulations into useable courses of study. Such support documents have traditionally originated from one of two sources: the Ministry of Education at Queen’s Park and local boards of education. During the postwar years the Department of Education issued a series of helpful booklets written by Charles Dudley Gaitskell: Arts and Crafts in the Schools of Ontario (1949), Children and Their Pictures (1951), Art Education in the Kindergarten (1952), Art Education for Slow Learners (1953), and Art Education during Adolescence (1954). Writing in 1988, Raymond Blackwell noted the high degree of scholarship and research that Gaitskell and his wife Margaret devoted to the writing of these booklets and the following revolutionary educational principles upon which they were predicated: 1. provision for creativeness in all activities for all participants; 2. acquiring skill through activities which engage the emotions and intellect of the learner; 3. provision for the learner to enjoy freedom of thought; 4. fusion of art production with the real experiences of the learner; 5. stress in developing taste; and, 6. using art experiences to relate the individual to the social group. (Blackwell 1988, 21–2)

When the Ministry of Education published The Formative Years (1975b) it anticipated that teachers might need amplification of its

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twenty-four pages. A companion document entitled Education in the Primary and Junior Divisions was therefore also printed in 1975; three pages of this text were devoted to visual arts instruction. The section begins with one of the most repulsive photographs I have ever found in any art curriculum: a student of undetermined gender pokes two fingers into what appears to be cranial matter of unknown origin; after years of puzzlement I have come to the conclusion that the object in question was most likely a prop from Ed Wood’s 1958 movie classic Plan 9 from Outer Space. In 1985 another support document for The Formative Years was issued, this time devoted entirely to art. Visual Arts: Primary and Junior Divisions offered elementary teachers valuable tips on a broad range of topics, especially curriculum planning. In a departure from previous elementary documents a section entitled “Some Notes on Safety and Health Hazards” was included. Some things never change, however, and the ministry’s penchant for unintended hilarity appeared in a diagram found, appropriately, on page thirteen. Here teachers are confronted with the conundrum of what to do when they have only one paint station for five pupils. The ministry advises teachers to arrange the five pupils’ desks in a circle and put the paint station in the centre on the floor. The long-arm-of-the-law principle must have underpinned this most impractical piece of advice. In 1990 the ministry released Viewing Art: Intermediate and Senior Divisions. A companion document to the 1986 visual arts guideline, Viewing Art provided teachers with Canadian exemplars that went beyond the predictable 120 Eurocentric male-dominated works mandated by the guideline’s master list; included were almost one hundred works by francophone, aboriginal, and women artists. A list of art galleries found throughout Ontario was provided in an appendix along with a detailed catalogue of each gallery’s educational resources. Viewing Art suggested a four-stage process for viewing art that consisted of initial response, analysis, information acquisition, and interpretation. The Ontario Curriculum: Exemplars – The Arts, Grade 9 (2000b) presented samples of student work from an art project entitled “TwoDimensional Black-and-White Graphic Design and Written Commentary.” Exemplars were provided to show teachers how to implement the four-level rubric for arts assessment mandated in the secondary school guidelines (Ontario 1999, 2000a).

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Support documents were also produced by local boards of education especially during the 1970s and 1980s when education was more decentralized than during 1950–70 and the 1990s. Funding to local boards of education was significantly increased, enabling the number of board consultants and coordinators to rise quite dramatically; correspondingly, the number of education officers was greatly reduced especially in regional ministry offices. As part of this decentralization process boards of education were encouraged to produce individualized curricula that reflected the unique aspects of towns or cities in their jurisdiction. To illustrate the development of locally produced support documents I have selected the Board of Education for the Borough of East York because of its rather unique status as a very small board representing a municipality of fewer than one hundred thousand people while operating under the aegis of the collective Metropolitan Toronto Board of Education. Early East York support documents such as Art: Elementary Division (1973) and Your Art Program in Balance (1974) were modest indeed; typically such documents were merely duplicated charts and checklists stapled together. The 1975 Visual Arts Curriculum Guide was somewhat more ambitious in scope containing brief philosophical statements, developmental theory, and planning exemplars; this document required a duo-tang binder. By the end of the 1970s East York support documents had achieved a more professional appearance; Visual Arts: JK–9 (1978) and Visual Arts: 9–13 (1979) offered art teachers a comprehensive overview of theory and practice; both required three-ring binders. It would be a great mistake to assume that larger urban boards of education produced support documents of higher quality than rural boards. While many small rural boards did tend to issue somewhat modest documents such as Middlesex County’s 1986 Visual Arts: Primary Division (Revised edition) the Toronto board’s mid-1980s Visual Arts: Intermediate pales by comparison both in terms of content and presentation. Some of the most impressive support documents were produced by two county boards of education, Halton (n.d., a and b) and Waterloo (1992). Halton, in particular, provided its teachers with volumes of curricular information, such as the encyclopedic Visual Arts: Core Curriculum, which covered just about every conceivable aspect of art education; I suspect the writers were simply too tired to include a publication date.

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research studies and publications, 1950–2000 Given the dynamic leadership provided by Dr Charles Dudley Gaitskell as the first director of art in the Ontario Department of Education (1948) and the first president of csea, or the Canadian Society for Education through Art (1955), Ontario certainly seemed poised to play a dominant role in postwar Canadian art education research studies and publications. As is often the case, however, appearances proved to be quite deceiving and despite promising successes in the 1950s, Ontario’s leadership in art education was quickly eclipsed by emerging centres of scholarship in other provinces such as British Columbia (University of British Columbia), Quebec (Concordia), and Nova Scotia (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design). To account for Ontario’s failure to keep pace one must understand the historical role played by the University of Toronto in the field of education and its crippling effect upon nascent scholarship in art education throughout the province. In 1906 the Department of Education set up the Ontario College of Education (oce), which enjoyed a monopoly on the preparation of secondary school specialists; although operated by the provincial government, oce was affiliated solely with the University of Toronto. This symbiotic relationship was further strengthened in 1965 when the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (oise) was created with yet another monopoly, this time in graduate education. Although limited provisions were made for access to master’s and doctoral studies throughout the province by means of regional field centres, oise’s affiliation with the University of Toronto starved the fledgling faculties of education at Western (1963) and Queen’s (1965) of their fair share of government research funding and tuition grants. Despite the emergence of additional faculties of education during the 1970s at Brock, Lakehead, Laurentian, Nipissing, Ottawa, Windsor, and York universities, oise’s stranglehold on graduate education remained intact until the 1990s when, one by one, all Ontario faculties of education were finally granted permission to offer their own master’s and doctoral programs. Nonetheless, although each faculty currently supports a tenured position in art education, teaching assignments are primarily focused at the preservice level and as yet there is no graduate degree in art education in Ontario. The monopoly on graduate education held by the University of Toronto crippled research and publication in art education by impos-

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ing upon the entire province graduate courses that focused upon the study of curriculum theory rather than specialization within school subjects. Art educators, therefore, could only obtain graduate degrees in education (curriculum); those wishing to earn specialist degrees in art education were forced to study in other provinces or in the United States. The impact of this curricular hegemony affected art education in Ontario for decades; upon my graduation in 1987, I became only the third art educator to earn a doctorate in oise’s twenty-two years of existence. It would be unfair to suggest that absolutely no subject specializations were possible in the Department of Curriculum at oise, but they were offered only within the context of broadly conceptualized areas of concentration. For art, this meant being subsumed within the Arts in Education concentration along with dance, drama, and music. It is important to note the critical nuance between arts education and arts in education. Countercultural influences in the 1960s gave rise to the arts-in-education movement in which the arts were taught collectively rather than as separate subjects. Typically, arts-in-education programs stressed studio activities, relied heavily upon artists and art galleries as instructional resources, and promoted the arts as interdisciplinary pedagogic methodologies. Perhaps one of the best-known Canadian proponents of the arts-in-education movement is the late Richard Courtney whose holistic media-based model of learning provided the philosophical underpinnings of his texts Play, Drama and Thought (1968), The Dramatic Curriculum (1980b), Re-play (1982), and The Quest (1987). Richard Courtney’s appointment to oise’s Department of Curriculum in 1974 further stifled Ontario scholarship in art education not just because of his close affiliation with the arts-in-education movement but because of his overt bias in favour of the performing arts, especially drama: Courtney’s three strands of Being, which translate into drama, music, and dance, share a common dependence upon corporeal action. For Courtney, Being requires a direct, bodily expression – in other words, a performance. What Courtney’s model fails to acknowledge is that there is “no one way of being,” to borrow a phrase from the title of his 1988 study into the practical knowledge of elementary school teachers. “For imaginings to become externalized” we do not need “to act with them.” We are not limited to pretending that we are an airplane, or sounding like one, or to moving like an

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airplane. We can draw an airplane, or construct one, as well. (Clark 1994, 17)

Given this historical backdrop, the paucity of research studies and publications in postwar Ontario art education becomes less puzzling; it also helps explain the important role played by scholars working outside academic university settings. Without question, the pre-eminent individual in this regard was, and remains, Charles Dudley Gaitskell. In addition to many monographs issued under the auspices of the Department of Education from 1949 to 1953, Gaitskell authored the seminal text Children and Their Art: Methods for the Elementary School (1958), which remains in print, albeit under the authorship of American art educators Al Hurwitz and Michael Day.1 The scope of Children and Their Art was expansive even by contemporary standards: included within its 446 pages were compact overviews of educational philosophies, aesthetic theories, developmental models, pedagogic strategies, and studio practices, as well as multicultural exemplars, selected readings, and bibliographic references. Children and Their Art was preceded by the 1954 text Art Education during Adolescence, which Gaitskell coauthored with his second wife, Margaret. This more modest text incorporated much of the information covered in Gaitskell’s Department of Education monographs. Although Art Education during Adolescence was written nearly half a century ago, its pages describe a model elementary art program, complete with modifications for specialneeds learners, that few of today’s art educators are fortunate enough to see realized in their own classrooms. Consultants, supervisors, and coordinators from local boards of education have consistently provided leadership in Ontario art education; occasionally their contributions involved the publication of noteworthy texts, three of which deserve special recognition. The first, written in 1951, was Self-Expression through Art: An Introduction to Teaching and Appreciation, by Kingston art supervisor Elizabeth Harrison; a second edition appeared in 1960. Essentially a compendium of standard elementary studio projects, Self-Expression through Art adhered to the principles of education through art as espoused by Harrison’s close colleague C.D. Gaitskell, who wrote the foreword to the text. In 1957 Florence Hart, Supervisor of Art and Crafts for the Oshawa Board of Education, wrote What Shall We Do in Art? Given Hart’s close interaction with art teachers one can readily appreciate the

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boxed text that appears at the very start of her book: “This introductory section contains a minimum of theory and much practical information. It will well repay the time spent in reading it” (Hart 1957, 9). Perhaps to add a level of academic stature to what is otherwise a compendium of “practical ideas for elementary schools,” the foreword by C.D. Gaitskell is prominently noted on the front cover. In 1969 a very specialized pedagogic focus provided the context and content for Art and Crafts for Slow Learners, written by Arnel Pattemore, Co-Ordinator of Art in St Catharines. Pattemore’s forty-eight-page monograph offered tips on how teachers could modify a wide variety of traditional studio activities to meet the needs of special needs learners, including a suggestion that “ice-cream sticks, stacked and glued, create interesting containers that can be built up over several days” (Pattemore 1969, 14); no references to any form of art appreciation appear to have been included. A quarter of a century was to pass before another book on art education was published in Ontario. This text, entitled Art Education: A Canadian Perspective (Clark 1994) was historic in that it was the first academic text published by the Ontario Society for Education through Art (osea). Overly ambitious in scope, the book was divided into four chapters: Art as an Emergent School Subject, Art as a Pedagogic Subculture, Art in Theory, and Art in Practice; it probably goes without saying that this book was written by a tenured professor at a faculty of education. Two years later, another Ontario monograph appeared entitled Art Education: Issues in Postmodernist Pedagogy (Clark 1996). This text was the first book to be published jointly by the Canadian Society for Education through Art and the National Art Education Association (naea) in the United States. For the first time in Ontario, and perhaps in Canada itself, an art education text dealt explicitly with issues related to gay and lesbian art and the recent appearance of gay and lesbian caucuses within the teaching profession: Although the love that dares not speak its name certainly appears to have had no trouble finding its voice on daytime talk shows, homosexuality has hardly managed a whisper in the field of art education. Fearing personal attack and/or loss of employment, gay/lesbian teachers have traditionally maintained a strict separation between their personal and professional lives. Nonetheless, gay/lesbian caucuses have been recently created in the American Federation of

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Teachers, the National Education Association, The College Art Association, and the Alliance for Museum Education. (Clark 1996, 60)

An Introduction to Art Education (Clark 1998) was written as a course text for preservice education students enrolled at the University of Western Ontario. The book featured a user-friendly page layout, a somewhat unique instructional span (kindergarten to grade twelve), and a moderately postmodernist philosophical foundation. In strong contrast to previous Ontario texts such as Children and Their Art and What Shall We Do in Art?, this text contained exemplars showing partial and full-frontal nudity and discussed strategies for dealing with controversial images as well as gay and lesbian artists. Although not authored by art educators, a few books written by Ontario art historians merit attention at this point. In each case the author was an established scholar from the University of Toronto, reinforcing the dominant position played by that university in the field of education. In 1964 Peter Brieger, G. Stephen Vickers, and Frederick Winter, colleagues in the Department of Fine Arts, wrote Art and Man in three volumes. Intended as textbooks for use in secondary schools, Art and Man provided a chronological survey of Eurocentric monuments that I vividly remember studying as a teenager growing up in Hamilton. The series reflected scholarship in the field of art history typical of the early 1960s in terms of both content and context:506 pages were devoted to the study of European exemplars, 127 pages to American art, and 144 pages to Canadian art. The rest of the story of art was told in a mere twenty-four pages, with ten devoted to “The Arts of Primitive Peoples” and fourteen focused on “Art of Eastern Asia.” A quick scan of the index reveals only one female artist, Emily Carr – way to go, Canada, eh? The paternal Eurocentric content of Art and Man was replicated in Introducing Art History – A Guide for Teachers, by Michael McCarthy (1978), with a foreword by H.W. Janson. Nonetheless, McCarthy’s text offers secondary school teachers “alternative approaches” to providing instruction in art history including the biographical approach: “Not only will the students be enthralled, they will have acquired a factual scaffold that can serve them as a point of reference for more detailed study of works of art later on” (McCarthy 1978, 25). McCarthy warns teachers to be wary of source materials that might

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prove problematic; for example, biographies of Michelangelo are described as either “too dryly analytical or too desperately sentimental to be recommended” (ibid.). Clearly, McCarthy never anticipated the emergence of postmodernist biographies that highlight the central role played by Michelangelo’s homosexuality; certainly, the pedagogic problems inherent in relying upon dry analysis or desperate sentimentality pale in comparison. In 1993 Annie Smith published Getting into Art History, which offered a plethora of lesson ideas demonstrating how the teaching of art history can be brought to life through studio-based projects. Lavishly illustrated with student exemplars, Getting into Art History provided educators an authoritative text on experiential approaches to art appreciation. From 1950 to 2000 there was only one research study in art education of any significance. The study was undertaken by oise arts professor Richard Courtney to “examine the role and relationships of arts programs in the general program of studies in the Primary and Junior Divisions in the Province of Ontario, Canada” (Courtney 1980a, 1). Courtney’s ties to the arts-in-education movement pervade Learning through the Arts right from the initial conceptualization of the problem through to the concluding analyses and discussion of the resultant data. Not surprisingly, the most important conclusions of the study reinforce Courtney’s media-based model of learning which places the arts at the epicentre of holistic pedagogies and therapies: “The study showed that arts programs assist learning in the general program of studies by improving perception, awareness, concentration, uniqueness of thought styles, expression, inventiveness, problemsolving, confidence, self-worth and motivation. It also showed that there was a considerable degree of transfer of learning from arts programs to: (a) learning and learning readiness in other subjects; and (b) life and social learning” (ibid.). Issues related to the attainment of artistic skill or aesthetic sensitivity were utterly ignored in Learning through the Arts. It should be acknowledged that small-scale field-based research studies in art education have been undertaken by a few tenured professors at faculties of education throughout the province. In particular, Lynette Fast from Brock University (Fast 2000) and Fiona Blaikie from Lakehead University (Blaikie 2000) deserve special recognition.

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professional organizations, 1950–2000 The dark cloud that has shrouded postwar art education in Ontario does have a silver lining. Ontario art educators can be justifiably proud of their contributions to the national scene throughout the period 1950–2000. Perhaps one can account for this apparent paradox by linking the limited opportunities for professional growth within the province to the legacy of national leadership begun with Charles Dudley Gaitskell and the founding of the Canadian Society for Education through Art in 1955. The vital role played by Ontario throughout the history of the csea is reflected in the archival records of the Society: three out of four honorary presidents, ten out of thirty-four presidents, and twelve out of thirty honorary life members have come from Ontario. It must be acknowledged that the csea archives also reveal the lack of scholarly activity within the province; only one of twelve editors of the Canadian Review of Art Education has come from Ontario. Gaitskell’s close affiliation with Sir Herbert Read and his philosophy of education through art has had a pronounced effect upon Canadian art education for most of the postwar period. Prior to the emergence of discipline-based art education in the 1980s, Gaitskell’s tenets of faith held sway from coast to coast: We have produced in this country a pedagogy which was different from the older pedagogy because we based it on needs. What we do is, we spot the needs of the children ... We don’t teach till the children are ready for the teaching ... We help the children to organize their reactions to [the] environment, a thing that was not done before. You drew the object and that was that ... We do not give drills for the development of skills. You need skill to produce art. But the little child has just enough skill to pick up a brush and make his scribbles, and then later on, say what he wants to say in symbolic form. As he works his skill grows. We can help the growth of this skill, but we do not give exercises ... We do not teach principles of design to our children. They must deduce their own from their experience ... We have brought a new concept into art education and that is the development of the group citizen. We keep our eye on the development of the individual as an individual, and probably that is primary. But we are also saying that art has social purposes and we have many ways now of bringing this to the attention of children. (Gaitskell 1984, 9)

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As a direct result of the key role played by Gaitskell in the formation of csea in 1955, the creation of a provincial society also based upon the principles of education through art quickly followed in 1957. It is worth noting, however, that Gaitskell concentrated his leadership at the national level, never serving the Ontario Society for Education through Art as either its honorary president or president. The relationship between the two societies was typically Canadian. Although founded in Québec City with a bilingual mandate solely to represent Canadian art educators, csea was largely an anglophone organization that held a rather paternalistic relationship with provincial groups that were required to pay annual dues to maintain an affiliate status with csea. Prior to 1957 leadership in provincial art education was provided by the Ontario Association of Teachers of Art (oata), an organization believed to have been founded in 1941 although there appear to be no archival documents prior to 1942; it is not even known who the first president of oata was. This curious factoid is discussed on page seven of Recurring Patterns: The History of the Ontario Society for Education through Art, a meticulously researched manuscript written by Raymond Blackwell in 1988. Those wishing to follow the ebbs and flows of osea from 1957 to 1987 are directed to this limited-circulation manuscript. As we have seen with supervisors and coordinators of art working within local boards of education, osea tried from its inception to fill the leadership void created by the University of Toronto’s misanthropic guardianship of graduate education. To this end, osea traditionally sponsored annual conferences throughout the province and provided its membership with a surprisingly wide variety of professional publications. The Journal of the Ontario Society for Education through Art (JOSEA) first appeared in 1971 with a practice-oriented format under the editorship of Ottawa art consultant Gary Conway; later, with volume 18, JOSEA acquired an editorial board and a more academic focus. The society has also traditionally published a newsletter, the format of which has undergone frequent transformations. Some of the most treasured issues of the newsletter were produced during the 1980s by Wellington County Art Consultant Stephen Lewis, whose penchant for hand illustration made reading the newsletter a wonderfully creative experience. While JOSEA and the newsletter remained the mainstays of the

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society’s publication program, monographs, pamphlets, and advocacy kits were also produced over the years. In 1980 osea reprinted, jointly with the Council of Drama in Education, Richard Courtney’s Learning through the Arts research study. A few years later, the society printed a series of advocacy documents. The first was a pamphlet entitled Quality Art Education in Ontario Schools: Goals and Implementation for Visual Arts (1988). This was followed four years later by a series of position papers on quality art education (1992a), in-service art education (1992b), preservice art education (1992c), and graduate art education (1992d). In 1994 the society published its first book, Art Education: A Canadian Perspective (Clark). A kit entitled the Art Advocacy Package was published and marketed across the province in 1997. The task of providing professional leadership across a territory as large as Ontario is formidable and, unlike provinces such as Saskatchewan and Alberta, Ontario’s Ministry of Education has never directly funded subject associations. The Ontario Society for Education through Art, therefore, has had to rely solely upon the time and expertise of volunteers in order to carry out its leadership mandate. Naturally, the fortunes of the society have fluctuated greatly over the past four decades both in terms of membership and finances. Briefly, during the 1980s a rival association simply called Impact appeared under the leadership of art consultants from the Waterloo County Board of Education. The fact that osea has continued to serve art teachers across the province is a credit to the tireless dedication of its executive and advisory boards throughout the past four decades.

unlimited potential and unfulfilled promise This archival retrospective of art education in Ontario from 1950 to 2000 has painted a picture of both unlimited potential and unfulfilled promise. The immediate postwar decade ushered in a time of genuine optimism and confidence across the province; indeed, one can justifiably look back at the 1950s as the golden era of Ontario art education. At the epicentre of change both within Ontario and across Canada stood Charles Dudley Gaitskell, whose curricular philosophy and political leadership continue to inspire and challenge the field of art education. The study has also noted the invaluable support provided by local boards of education during the 1970s and 1980s and the con-

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tinuous thread of professional service provided by the Ontario Society for Education through Art. Given the dominance of Ontario within the wider Canadian landscape over the past fifty years, one might have confidently predicted a similar role for the province within art education. This archival study has shown, however, that Ontario failed to reach its potential despite a promising burst of activity during the Gaitskell years; in fact, one would be hard pressed to name any subsequent provincial art educator of Gaitskell’s stature despite the passage of almost half a century. What factors can be identified from the archival record to account for Ontario’s dismal overall performance in the field of art education? I believe that two overarching factors emerge from the record: a systemic disdain for subject specialization, and an absence of scholarly activity. In both instances, responsibility for Ontario’s lacklustre role appears to reside within the postsecondary tier of education, primarily at the University of Toronto and secondarily at the Ministry of Education. The archival record shows that when these two institutions stopped supporting subject specialization and scholarly activity during the 1960s, art education declined; by comparison, provinces such as British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Quebec, which opted to continue promoting specialization and scholarly activity, acquired leadership roles that have continued to strengthen and dominate the field over the past four decades. Specifically, the decline in Ontario’s leadership in art education can be traced to the University of Toronto’s imposition of provincewide graduate programs focused on the study of generic curriculum theory rather than subject specializations, such as art education. I believe that this particular event, more than any other, triggered Ontario’s decline into mediocrity for the following reasons. First, it relegated specialization in school subjects to a position of inferiority in relation to other areas of graduate study; educators seeking career advancement, whether administrative or supervisory, completed advanced degrees that seldom provided any insight into subject content or skills. Educators determined to acquire subject specializations had no alternative but to study in other provinces or the United States, perhaps never returning to their posts in Ontario. Compounding this problem was the related disappearance of subject specialists working within the Ministry of Education and local boards of education. By the late 1980s the ministry no longer maintained a single education officer responsible for art, or arts, education; a decade

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later, most boards of education had followed suit. This decimation of art specialists during the 1990s restricted in-service and scholarly activities at the very time when new provincial guidelines were introduced from kindergarten to grade twelve. It may be argued that the decline in Ontario’s leadership within art education is too multifaceted to be primarily ascribed to a single event such as the University of Toronto’s disdain for subject specializations at the graduate level. In light of the hierarchical nature of education, however, any paradigm at the top sets into motion a lock-step sequence of expectations and behaviours at lower levels of the overall enterprise. I believe that until one of Ontario’s faculties of education rises in support of subject specialization, the fate of art education will be one of continued unfulfilled promise.

Recto Running Head

10 The Electronic Era: Radio and Television School Art Broadcasts in Canada bill zuk and robert dalton

introduction In Canada, school broadcasts began with the support of local radio stations in the 1920s and developed under the auspices of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which was created in 1936. A strong presence, the cbc was instrumental in guiding and developing school and television art programming through the 1940s and into the 1970s. Radio art broadcasts reached a peak in the 1970s. Television was first instituted in Canada in 1952 and emerged in the latter part of the radio era. Radio audiences began to decline, especially child listeners, many of whom were attracted to television programming. Even though radio art broadcasts waned in the 1980s, they were still available in audiotaped form through some school broadcast divisions and media centres. Over the past three decades the provinces have assumed greater responsibility for developing educational programming, and with the advent of microwave stations, cablevision networks, satellite communications, and the Internet, a greater range of options has become available to pave the way for the development of mass media in art education. Our research into the history of radio and television school broadcasting was guided by a set of questions that dealt with the origin of programs, the nature of their content, the role they played, and their

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contributions to art education. We examined personal correspondence, manuals, and books, and we also took the opportunity to bring some facts to life by interviewing people who were active in preparing scripts or providing leadership. The following questions were posed: When did radio and television school broadcasts begin and how did they develop in Canada? Where did they originate and how extensive were they across the nation? What was their content? What role did art broadcasts play and how influential were they in contributing to art education in Canada?

the radio broadcast era Early Broadcasting Radio broadcasts for schools first began in Manitoba according to Lambert (1962) when the Teachers’ Federation experimented with after-hour school presentations in 1925. Other initiatives soon followed. Rainsberry (1988) notes that a local radio station in Vancouver, British Columbia, in cooperation with the Vancouver School Board, presented programs for children on Friday evenings in 1926. These included songs, educational games, and helpful lessons for teachers. Nova Scotia earned the reputation of having the longest continuous system of local school broadcasts in the nation beginning in 1928 and lasting approximately fifty years. Alberta was soon to follow, beaming radio broadcasts into classrooms in 1929 according to Lyseng (1978). In 1931 the Saskatchewan Government Correspondence School began to broadcast a daily series of lessons covering various high-school courses. This continued until 1935–36 when government funding was curtailed as a result of widespread crop failure. Prior to World War ii, the Ontario Department of Education’s attitude towards school broadcasts was not very positive. According to Lambert, this left local schools on their own. However, Central Collegiate pioneered radio broadcasting in 1937, and in 1942 the Ontario Education Association passed a resolution in favour of school broadcasting. Attempts to extend the reach of these broadcasts, however, sometimes met with difficulty. When a “Heroes of Canada” series was developed and Quebec was invited to air the program, the province promptly rejected it on the basis that it included stories of the United Empire Loyalists. On a national level, there was some disagreement about how broad-

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casting was to be developed in certain jurisdictions. For instance, the National Advisory Council on School Broadcasting included two representatives from the Quebec Department of Education, one Catholic and the other Protestant. However, the Ministry of Education in Quebec never accepted the invitation of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to use its facilities or to participate in the provision of national school broadcasts. The Protestant division was permitted to ask cbc and the Quebec Department of Education to arrange for broadcasts to be aired over English-language stations. Postsecondary institutions stepped in to provide leadership. Radio College was established in 1941 under the auspices of the Universities of Laval and Montreal. Their programs served as a supplement to the high-school curriculum. No school programs were provided for Newfoundland until it joined Confederation in 1949, at which time the cbc extended its programs to the newly created province. While early broadcast experiments and developments prior to 1946 were not dedicated to art to any large extent, they provided a solid foundation for the planning and preparation of programs to come. A National Vision School art broadcasts began under the educational direction of the cbc in 1942. The corporation sought input from a wide range of groups and organizations including the Canadian Education Association, which consisted of administrators, school superintendents, and deputy ministers of education from the ten provinces. This set the stage for the formation of the National Advisory Council on School Broadcasting. It consisted of representation from audio-visual departments within the provincial ministries of education and input from various professional groups such as the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, Home and School and Parent Associations, the Canadian School Trustees’ Association, and the Confederation of Canadian Universities and Colleges. The National Advisory Council on School Broadcasting was to be used as an instrument for coordinating programming, as well as screening and refining ideas for development to form a national agenda. Achieving cooperation at both provincial and national levels was a constant concern; the use of printed materials for teachers and pictorial material for students contributed to increasing the value of programs and preparing children to visualize a Canadian way of life. The cbc was

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generally able effectively to guide and coordinate radio programming across Canada. On 13 April 1943 (Lambert 1962), a school radio conference was held in Regina for Department of Education representatives, members of the Teachers’ Federation, and managers of privately owned radio stations in the province to consider joint involvement of the four western provinces. These early initiatives were responsible for providing a framework that would ensure quality development of school art broadcasts in the coming years. School Art Broadcasts The first set of radio art broadcasts was prepared and presented by the Radio College in Quebec in 1941. Their titles were “Sculpture,” directed by Gerard Morrissant, and “Architecture,” directed by Jules Bazin. Some school art broadcasts were aired under the auspices of the cbc in 1943 and were titled “The Adventures of Canadian Painting.” An early and successful series of school art broadcasts called “It’s Fun to Draw” was developed in 1946 in Manitoba by Betty McLeish, an art educator at the University of Manitoba who directed programs for many years. Four years later it was introduced to Alberta as a shared Western Regional series. The programs were popular and characterized by simple conversation, music, and dramatizations based on fairytales or poetry. Their contents were summarized as follows: Programs often contain an imaginative introduction to the particular medium or technique to be used and a practice session in that medium. Each program contains suggestions regarding the different elements of visual creation, including form, colour, space, pattern and texture. These considerations are introduced immediately after the dramatic selection and then further suggestions are made at intervals during the musical passages which follow. These comments are made in such a way as to coincide with the progress of the students as they begin to work and slow starters are especially kept in mind. The original programs were broadcast with children working right in the studio, and as a consequence the instructions are never far removed from the reality of the classroom situation. As mentioned earlier, every effort is made to free the teacher and give attention to the individual student as he responds to the broadcast. All of these elements, drama, music, sound effects and instruction combined with the personal attention of the teacher create an effective and enjoyable creative and learning situation which would be impossible to duplicate with classroom resources alone.1

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A continuation of comments in the manual is included as a way of dealing with learning outcomes and extended activities. This was initiated by the radio-and-classroom teacher in discussing completed pictures. Suggestions regarding the artwork should show an imaginative approach, consideration of the whole page, good colour combinations and contrasts, interesting background areas, a sensitive feeling for the subject, expression of mood, a suggestion of pattern and texture, etc. There were also follow-up suggestions: “Research undertaken before the use of the program and creative ideas stimulated by the program frequently result in sustained interest in the topic. Some suggestions for follow-up topics have been given and imaginative teachers will think of ways to extend interest into other subject areas such as Creative English, Creative Movement, Music or Social Studies.”2 Content Analysis Some of the resource materials gathered for our research called for a content analysis that allowed us to systematically identify provinces, personnel, schedules, and specific characteristics of programs as well as make inferences about their nature. Our analysis was based on a broad selection of manuals and booklets from the 1950s through the 1980s.3 We developed a coding system to identify themes and then interpreted the data (shown in Table 1). A majority of provinces are included in this analysis. To balance our coverage, Alberta, Quebec, and Ontario are acknowledged in the following section dealing with the television era. Radio Art Broadcasts Table 1 indicates the systematic way in which programming was scheduled. It corresponded with the school year, was slotted into regular half-hour weekly spots, and was coordinated with broadcasts from other subject areas. Greater emphasis appeared to be placed on programming in the lower grades where the goal was to establish a solid foundation of art education. Many of the broadcasts were contributed either by one individual or a variety of script writers. Obvious to us in examining scripts was the meticulous and detailed way in which they were prepared. After listening to numerous audiotapes, we found the broadcasts lively and entertaining with sound effects, poetry, and music accompanying dramatizations. Each presentation was self-

Year

Province/Program Title/Grade/Schedule/ Script Writers

Materials

Community

226

Table 10.1 Content Analysis of Radio Art Broadcasts

Season

Holiday Integration

Heritage

Portrait

Other (Titles)

1953–54 (Gr. 1–3). Friday 2:00 pm, 2:30 pm

“Let’s Make Pictures” Prepared by Sinclair Healy, Provincial Teachers College, New Brunswick

1954–55 (Gr. 1–3). Friday, 2:00 , 2:30 pm

“It’s Fun to Draw”. Prepared by Prof. Eric Dodd, Nova Scotia College of Art.

*Numbers refer to number of programs in that category

1* Where We Live

2 - Changes: Summer to Winter

4

2 - Art with Descriptive Poetry

2 Hunting, Traffic Safety

1 References to Edouard Manet - Rainy Day (Les Parapluies)

3

2 - Poetry Lewis Carroll “Through the Looking Glass” - Design to Music

5 - Street Car - Going to Church - Puppet making - Ocean - Circus

From Drawing to Visual Culture

Atlantic School Broadcasts 1953–55 prepared for New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island & Newfoundland.

Table 10.1

(Continued)

Year

Province/Program Title/Grade/Schedule/ Script Writers

1969–70 Division 2&3 (Ages 1–14) Alternate Wed. 2– 2:30 pm, Oct.–May.

Young Saskatchewan Looks and listens. “It’s Fun to Draw”. Prepared by a variety of script writers (some not identified ). George Steggles, U. of Manitoba. Dr Helen Diemert, U. of Alberta.

1 1 Using a Variety of Materials

2 1 - Growing Things from Seeds - Green Is the Colour of Spring

1 Gypsies - Poetry & Art

2 2 Costumes - Settlers Fish Kites - Japan

6 - Junka Bird - Banners - Rockets - Noah’s Ark - Gulliver’s Travels - Eye in the Sky

1970–71 Alternate Wed. October– May. 2:03– 2:30 pm.

Manitoba School Broadcasts. “It’s Fun to Draw”. Director, Elizabeth McLeish, U. of Manitoba. Script writers: Bill Zuk, Betty MacRae, Betty Holmes, Nancy Noonan, George Steggles, Gwen Parker, Fred Yeo, Nadia Kostyshyn

4 1 - Using Rodeo Own Materials - Wooden Wonders - Hats - Rhythm Instruments

1 1 Magic of Winter

1 Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll

3 - Happy Occasions - Mosaics First Nations

3 - Creations - Volcanoes - Highways

Materials

Community

Season

Holiday Integration

Heritage

Portrait

Other (Titles)

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Year 1981–82

Province/Program Title/Grade/Schedule/ Script Writers

Materials

Community

1 - Draw with Strips of Paper

2 2 - Fun of - Spring the Fair - Autumn - The City

*Numbers refer to number of programs in that category

Season

Holiday Integration 3

Heritage

3 1 - Lewis Carroll - Brothers Grimm Jorinda & Jorindel - Sleeping Beauty -Hans Christian Andersen The Tinder Box

Portrait

Other (Titles) 8 - Near & Far - View through a Window - Caves - Volcanoes - Jungles - UFOs Monsters/ Mysterious beasts - Warm to Hot Cool to Cold

From Drawing to Visual Culture

Provincial Education Media Centre, Richmond British Columbia. “Pictures in the Air”. Twenty 30–minute audiotapes. Prepared by Michael Foster, University of British Columbia.

228

Table 10.1 (Continued)

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contained, creative, and highly individualistic. Some promoted holiday and seasonal themes while others were sensitive to integrating art with “other” subjects. For example, art and design were integrated with music through a project illustrating Hans Christian Andersen’s stories, Grimm’s fairytales, or Lewis Carroll’s poetry. Given the limitations and character of radio broadcasts, imagination was often stimulated by stories, music, and sound effects. Many of the programs were eclectic and seemed to defy categorization, falling into what we called other interest areas, some of which were crafts. While the programs were lively and creative, there was no serious attempt to link topics or themes with one another in terms of sequencing learning experiences or giving attention to important concepts stated as objectives or learning outcomes. A great deal of attention was given to building art vocabulary and knowledge of design fundamentals as well as developing skills with a variety of materials and processes. However, there were few references to the history of art, master artists, or developing critical inquiry, all of which are basic components in art education today. It may be unfair to compare the radio broadcast curriculum with contemporary art education approaches that are comprehensive and diverse. However, by comparing past with present practice, we gained a sense of change and insight into how revitalization in art programs has occurred. In our research, few studies revealed the influence and contribution of radio art broadcasts to art education. However, Forbes (1951) noted that in observations of numerous classes in country schools in Alberta, both teachers and students appeared to benefit greatly from presentations and in most cases artwork completed by children during radio broadcasts was superior to the outcome of lessons guided solely by teachers. When asked to provide commentary about broadcasts, teachers frequently suggested that narrators talked excessively and created too many ideas for children to visualize.

the school television broadcast era At a meeting of the National Advisory Council on School Broadcasting in 1951, the cbc declared that it would lead the way in experimenting with educational television in Toronto and Montreal. Lambert (1962), the first cbc supervisor of school broadcasts from 1943 to 1960, was aware of a degree of dissatisfaction with federal infringement of constitutional authority in educational matters. When the

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future of television use in Canadian schools was considered at a 1961 conference on school broadcasting, Lambert advised that the success of school radio was based on cooperation with the provinces and that if this success was to be repeated it had to be approached with sensitivity. However, a major obstacle associated with television was the enormous technical and production costs, which were as much as five times the cost of radio. These concerns led to the establishment of the Council of Ministers of Education across Canada, which became instrumental in coordinating and developing television programs as a form of enrichment (Rainsbury 1986). The cooperation of the National Film Board was also enlisted and in order to reach large audiences in distant or remote locations, it was recommended that broadcasts be distributed by means of microwave stations or recorded on video and then distributed to outlets beyond the range of microwave towers. Manitoba and Nova Scotia were the first provinces to receive funding for experiments in television programming, but the cbc eventually made a commitment to provide for a full year of support of its national telecasts in 1962–63 and continued with its initiatives until 1982. Rainsberry (1986) posits that Nova Scotia’s attempts to teach directly by television had mixed results and that even in the face of teacher shortages there was no substitute for a specialist art teacher. Both Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick responded to the need for television in classrooms by developing media centres and requiring films and video materials for school or school district libraries to meet school needs. When the first regular television series was introduced in Newfoundland, it was slow to develop. Radio broadcasting continued to be a strong communication force in this outlying province. Television Art Broadcasts Some of the first televised school art broadcasts in Canada were cbc productions developed in cooperation with the National Gallery of Ottawa under the guidance of Alan Jarvis, who was then its director. A 1957 series called The Things We See was based on a set of art texts published in England. A 1957 excerpt from the cbc Times indicates that Jarvis was a dedicated studio artist who did demonstrations of drawing, cartooning, and clay modelling on camera. Insights into his thoughts are revealed in the following comments: “Fundamentally, art is a way of seeing rather than of doing or making, and the first tele-

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casts will be programs about seeing with fresh eyes ... My idea is still, rather than elevating public taste, to increase people’s enjoyment in looking at everything from industrial design, and finally the fine arts – painting, drawing, sculptures” (cited in Rainsberry 1988, 101). Jarvis’s comments point to the importance of perception and understanding how many of the things we see and experience are central to developing an appreciation of life around us. Content Analysis of Television Broadcasts A content analysis of Table 2 provides insight into development and change during the television broadcast era in Canada. Several things are notable such as the overlapping nature of radio and television programming and coproduction of programs outside regular schedules. For instance, the guidebook for the 1969–70 series “Young Saskatchewan Looks and Listens” lists both radio and television programs, indicating a transitional phase in the broadcast era as radio declined and television took root. The number of coproduced programs is also noteworthy. Table 2 shows that programming in both Alberta and Saskatchewan was part of a Western Regional series on which the cbc and the provinces worked together and shared costs. While script writers for the television programs consisted of both individuals and groups, greater cooperation, program diversity, and special interest appeal was evident especially in the four-program series “Art Galleries and Museums” and the nature series “The Way I See,” a cbc Western Regional series originating in Alberta. The special Quebec-prepared series called “Intégration” is noteworthy because of its emphasis on the holistic development of the child at the primary level. Finally, Table 2 shows that programs were available outside regular schedules and could be viewed or purchased in video format. The Alberta Access Network video catalogue with its “Human Growth” series is typical of developments occurring in other provinces where teachers and parents, for example, had the opportunity to prescreen or view broadcasts outside their regular scheduling. Alberta and Saskatchewan: Individual Ventures Highlights of television school broadcasts and their developments are worth noting in several provinces. Radio broadcasts were part of a

232

Table 10.2 School Art Television Broadcasts

Year

Province/Program Title/ Grade/Schedule/Script Writers

1969–70 Division 1 (Gr. 1–3). Mondays 10–10:30 am, April–May (repeated)

Young Saskatchewan Looks and Listens. School Broadcast, Dept. of Education, Regina, Saskatchewan with cbc. Busy Brown Cottage. Primary craft series. Prepared by Marlene Taylor, Dept. of Education, Regina, Saskatchewan.

- Paper Laminating - Box Sculpture - Stitchery - Paper Bag Animals

Division 2 (Gr. 4–6) Alternate Fridays, 10:00 – 10:30 am

Adventures in Art. Prepared by John Cawood, University of Victoria. School Broadcast Section, Department of Education, Regina, sk with cbc.

-

1974–75 cbc tv Alberta series (Gr. 4–6 and up).

Alberta School Broadcasts. Creative Hands. Prepared by Murray MacDonald Dr Helen Diemert, Dr Bernard Schwartz, Dr Jim Simpson Jr, and Evelyn Blakeman. This group of art educators also produced

- Drawing for Information – Jim Simpson, Supervisor of Arts Edmonton Public Schools. - Drawing for Expression – Jim Simpson. - Painting a Watercolour – Murray MacDonald, University of Alberta. - Painting without Brushes – Murray MacDonald, University of Alberta. Printmaking Part 1 – Dr Bernard Schwartz, University of Alberta Part 2

Content Description

From Drawing to Visual Culture

Fine Art Workshops Making Kites Drawing People Exploring Dreams Exploring the Arts Family Making Puppets

Table 10.2

(Continued)

Year Nov. 14– Apr. 10 Alternate Thursdays, 10:00– 10:30 am

Province/Program Title/ Grade/Schedule/Script Writers

Content Description

Another series of different programs in 1975–76.

- Sculpture - Fabrics

Part 1 – Evelyn Blakeman, Queen Mary Park School, Edmonton, Alberta. Part 1 Dyeing – Dr Helen Diemert, University of Calgary Part 2 Macramé

1978–79 cbc tv (Gr. 4–6) Dec. 14 – May

10 programs to develop a sensitivity to the processes and forms of nature. Encourages students to observe, describe, and analyze phenomena and to use this information in image making. Uses spectacular nature photography and an artist-in residence to help students use information to create expressive and communicative forms using a variety of materials. - Introduction - Plants - Birds - Camouflage Patterns - Fishy Shapes and Forms - Animals - Reptiles -Land Forms - Weather - Micro and Macrocosms

Alberta School Broadcast Guide to Television The Way I See 10

233

4 programs that take students on a tour of major museums and galleries in the western provinces: - Royal bc Museum, Victoria, bc - Provincial Museum of Alberta, Edmonton, ab - Norman Mackenzie Gallery, Regina, sk - Mennonite Village Museum, Steinbach, mb

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1975–76 Teacher Guide to Television cbc tv Alberta School Broadcasts Western Art Galleries and Museums Regional Series (Grades 5–6) Jan. 28– Feb. 14 Wednesday 10:00–10:30 am

234

Table 10.2 (Continued)

Year

Province/Program Title/ Grade/Schedule/Script Writers

Content Description

Alberta Access Network Video Catalogue (Est. 1972) Human Growth series

Demonstrates influence of parents and others. Caring for preschoolers. Each program focuses on an activity familiar to the small child, linked to normal stages of maturity. All about 7 minutes in length - Finger painting - Drawing - Sculpture - Ways of Looking at Children’s Art

1977 Gr. 1–2

Quebec Ministry of Education La Service Générale de Moyens d’Ensignment Intégration

8 kits developed around a central theme that considers wholistic development: Moi Moi, Nous – becoming aware of social qualities and the neighbourhood. Zazi, Zazou – interdependence of elements of nature to stimulate scientific inquiry. Philidor – how gifts are made, given, received, or exchanged. Le Noveau Roi – fancy dress, disguise, masquerade, and the theatre arts with emphasis on self-expression, interpersonal communication, and dramatic art. • Communication – interpersonal communication moving from self-concern to social language and gesture. • Le Moyens de Transport – reliving and participating in incredible conquests of time, distance, and air through transportation. • Les Animaux Familiers – Care and responsibility of pets, developing the theme to its fullest meaning in terms of social, moral, and political responsibility. • Les Abris – exploring the theme of shelter and habitat with consideration of and for security and territoriality. • • • •

From Drawing to Visual Culture

1986–87 Video Producer and Distributor

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shared Western Regional series called “It’s Fun to Draw” from 1950 onwards in Alberta. Another significant initiative was a ten-part cbc television series called “Creative Hands,” which went into production in 1962 and ran for fourteen years until 1976. Some of these programs were reruns, some were new. A summary of the 1974–75 schedule is outlined in Table 2. Booklets were prepared as a guide for teachers and students viewing the series on television or on videotape. Slides were also available to teachers in later programming. The guidebook for the series outlines clear purposes and objectives for each program, gives details for promoting discussion prior to the program, indicates a comprehensive list of materials, and provides suggestions for guiding students during their work and after the program. Various television series went into production in Alberta including “Junior Studio” in 1968 and “Studio West” in 1972, which was part of another Western Regional series broadcast on cbc. In the 1975–76 season, a four-part presentation noted in the Alberta School Broadcasts Teacher Guide to Television was devoted to art galleries and museums, taking students on a tour of facilities where history and art “came alive.”4 The museum and gallery program provided insights into the attractions and operations of the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, Provincial Museum of Alberta in Edmonton, Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, and the Mennonite Village Museum in Steinbach, Manitoba (see Table 2). Alberta was one of the provinces that exerted great independence in producing television art broadcasts. This is evident in the Access Network Video Catalogue, mentioned above, which lists a series on teacher education coproduced by Access Network and the Visual Arts Branch of Alberta Culture in 1983. The three fifteen-minute videos titled “Children and the Visual Arts” are designed to “encourage parents to develop attitudes that will inspire confidence in their children, enabling them to develop and express their own unique individuality.”5 Visual awareness through role playing takes children on journeys in the indoors and outdoors. An ambitious ten-part television series called “Encounters” released by Access Network in 1986 and produced by Dr Bernard Schwartz at the University of Alberta prides itself on being an innovative program for upper elementary grades. Each thirty-minute program consists of three separate but related modules in seeing, discovering, and doing, with self-contained units offering the option of altering program order. The modules can be shown singly or collectively in various sequences.

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A teacher’s guide that accompanies the videos is designed to support the Alberta elementary art curriculum. A description in a promotional flyer provides details: The Encounter module, the first part, is a fast-paced visual essay, somewhat like a rock video. It introduces viewers to the program’s theme. The Explore module slows the pace down and encourages viewers to look at their world and the world of art. This part shows how art and sources of ideas for art can be found in the natural and built environments and in art itself. The Express module, the last part, aims to motivate viewers to create their own artworks as well as to respond to art based on the ideas presented in the other modules. Here the artist-teacher synthesizes reasons for creating art, subject matter and themes, media, tools, techniques and visual design in demonstrations including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, collage, fabric arts, photography and mixed-media.6

British Columbia Shares Its Talents Another series that provided insight into script preparation and television presentation was the “Adventures in Art” series developed by John Cawood from the University of Victoria, also shown in Table 2. John’s career as an art educator straddled the eras of radio and television school broadcasting and he was committed to its excellence. He developed the radio broadcasts “Pictures in the Air” for the British Columbia Department of Education. Produced over a two-year period 1970–72, they were aired repeatedly in 1974–75. Cawood also developed television programs that were commissioned first by the Saskatchewan Department of Education in 1967 and then jointly by the Saskatchewan and Manitoba Departments of Education in the “Adventures in Art” series from 1965 to 1975. In a résumé John explains why he has worked in both radio and television with such dedication: “My efforts to bring radio (produced then in Manitoba) and television (produced in Saskatchewan) together for the first time was so that programming could be presented in such a way that a classroom teacher using both would be provided with a coherent art experience spread throughout the whole school year (on which to base a well developed art program for the children in her classroom).7 John’s charisma, well-conceived philosophy, and meticulous care and detail in writing scripts attracted a great deal of interest among studio producers and earned invitations for return assignments. His

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“Making Mobiles” program won a top international award in Columbus, Ohio, for best educational television. John Cawood’s philosophy about drawing is worth noting. He begins with the assumption “that creative activity is the result of mental innovation rather than visual imitation” and goes on to speak about drawing as a form of communication in a drawing script: It is well known that drawing is developed at a very early age as a natural and spontaneous form of visual communication – communication first with the self, and second, communication with other persons ... It is this visual form of expression which beautifully combines the mind, the hand, and the eyes in the definition and resolution of ideas, emotional states and abstract values, some of which cannot as adequately, if at all, be stated in words.8

There were definite advantages in having an art educator such as John Cawood refine and hone his abilities and skills in both radio and television. The electronic era benefited greatly from his professional dedication. British Columbia expanded its involvement with television by developing a Provincial Media Education Centre, which became a distributor of videos and films in fine arts and other subject areas. Other developments included public education television known as the Knowledge Network that carried a variety of art programs, some for the Open Learning Institute and Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver. Their art courses were developed for postsecondary education and distance learning. Ontario: Breaking the Mould of Dependency The Ontario Education Television Committee was established in 1958 on the advice of the Ontario School Trustees Council, which wanted an evaluation of national educational broadcasting. That eventually led to the creation of the Ontario Educational Television Association in 1961. Plans for creating an educational television section within the Ontario Ministry of Education were also announced. Licensing for an Education Television (etv) channel was turned down by federal authorities in 1966 on the basis that broadcasting was a federal responsibility. However, later that year, a White Paper on broadcasting stated that there was a need to adapt to technological change, and a new branch for etv was established in Ontario. A new definition of

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educational broadcasting allowed provincial governments to supervise learning opportunities provided by etv and to broadcast special educational events or course information developed within its system. Program production within the etv branch of the Ontario Department of Education expanded from 150 programs in 1966 to 522 in 1970 (Rainsberry 1986). Small-format videotape libraries were established in 1970. Videotape resources moved from a supplementary to a core resource in schools. Dubbing facilities in schools allowed wide distribution of the three thousand programs produced by 1973 and television resource teachers were also available in Ontario secondary schools. Cable channels were approved in 1976. tv Ontario gained wide respect for its many visual art programs, notably those dealing with master artists in Canada and a series called “Artscape” designed for preteens. According to Rainsberry, the program can be described as a creative shift from the didactic mode of instruction to one that takes the viewer on an imaginative journey: Artscape carries viewers to a wondrous fantasy land where visual arts reign supreme. This tv Ontario series for preteens promotes the discovery of the joys of artistic self-expression through perception, understanding, and creation of art at home and at school. Artscape demystifies art concepts such as line, shape, form, pattern, texture, colour, and perspective. The series’ protagonists – Craig and Tracy – are swept into Artscape through a painting in an art gallery, at the urging of an audio guide that soon proves to have a mind of its own. Tracy and Craig must use their wits, senses, and talent – in short, think art – to find their way back to the gallery. On their magical, musical journey back home, Craig and Tracy develop their senses of artistic expression through numerous adventures and encounters with the fantastic, and often humorous, residents of Artscape. These characters introduce the children to works by Canadian and international artists, as well as the work of children and native artisans. (Rainsberry 1988, 102)

School television broadcasts expanded enormously in Ontario and Alberta, the two provinces leading the way in the electronic era of art education. Quebec: Exercising Independence The late flowering of national television broadcasting in Quebec can be attributed to several circumstances according to Rainsberry (1986),

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principally the indifference of the cbc French division, and a lack of interest in some provinces with small francophone populations. However, when curriculum preparation and planning of television production came under the control of the Quebec Ministry of Education and its centre, La Service Générale de Moyers d’Ensignment, a wide range of experimentation became noticeable. The most significant project, entitled “Intégration,” was developed in 1977 for grades one and two. It was produced for use with video cassette, film, and television components. The program was heralded as a way of bringing together subjects in the curriculum that were tightly prescribed and separate from one another to foster the creative and holistic growth and development of the child. It was meant as a diversion from the emphasis on didactic teaching. Attention was put on individualized instruction and continuous evaluation. Multimedia resources contained the following: •

•

•

•

•

thirty-minute film (16mm/8mm) to stimulate children’s interest in social situations that form part of their experience; five-minute film focusing on a single concept or experience to aid comprehension, e.g., neighbourhood, nature, costume, communication (social language and gesture), transportation, pets, shelter; transparent acetates to allow children to express visual ideas in response to what they had seen – some sketched samples are available as a resource; audiotape to cultivate listening skills and to help students imagine a situation as it is being described; record or disc of songs/short dramatic vignettes.

The multimedia learning approach is summarized by the project organizers in Rainsberry 1986. “Intégration” provided the foundation for development of a further series. At the provincial level, broadcasts of both French and English programs were negotiated with cbc French division but the relationship continued to be uneasy because of bilingual and bicultural issues, which persist in Canada to this day.

summary Every generation has its heroes and the electronic era of school art broadcasts has its share. They include Sinclair Healy and Eric Dodd in the Maritimes who introduced radio broadcasts to classrooms, and

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Marlene Taylor of Saskatchewan who pioneered television programs. Also notable is the contribution of Betty McLeish of Manitoba who expertly directed successful radio broadcasts for many years with cbc support. There are Michael Foster and John Cawood of British Columbia, who dedicated years of their professional careers in art education to support the flowering of the electronic era. Whether it was the pioneering interprovincial cooperation of script writers in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and elsewhere, or the later-blooming provinces of Ontario and Quebec as they launched programs independently, art education benefited greatly from the combined efforts of many people and their imaginative and diverse points of view. Both radio sounds and voices and television images and personalities were instrumental in changing the way art education instruction was delivered in Canada. While the radio era provided some evidence of influence and contribution in rural schools, the full extent of the contribution of television school broadcasts is as yet difficult to ascertain.

Recto Running Head

10 Afterword harold pearse

The preceding chapters have laid the groundwork not only for a greater understanding of art education as a field in Canada but also for asking further questions and suggesting new research. For example, is there anything indigenous to art education in Canada? Has anything originated here and been transferred elsewhere? What more can be discovered or inferred about the impact of national associations of artists and art educators and those venerable national institutions, the National Film Board and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation? What has been the cumulative effect of art teacher education programs and policies in each of the provinces? What role has been played by native peoples in terms of both influence and recognition? What stories can individual art teachers and administrators tell about their experiences in particular schools, districts, or provinces? How will future historians interpret the trends and practices of the late twentieth century and what will be the place and role of art education in Canadian schools in the twenty-first century? Responses to these questions and others will further contribute to the multifaceted story that is the history of Canadian art education. In some small way, this history serves to illuminate the sensibility that defines Canadian identity. That identity, says Northrop Frye (1971, 220), is a response not so much to the question “‘who are we?’, but to the real riddle we are pursuing: ‘where is here’”? The description of location is enlarged somewhat by this sketch of the art

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education landscape up to the late twentieth century. It shows how forces and interests from both within and outside of school systems have shaped art education – sometimes expanding and enhancing, sometimes diminishing. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, perhaps even more than ever, many interest groups, including parents, as well as elected bodies are expressing a special interest in schools and schooling. It is perhaps paradoxical, but not surprising, that in times of rapid societal change and uncertainty special interest groups and governments tend to embrace traditional methods of schooling, rigid practices, and financial restraint. Other groups and parents think that schools are one-dimensional soulless places and that government support for art education (increasingly spoken of in terms of “arts education”) is not adequate. They are looking elsewhere for financial support and stimulation. Groups and projects such as “ArtsSmarts” and “Learning through the Arts,” initiated by national arts organizations and funded by private foundations, step in to fill the gap. “ArtsSmarts,” launched in 1998 by the Canadian Conference of the Arts, “promotes the active participation of young people in the arts” through “activities that incorporate the arts into all aspects of a child’s education” (Scott 2003, 13). The media, lacking any historical knowledge or perspective about art education, tout these isolated arts integration projects that bring in artists to work with classroom teachers and children as “new” and innovative” (Ferguson 2003). Children in selected schools get the benefit of an “arts infused” and enriched curriculum and school boards sidestep the issue of employing arts specialist teachers. At the same time, a broad and representative group of arts educators from across the country have come together under the banner of the National Symposium on Arts Education to articulate guidelines to provide a direction for arts education in Canada and describe a vision for decision makers to implement. These policy guidelines and recommendations focus on arts education in the school, addressing a number of dimensions: learning in, through, and about the arts; curriculum; culture and diversity; teachers and teacher education; resources; partnerships; research; and leadership. The complex dynamics that characterized the relations among art educators and artists, provincial and national governments, and a variety of individuals and organizations through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries continue to unfold. One hopes that an awareness and understanding of the history of art education in this country will help in the process of determining future directions.

Recto Running Head

1 Notes

chapter one 1 Founded in 1887, the name of the Victoria School of Art and Design (vsad) was changed in 1925 to the Nova Scotia College of Art (nsca) and in 1968 to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (nscad). In 2003 it was changed again to nscad University. 2 Quoted from the constitution of vsad, 1887. See Soucy and Pearse 1993, 14–15. 3 In 1897 a Manual Training Section of the Ontario Education Association was formed. James L. Hughes, a supervisor in the Toronto School Board and supporter of Jessie Semple’s art program, was an advocate (see Chapter 4). 4 For a list of approved curriculum resources for Alberta see Alberta School Curriculum Historical Bibliography 1885–1985, compiled by the Herbert T. Coutts Education and Physical Education Library, University of Alberta, accessible through the Web site: http://www.library.ualberta. ca/subject/education/bibliography/index.cfm. 5 McLennan’s Children’s Artist Friends (1931) includes two paintings by Tom Thomson (the only Canadian) and a short biography that extols his love of Ontario’s “wild northland” and of his mother, who “instilled into him in his boyhood high ideals of life which later found expression in his painting” (p. 1). The twenty-four other artists include, in addition to Rembrandt, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Da Vinci, the picture study

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7 8

9

10

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Notes to pages 15–31

favourites Millet, Carot, Landseer, Burne-Jones, and Millais. The only woman artist represented is Rosa Bonheur. Arthur Lismer wrote an article with the title, “Education through Art” ten years earlier. Herbert Read was knighted in 1953 and was thereafter known by art educators as Sir Herbert Read. Gaitskell died in November 1985 at the age of seventy-seven. The second edition (1970) was coauthored by the Boston-based art educator Al Hurwitz, presumably to make it more marketable to an American audience. A list of csea honorary members, honorary presidents, and presidents can be found at the back of any recent issue of the Canadian Review of Art Education: Research and Issues, the research journal of the Canadian Society for Education through Art, published twice annually. In Canada noncommercial public or private institutions that collect, preserve, and exhibit art are generally called “art galleries,” while in the United States they are called “art museums.” Contemporary educators who work in such Canadian institutions use the terms interchangeably (see Stephen 1997). Howard Gardner’s eight intelligences are: linguistic; logical-mathematical; visual-spatial; musical; bodily-kinesthetic; interpersonal; intrapersonal; and naturalist (see Gardner 1983 and 1993).

chapter two 1 J.C. Gallaway (1844), The claims of mechanics’ institutes, or, the importance of communicating literary, scientific and mechanical knowledge to the working classes: an introductory address delivered to the mechanics’ institute, Saint John, NB, November 27, 1843 by J.C. Gallaway: and published by the request of the directors. (Saint John, nb: R. Shives. Filmed from a copy of the original publication held by the Public Archives of Canada. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions #21944). 2 For example: J. Dallas (1865), A lecture on the aims and usefulness of mechanics’ institutes delivered on the opening of the Orillia Mechanics’ Institute, December 1864 (Barrie, on: D. Crew at the Advance Office, printer); W. Eales (1851), A lecture on the benefits to be derived from mechanics’ institutes: Delivered in the Toronto Mechanics’ Institute, February 5, 1851 (Toronto: J. Stephens); H.J. Friel (1855), Inaugural address at the opening of the winter course of lectures before the Ottawa mechanics’ Institute and Athenaeum, October 2, 1855 (Ottawa: Citizen. Filmed from a copy of the original publication, Canadian Institute for

Notes to pages 31–4

3

4

5 6 7

8 9

10

11

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Historical Microreproductions #52884); W. Inglis (1867), Our village and mechanics’ institute. A lecture by Rev. Walter Inglis, delivered March 26, 1867 before the mechanics’ institute of Kincardine (Kincardine, on: J. Lang Bruce Review Office); Mechanics’ Institute of Windermere (1885), “To the friends of literature and mental culture who frequent the Muskoka Lakes in summer.” Signed George Paton et al. (Provisional Committee of the Mechanics’ Institute of Windermere, Muskoka, Ontario. Dated 1 June. Printed ephemera from the Toronto Reference Library, Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions #52107); J. Young (1880), Address of James Young, Esq., M.P.P. president of the Association of Mechanics’ Institutes of Ontario (Toronto: Globe Printing, Filmed from a copy of the original publication held by the Archives of Ontario, Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions #17397). See also Vernon 1969; Judd 1976; Reilly 1994; and Robbins 1987. H.Y. Hind (1863), Eighty years’ progress of British North America: showing the development of its natural resources by the unbounded energy and enterprise of its inhabitants: given in a historical form, the improvements made in agriculture, commerce and trade, modes of travel and transportation, mining and educational interests, etc., etc., with a large amount of statistical information from the best and latest authorities. Toronto and London: L. Stebbins, S. Low, and Marston. P. 469. See the images, for example, in the photographic history by G.E. French, S. Murdock, and I. Perry, Barrie, a nineteenth century county town, edited by G. Dymond (Elmvale, on: East Georgian Bay Historical Foundation, 1984). Cited in W.A. Fisher (1987), The genesis of Barrie, 1783–1858, 67. (Barrie, on: W. Allen Fisher). Fisher 1987, 68. W.H. Smith (1846), Smith’s Canadian Gazetteer; comprising statistical and general information respecting all parts of the upper province or Canada West (Toronto: H. and W. Rowsell). Barrie Magnet (1848), 31 March, 3. Barrie Debating Club and the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute (1854–55), Minute book of the Barrie Debating Club January 16, 1854 to November 22, 1854 and the Mechanics’ Institute, November 22, 1854 to June 8, 1855 (Simcoe County Archives b3 r4a s1 sh5). Barrie Mechanics’ Institute (1871–84), Minute book of the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute, October 9, 1871 to November 27, 1884 (Simcoe County Archive b3 r4a s1 sh5). Cited in Kingston Daily News (1861), 8 January, 1.

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Notes to pages 34–8

12 Grand Lodge of Canada in the Province of Ontario (1999), “What is freemasonry?” http://www.grandlodge.on.ca/whatis.htm. 13 H. Belden (1881), Illustrated Atlas of the County of Simcoe, Ontario (Toronto: H. Belden). p. 9. 14 Barrie Debating Club and the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute (1854–55), Minute book of the Barrie Debating Club January 16, 1854 to November 22, 1855 and the Mechanics’ Institute, November 22, 1854 to June 8, 1855. (Simcoe County Archives b3 r4a s1 sh5), p. 9. 15 Toronto Mechanics’ Institute (1848), Toronto Mechanics’ Institute exhibition: An exhibition of specimens of art, new inventions and improvements, and samples of manufactures in general by mechanics, artisans and others, resident in Canada, will be held in the hall of the Institute, commencing on Monday 16th. of October and to be continued for two weeks (Printed ephemera from the Toronto Reference Library. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions #44604). 16 Northern Advance (1855), 2 May, 3. 17 J. Ardagh (1858), An address delivered before the County of Simcoe Mechanics’ Institute, Barrie, at the close of the session, May 21st. 1858 by John Ardagh (Barrie, on: J.H. Jones and J.H. Davies. Filmed from a copy of the original publication held by the Archives of Ontario. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions #50568, p. 18). 18 Ibid., 20 19 Board of Arts and Manufactures (1861), Journal of the Board of Arts and Manufactures for Upper Canada 1, p. 8. 20 Ibid., 11. 21 Ontario, Department of Education (1881), Special report of the Minister of Education on the mechanics’ institutes (Ontario), p. 12 (Toronto: C. Blackett Robinson. Printed by Order of the Legislative Assembly). 22 J.C. Hopkins (1912), Historical sketch of the Ontario Department of Agriculture (Reprinted from special supplement in The Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs [1910], p. 4). 23 By 1880 there were 117 mechanics’ institutes in Ontario: 1831: Toronto 1835: Kingston, Woodstock 1838: Niagara 1842: London, Paris 1846: Stratford 1849: Hamilton, Mitchell, St. Catherine’s, Whitby 1850: Belleville (re-established 1876), Simcoe, Vittoria 1853: Galt

Notes to pages 38–9 1854: 1855: 1856: 1857: 1859: 1860: 1865: 1867: 1868: 1869:

24

25

26 27 28

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Barrie, Smith’s Falls, Streetsville Aurora, Milton, Owen Sound Ayr, Collingwood, Ennotville, Newmarket Fergus Uxbridge Mt. Forest Kincardine, Orillia (re-established 1880) Brighton, Oshawa, Peterborough, Ottawa Bowmanville, Meaford, Merrickville, Thorold Brampton, Clinton (re-established 1879), Garden Island, Richmond Hill, Seaforth, St. Mary’s 1870: Bradford, Greenwood, Guelph, Hespeler, Port Elgin, Port Perry, Renfrew 1871: Elora, Grimsby, Preston 1872: Norwood, Strathroy, Wroxeter 1873: Durham, Harriston, Listowel, Parkhill, Schomberg 1874: Aylmer, Bracebridge, Brussels, Paisley, Port Hope, Sarnia, St. Thomas 1875: Pembroke, Walkerton, Waterloo, Welland 1876: Port Colborne, Thunder Bay, Wardsville, Wingham 1877: Ailsa Craig, Claude, Kemptville, Lucan, Norwich, Woodbridge 1878: Alexandria, Alliston, Arkona, Arthur, Chatham, Fenelon Falls, Markham, Napanee, Niagara Falls, Oakville, Orangeville, Penetanguishine, Picton, Prescott, Scarboro, Stouffville, Waterdown 1879: Bolton, Clarksburg, Exeter, Forest, Goderich, Lindsay, Petrolia, Point Edward, Ridgetown, St. George, Watford 1880: Georgetown, Huntsville, Midland, Parkdale, Tilsonburg, Wiarton Cited in Board of Arts and Manufactures (1862), Reply to address from the Hamilton Mechanics’ Institute to the governor-general (Journal of the Board of Arts and Manufactures for Upper Canada 2, p. 303). Board of Arts and Manufactures (1864), Mechanics’ institutes as educational institutions for the adult industrial classes (Journal of the Board of Arts and Manufactures for Upper Canada, 4 [February]: 33. Ontario, Department of Education (1881), Special Report of the Minister of Education on the Mechanics’ Institutes (Ontario), xi. Ibid., 55 Barrie Mechanics’ Institute (1871–84), Minute book of the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute, October 9, 1871 to November 27, 1884 (Simcoe County Archives b3 r4a s1 sh5).

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Notes to pages 39–42

29 Ontario, Department of Education (1881), Special Report of the Minister of Education on the Mechanics’ Institutes (Ontario), 69. 30 J. Hunter (1881a), “The intellectual life of Barrie,” Northern Advance, 31 March, p. 3. 31 J. Hunter (1881b), “Barrie Literary Society,” Northern Advance, 3 November, p. 3. 32 “Industrial art: the progress it is making in Ontario,” The Globe 46 (21 June 1890): 3. 33 O. Klotz (1881), A review of the special report of the Minister of Education on the mechanics’ institutes Ontario (Toronto: Willing and Williamson). 34 Barrie Mechanics’ Institute (1871–84), Minute book of the Barrie Mechanics’ Institute, October 16, 1884 (Simcoe County Archives b3 r4a s1 sh5). 35 I am grateful to Roy V. Shaw of Barrie, Ontario, for showing me examples and photographs of Shaw Brothers’ work and providing information about his grandfather and great uncle. 36 Northern Advance (1885), “Mechanics’ evening classes,” 15 October, p. 8. 37 Coldstream Mechanics’ Institute (1894), Catalogue of books in the Mechanics’ Institute Coldsteam, November 13, 1894 (filmed from a copy of the original publication. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions #39313). Goderich Mechanics’ Institute (1893), Catalogue of books in the Mechanics’ Institute Goderich Ontario (filmed from a copy of the original publication. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions #39250). Orillia Mechanics’ Institute (1891), Catalogue of books in the library of the Mechanics’ Institute, Orillia, revised April 1891 (Orillia, on: Times. Filmed from a copy of the original publication. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions #89106). Port Hope Mechanics’ Institute (1886), Library catalogue complete to July 1886 (Port Hope, on: G. Wilson). 38 Barrie Mechanics’Institute (1887), Catalogue of books, magazines, etc. in the library and reading room (Barrie, on: Gazette Steam Print House) filmed from a copy of the original publication held by the Toronto Reference Library. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions #89104), and (1891), Catalogue of books, magazines, etc. in the library and reading room (Barrie, on: Gazette Steam Print House. Filmed from a copy of the original publication held by the Toronto Reference Library. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions #89105). 39 For example: J. Callingham (1876), Sign writing and glass embossing: a

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complete practical illustrated manual of the art, to which are added numerous alphabets (Philadelphia: Henry, Carey, Baird); Cassell, Petter, and Galpin (1870), An encyclopedia of technical education (Cassell’s technical educator) (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin); E. Davidson (1860), Linear drawing: showing the application of practical geometry to trade and manufactures (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin), (1868a), Drawings for stonemasons. Containing a description of the construction of the subject of each study and the method of drawing it, with elementary lessons in freehand and object drawing, and a concise history of the art of masonry (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin), (1868b), Model drawing, containing the elementary principles of drawing from solid forms, the method of shading, and patterns for making drawing objects in cardboard (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin), (1868c), Orthographic and isometrical projection: development of surfaces and penetration of solids; with additional chapters and plates illustrative of traces, normals, tangent-points and tangent planes (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin), (1868d), Right lines in their right places, or the first principles of drawing and design without instruments (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin), (1870), The elements of practical perspective (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin), (1872), Drawings for bricklayers. Containing the constructive principles of brickwork and the method of drawing each subject together with the elements of freehand, object and plan drawing (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin), (1874), Gothic stonework: containing the history and principles of church architecture, and illustrations of the characteristic features of each period, the arrangement of ecclesiastical edifices, and a glossary of terms (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin), (1876), Drawings for machinists and engineers (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin); C. Dresser (1870), Principles of decorative design (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin); M.A. Gessert (1878), Rudimentary treatise on the art of painting on glass, or glass staining; comprising directions for preparing the pigments and fluxes, for laying them upon the glass, and for firing or burning in the colours (London: C. Lockwood); R. Hunt, ed. (1867), Ure’s dictionary of arts, manufactures, and mines containing a clear exposition of their principles and practice (London: Longmans, Green, and Co; W. Johnson (1854), The practical draughtsman’s book of industrial design and machinist’s and engineer’s drawing companion, forming a complete course of mechanical, engineering and architectural drawing (New York: Stringer and Townsend); D. Lardner (1851), Popular lectures on science and art; delivered in the principal cities and towns of the United States (New York: Greeley and McElrath).

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40 J. Ruskin (1865), Pre-Raphaelitism; notes on the construction of sheepfolds; the king of the golden river; or the black brothers, a legend of Stiria; Sesame and lilies: two lectures delivered at Manchester in 1864; an inquiry into some of the conditions at present affecting the study of architecture in our schools (New York: Wiley), (1870), Lectures on art delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 (Oxford: Clarendon), (1873), Fors Clavigera. Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain (London: Hazell, Watson and Viney), (1875), Lectures on architecture and painting, delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 (New York: J. Wiley), (1877), Mornings in Florence, being simple studies of Christian art. For English travelers (Orpington, Kent, uk: G. Allen), (1885a), Art culture: a handbook of art technicalities and criticisms (New York: Wiley), (1885b), Readings from Ruskin Italy (Boston: Chautauqua Press). 41 J. Ireland and J. Nicholas (1880), The works of William Hogarth (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent). 42 W. Whewell (1851), Inaugural lecture: the bearing of the great exhibition on the progress of art and science (London: Royal Society of Arts); E.L. Garbett (1850), Rudimentary treatise on the principles of design in architecture as deducible from nature and exemplified in the works of the Greek and Gothic architects (London: J. Weale); J. Gwilt (1867), Encyclopedia of architecture, historical, theoretical and practical (London: Longmans, Green); A. Lefèvre (1870), Marvels of architecture (Merveilles de l’architecture), translated by R. Donald (New York: Scribner); W.B. Tuthill (1881), Practical lessons in architectural drawing; or how to make the working drawings and write the specifications for buildings (New York: W.T. Cornstock); G. Whitewick (1846), Hints to young architects. Comprising advice to those who, while yet at school, are destined to the profession, to such as, having passed their pupilage, are about to travel and to those who, having completed their education, are about to practice. Together with a model specification involving a great variety of instructive and suggestive matter (London: J. Weale), (1847), Hints to young architects: calculated to facilitate their professional operations (New York: Wiley and Putnam). 43 E.L. Wilson (1881), Wilson’s photographics. A series of lessons accompanied by notes, on all the processes which are needful in the art of photography (Philadelphia: E.L. Wilson). 44 C.C. Black (1875), Michael Angelo Buonarroti, sculptor, painter, architect. The story of his life and labours (London: Macmillan); A. Cunningham (1843), The lives of the most eminent British painters and sculptors

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(New York: Harper and Bothers); N. D’Anvers (1876), Elementary history of art. An introduction to ancient and modern architecture, sculpture, painting and music (New York: Scribner, Welford and Armstrong); J. Flaxman (1874), Lectures on sculpture, as delivered before the president and members of the Royal Academy (London: G. Bell and Sons); W. Irving (1861), Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, gent. Sketchbook of Washington Irving (Quedlinburg: G. Basse); G. Vasari (1855) Lives of the most eminent painters, sculptors and architects, translated by J.P. Richter (London: H.G. Bohn); L. Viardot (1870), Wonders of Italian art (London: Sampson Low, Son and Marston). Lockwood, M. Smith. (1878). Art embroidery, a treatise on the revised practice of decorative needlework. London: Marcus Ward; Crane, L. (1882). Six lectures by Lucy Crane with illustrations drawn by Thomas and Walter Crane. London: Macmillan; Garrett, R. & A. (1876). Suggestions for house decoration in painting, woodwork and furniture. (Art at Home Series). London: Macmillan. Magazine of Art (1881), Treasury of art (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin). Northern Advance (1887), “Mr Tilley’s lecture,” 23 June, p. 1. Sir Richard Arkwright (1732–92) invented a spinning frame and carding engine for the textile industry. James Watt (1836–1819) invented a more efficient steam engine. George Stephenson (1781–1848) designed the first steam locomotive in 1814 and constructed the first passenger-carrying railway line. Northern Advance (1891), “Barrie Mechanics’ Institute annual meeting report,” 28 May, p. 1. J. Lea (1978), A survey of ornamental and carriage painters (stripers) in Barrie c.1860–1904. Their craft, their rise and decline (Waterloo on: Term paper for Wilfred Laurier University). J. Harris (1981), “A survey of Barrie’s painters, glaziers and paperhangers before 1900,” Building trades in Barrie in the nineteenth century, 153–92 (Barrie, on: City of Barrie Local Architectural Conservation Committee). I. Wilde, (1981), “Barrie architects and builders of the nineteenth century,” Building trades in Barrie in the nineteenth century, 1–73 (Barrie, on: City of Barrie Local Architectural Conservation Committee). C. Kell (1981), “Carpenters in Barrie during the 1800s,” Building trades in Barrie in the nineteenth century, 91–152 (Barrie, on: City of Barrie Local Architectural Conservation Committee). L. Burns (1981), “Brickmakers and bricklayers during the 1800s,” Build-

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ing trades in Barrie in the nineteenth century, 74–90 (Barrie, on: City of Barrie Local Architectural Conservation Committee). R. Campbell (1981), “Tinsmithing in Barrie during the 1800s,” Building trades in Barrie in the nineteenth century, 194–209 (Barrie, on: City of Barrie Local Architectural Conservation Committee). Among those who attended Ontario mechanics’ institute drawing classes in the 1886–87 session were: accountants, agents, apprentices, architects, artists, bakers, bankers, barbers, barristers, blacksmiths, boilermakers, book-keepers, brakesmen, bricklayers, brickmakers, builders, butchers, cabinetmakers, cadets, carpenters, carriagemakers, carriage painters, carvers, cash boys, cheesemakers, cigarmakers, civil engineers, clerks, contractors, coopers, designers, domestics, dressmakers, drivers, druggists, dry goods clerks, editors, egg merchants, engineers, engravers, excise officers, farmers, finishers, fitters, flax mill employees, flour merchant, gardeners, governesses, grain merchants, grocers, hardware merchants, harnessmakers, hatters, hotel keepers, insurance agents, jewellers, joiners, knitters, labourers, law students, lumbermen, machinists, manufacturers, marblecutters, masons, melters, merchants, messengers, milkmen, millers, milliners, millwrights, ministers, moulders, music teachers, organ builders, painters, pattern makers, photographers, piano makers, post office clerks, pumpmakers, printers, raftsmen, railway employees, real estate agents, saddlers, sailmakers, sailors, salesmen, saleswomen, sandstone manufacturers, school teachers, seamstress, servants, shoemakers, spinners, spoonmakers, stonecutters, storekeepers, students, surveyors, tailors, tanners, taxidermists, teamsters, telegraph operators, tinsmiths, turners, type writers, veterinary surgeons, wagonmakers, warehousemen, watchmakers, well diggers, woodworkers, woolen mills employees. From Vernon 1969, 560. In Ontario, Department of Education (1881), Special Report of the Minister of Education on the Mechanics’ Institutes (Ontario), 27 Ibid., 43 Ibid., 44 Barrie Public Library (1897–1924), Minute book of the Barrie Public Library (Board of Management), May 3, 1897 to January 28, 1924 (Simcoe County Archives b3 r4a s1 sh5). R. Lewis (1877), “Mechanics’ institutes and the best methods of improving them,” Prize essays: Association of Mechanics’ Institutes of Ontario (Toronto: Hunter, Rose). Ibid., 15. Cited in ibid., 7.

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63 Lewis, 1877.

chapter three 1 Cunningham (1979, 85) has stated that England’s Schools of Design were created in response to France’s perceived “superiority in questions of taste and design.” 2 I would like to thank Elizabeth Bonython, the leading authority on Sir Henry Cole, for generously sharing with me her unparalleled knowledge of Cole and expertly guiding me through the vast Cole documentation at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 3 The terms “art culture” and “training of the hand and eye” coined by Cole and Redgrave originate in the annual reports from 1853 and can be found in art educators’ statements and official government documents in both Quebec and Ontario. 4 Butterworth 1968, 472; MacDonald 1970, 51, 169, 304; AllthorpeGuyton 1982, 80, 113; Alexander 1983, 152; Morris 1986, 65. 5 White 1965, 45; Sutton 1967, 299; Boime 1977, 3, 32. The English also closely monitored French art education as evidenced by Walter Smith’s influential report (Smith 1863) 6 Bell 1963, 256; Allthorpe-Guyton 1982, 74; Alexander 1983, 152. 7 Loi pour l’encouragement de l’Agriculture, des Arts et de l’industrie 20 Vict., Chap. 32. campq has been the focus of three theses: Sabourin (1989) examined campq from 1857 to 1872; Stirling (1989) from 1876 to 1914; and Comeau (1983) from 1919 to 1929. Incredibly only three authors have correctly dated campq’s founding to 1857: Janson 1984; Stirling 1989, 1997; and Sabourin 1989. Numerous writers who obviously did not consult the rich and extensive archival material on campq have confused campq and the schools of industrial art and design established by campq. Charland (1981, 1982) chose 1869; Heap (1981), Halary and Fournier (1978), and Lacroix (1996) chose 1872. 8 The bibliography on mechanics’ institutes is extensive so I have included only those that pertain to Quebec and were most useful: Gordon 1940; Leduc 1975; Heap 1978, 1981; Robbins 1981; and Kean 1981, 1988. Ralph McKay of the Atwater Library must be thanked warmly for his interest, enthusiasm, and dry sense of humour during the weeks when I extracted material related to drawing from their collection of Montreal Mechanics’ Institute archives papers. 9 For a summary of the literature on the importance of drawing in various

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Quebec publications in the 1860s, as well as an analysis and sources of Bourassa’s ideas on drawing and art education, see Stirling 1989, 14–26, 60–72. Under the benevolent eye of Chauveau a number of government educational journals were published monthly to promote educational ideas relevant to Quebecers, and to inform the public and teachers about curriculum and other educational systems. Chauveau maintained iron control as the sole editor of the Journal of Education and the Journal de l’instruction publique from 1857 to 1867. The first articles on the value of drawing appeared in 1863. L’instruction primaire (1857– and the Journal de l’instruction publique (1857–80, 81–98), and the Journal de l’Education (1880–1) were aimed at French-speaking Roman Catholic audience, whereas the Journal of Education (1857–80) followed by the Educational Record of the Province of Québec (1881– were for the English-speaking Protestant school system and community. lac Fonds Napoleon Bourassa mg 29. d80, no. 1267, vol. 1, 16–17. Bourassa and Hutchison were paid three dollars and Smith two dollars per evening (campq, 6 July 1869, 140, banq). Bourassa taught drawing at the École normale Jacques Cartier from 1861 1863 and the Collège Ste. Marie in 1865 (Bedard 1983, 29). I am indebted to Susanna Robson, Curator of the National Art Library, London, for bringing to my attention their catalogue collection of D. Brucciani and Co., Ltd., of Goswell Road and Russell Street, London who supplied casts of statues to all British schools including those purchased for use in campq schools. (campq, 17 November 1873, 160–2; 12 May 1874, 170–1, banq). Bulmer returned to the “Art Department ... South Kensington” in 1885 in a further attempt to secure financial assistance, instructors, and teaching apparati (campq, 5 November 1885, 698, banq). Only one South Kensington instructor, “Mr Saunders” contacted campq schools, but his salary demands of £250 per annum plus travelling expenses were too rich for campq’s budget (campq, 18 August 1874, 176; 3 November 1875, 187, banq). The delegation members were the Reverend abbé Audet, L. Boivin, later campq president, A.A. Stevenson, campq president in 1882, and S.C. Stevenson (1848–98), campq secretary from 1872 to 1898. Both father and son were members of the Montreal Mechanics’ Institute. When he died in 1898, S.C. Stevenson was succeeded by S. Sylvestre, former minister of Agriculture (campq, 10 February 1898, 1081–2, banq). Prior to the 1980s and the rediscovery of Walter Smith, his manuals, and

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system, only Green’s (1966) seminal article stood out against cursory notices and derogatory statements about Smith in general art education publications. F. Graeme Chalmers (1985a, 1985b, 1990, 1993, 1998, 2000) has pioneered the research into Smith’s activities in Britain and its colonies, as well as the us, with contributions from Barbosa (1984) on Brazil and Stirling (1989, 1997) on Quebec and Ontario. 17 In February 1877 Gidéon Ouimet (1823–1905), who would be superintendent of Public Instruction for nearly twenty years, was urged by members of both campq and the Council of Public Instruction to adopt the Smith system and drawing manuals in primary and secondary Roman Catholic and Protestant public day schools (campq, 8 Feb., 1877, 288, banq). Oscar Dunn (1845–1885), bibliophile and publisher of the Journal de l’instruction publique, was selected to publish and translate into French Smith’s Manual of Industrial Drawing and Teacher’s Manual for use in primary, secondary, and campq schools (campq, 8 Feb., 1877, 290; 8 Aug., 1877, 315, banq). In August the Roman Catholic and Protestant committees of the Council of Public Instruction agreed to adopt the Smith system in primary and secondary schools “at least three lessons in Drawing of twenty minutes per week” (campq, 8 August 1877, 315–16, banq). In November 1877, a drawing examination was introduced into public schools to enable the government to award proficiency certificates (campq, 6 November 1877, 335, banq). By May 1878 Smith’s drawing manuals had been distributed to schools in more than four hundred Quebec municipalities (campq, 14 May 1878, 376; 21 August 1878, 384, banq). The number of students in Quebec public schools taking drawing lessons rose dramatically from 8,351 in 1877–78 to 50,777 in 1879–80; see Journal de l’instruction publique (May 1882): 130. To extend the influence and popularize drawing Smith’s manuals were awarded to pupils for successfully completing each stage of the multilevelled course (campq, 5 February 1878, 346, banq). Charland (1981, 1982, 65) has stated incorrectly that the Smith system fell out of favour after the initial year and was abandoned. 18 La Presse, 18 March 1890 (Heap 1981, 609, 611), published a criticism of Templé, his drawing manuals, and his administration of adult education evening classes. He replied to criticism in Le monde, 26 March 1890. Templé was sensitive to criticism at an early date. In order to elicit support for his system and drawing manuals he published a pamphlet (Templé 1886) that reproduced letters from prominent Roman Catholic and predominantly French-speaking Quebecers who lauded his system and manuals. Both his French-language and English-language drawing

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manuals (Templé 1891) have the last eight (54–61) and nine (50–8) pages respectively devoted to letters of support. From the outset, when the Smith system was used in primary, secondary, and campq schools, two problems were cited: first, students were uninterested in the elementary level of instruction, and second, many teachers were incompetent to teach drawing. These two problems were reported annually not only when the Smith system was used but also after it was replaced by the Templé system. During the first year when the Smith system was used in Quebec primary and secondary day public schools in 1877–78, Frère Alphraates of the Christian Brothers of Quebec attempted but failed to introduce at the St Henri school the drawing system and manuals of the Christian Brothers, Paris, which had received favourable reviews at previous international exhibitions in Paris in 1867, Amsterdam in 1869, and Vienna in 1873 (campq 7 May 1878, 383, banq). Charles A. Lefèvre was an ambitious man. The Educational Record of the Province of Québec 15, no. 10 (October 1895): 304 noted that the thirty-year veteran drawing instructor at the École normale Laval frequently participated at educational conferences and published numerous articles in L’enseignement primaire, beginning in 1881 but regularly from the early 1890s, that were “stepping stones even to something better.” His report (Lefèvre 1892) on European drawing and art education undoubtedly led him to receive a decoration from the French government in 1898; L’enseignement primaire 19, no. 13 (June 1898): 614. In his drawing manual preface Templé dedicated his publications to “la jeunesse et à l’Industrie Canadienne.” He criticized Smith’s manuals for failing to create an interest in drawing, raising the level of taste, or developing industrial art and design. “Les méthodes americaines n’yant donné jusqu’ici aucun résultat” (Templé 1891, 3). campq, 10 February 1898, 1,084, banq. A cup was donated by Simpson, Hall, Miller, and Co., for the Lithography class. In 1899 twenty-eight individuals and organizations contributed prizes (Documents de la Session [ds] 1899–1900, vol. 34, no. 3, 341, banq). In 1906, James McCready Company Ltd. offered awards to both the Plumbing and Boot and Shoe classes (ds 1906–07, vol. 41, no. 7, 49, banq). Stirling 1989, 206n3. The majority of men and women who posed for life classes were identified as being of Italian origin. For a list of campq students who continued their fine art studies in Paris and elsewhere see Stirling 1989, 195–202 and Appendix 2e, 422–5.

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25 Five hundred and fifty former campq students were listed as employed in the new industrial economy in 1893 (ds 1893–94, vol. 28, no. 2, 482–91, banq) and another three hundred and seventy-eight in 1910 (ds 1910–1, vol. 45, no. 6, 178–89, banq). 26 The aam has been the focus of four studies: Leduc (1963) wrote a master’s thesis about the historical development of the aam from 1860 to 1912; Pepall (1986) published an architectural history of the aam and mmfa buildings; Trudel (1992) summarized Leduc’s and Pepall’s information; and Stirling (1989, 106–22, 216–47) examined the art education offered at the aam School of Fine Art under Harris from 1883–84 to 1885–86 and his successor Brymner from 1886 to 1921. 27 Dunkin was a Quebec Conservative party member of the National Assembly for the counties of Drummond and Arthabaska who became provincial secretary under Chauveau and replaced Ouimet as treasurer. He was a member of the Council of Public Instruction from 1859 (Corbeil 1982, 286–8) and an active member of the Montreal Mechanics’ Institute where he lectured on “Self-Improvement and the Education of the Working Classes” (mmi Minute Book, 12 May 1840, 32–3, Atwater Library; “Phrenology” (ibid., 9 January 1841, 106); “Some of Shakespeare’s Delineations of Characters in MacBeth” (ibid., 1856–57, n.d, n.p.). 28 King’s extensive and eclectic art collection was auctioned upon his death in 1886 (King 1886). 29 Trudel (1992, 49) concluded, incorrectly because he consulted only Canadian sources, that Henry Cole never replied to the aam’s request for financial aid: “Adressé au secrétaire du département, Henry Cole, la lettre n’eut semble-t-il aucune réponse.” See Victoria and Albert Museum Archives, Précis ... (1864, 276). The entry for 8 March 1860 was “Montréal Art Association, application for aid from, declined, but catalogues, etc. sent.” 30 Popham was elected the recording secretary of the Montreal Mechanics’ Institute on 22 June 1848. His frequent trips to Europe enabled him to purchase works for his large art collection, which were auctioned upon his death in 1895 (Montreal Gazette, “Mr Popham’s Pictures,” 21 March 1895, 3). 31 Rimmer was one of the outstanding and influential art educators in Boston from 1860 to 1866, and again from 1870 to 1876. His lectures in New York, Boston, and the New England states focused almost entirely on anatomy, which culminated with the publication in 1877 of his magnum opus Art Anatomy (Bartlett 1970, 61). He returned to Boston in

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1870, to establish a course in art anatomy based on his teaching at the Cooper Union School of Design for Women, New York. Harris and Thomas Wilmer Dewing (1851–1938) met through Rimmer’s anatomy class and both enrolled in life classes held in the basement of the Boston Art Club of the Lowell Institute (Hobbs 1981, 4–55). Harris and Dewing remained friends and spent time together in Paris in 1878 (Williamson 1983, 59–61). The two had been classmates in Boston; Harris had not studied under Dewing, as Harper (1970, 148) incorrectly stated. Harris’s name is listed among the students registered at the Slade (London University Records Office, University College, London. Calendar 1877–78, 196. Date of entry 1876–77). Among Harris’s notable contemporaries at the Slade were H.S. Tuke and W.H.T. Hunt, both of whom won Slade scholarships in 1877 (ibid., Calendar 1880, 30. List of scholarship recipients 1872–80). The first Slade Professor of Fine Art, Edward Poynter, upon his resignation in 1876 highly recommended Alphonse Legros (Forge 1960, 31) for the position, which he retained until 1893. Legros added etching and modelling to the Slade curriculum, although he is best remembered for introducing memory drawing first championed by his former professor Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, whose book (Boisbaudran 1848) enjoyed wide circulation on both sides of the Atlantic. Both Harris and his aam successor Brymner favoured memory drawing as well as Legros’s insistence that students “draw with the point by the character of the contour and not by the mass” (Hartick 1921, 23; Forges 1960, 41). Bonnat’s love and enthusiasm for the work of Spanish artist Diego Velázquez influenced his students including Dewing, who “admired the Spaniard’s dramatically posed figures and careful handling of light and shade” (Hobbs 1981, 15), and Harris, who made a number of copies after Velázquez (Harper 1970, 148) Marmaduke Matthews (mmfa Archives, cmb 1 5 September 1883, 3 June 1884;mmfa Archives, aam, ar 1887, 5–6); the Natural History Society of Montréal (mmfa Archives, cmb 1, 1 June 1881) collection was originally donated to the nhs by Nathaniel Gould in 1832 (Gagnon 1995, 103); and the institut canadien (mmfa Archives, cmb 1 2 November 1882; mmfa Archives, aam, ar 1882, 6). I would like to acknowledge particularly Juanita Toupin, former librarian and archivist at the mmfa, including her successors Eric Vanasse and Danielle Blanchette, as well as McCord Museum archivists Pamela Miller and Suzanne Morin, for their help in locating relevant material on the aam School of Fine Art and William Brymner.

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36 Harvey (1943, 249–52); Wright (1994, 129–31); Wilson (1997, 28–30). William Brymner painted two portraits of his father, both in the collection of the Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 37 Keefer (1881, 14). 38 See Weinberg (1991, 54) for a brief description of fine art instruction at the Académie Suisse. 39 See Blaugrund (1989, 135–8) for biographical information on Curtis. 40 Information on the Académie Julian is rich, particularly the outstanding contributions to scholarship by Boime (1971, 1977, 1982, 1985). Fehrer (1982, 1984) and Cole (1976) contain further insights into art instruction at the Académie Julian. 41 Chu (1982). 42 mmfa Archives, Fonds William Brymner P16 Typescript, 12. “The first part of Ruskin’s ‘Elements of Drawing’ is good ... and most of what he says in that book is helpful.” 43 mmfa Archives, Fonds d’archives John Watts p10/a/3. Letter from Brymner to Watts, 18 March 1878; McCord Museum Archives, Artists collection c121, Fonds William Brymner Folder 1, letter to his mother, 7 March 1878. 44 Forty-four artists have acknowedged studying under Brymner at the aam School of Fine Art (MacDonald 1977, vols. 1–6). See Stirling 1989, Appendix a1, 379–80. 45 The laconic, stoic Brymner lectured only a few times to the public. His subjects included “Impressionism,” “Modernisms in Art,” and most importantly, “Paris Ateliers and drawing instruction” (Montreal Gazette, “Views of Art Teaching,” 27 March 1895, 2), the text of which concisely and clearly outlines his pedagogy of drawing and fine art, identifies individual art educators and theorists who influenced him, and is a valuable insight into his philosophy of art, which he developed in his aam School of Fine Art curriculum (mmfa Archives, Fonds Wm. Brymner p16).

chapter four 1 From 1861 to 1901 Methodists continued to increase membership and outdistanced their religious rivals the Presbyterians and the Church of England (Grant 1988, 224). Scottish-born Canadian artist William Cruikshank, who taught drawing at the postsecondary art schools in Toronto from 1883 to 1916, commented on the “meddlesome methodist farmers” (ago Archives, Edgar J. Stone Donation, letter from Cruikshank to Edmond Morris 10 October 1898). In an earlier letter, he blamed the

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lack of interest and patronage in fine art on “the opinions of a lot of farmers who can hardly be trusted to go to bed without attempting to blow out the gas” (ago Archives, Edgar J. Stone Donation, letter from Cruikshank to Edmond Morris, May 1890). For an excellent study of the rise of Methodism in Canada see Semple (1996, 181–2, 184). Report of the Minister of Education (hereafter rme), 1885, 205, lac. Mechanics’ institutes were established in 1835 in Toronto and Kingston, 1842 in London, and 1849 in Hamilton, although the Act of Incorporation was legislated later in 1851. The literature on Ryerson is extensive. For this study I found most useful Onn (1969), Stamp (1978), and Gidney (1982). The Educational Museum has been the focus of a number of studies: Johnson 1970, 1971; Bayer 1984; Stirling 1989. For a summary of the critical response to Ryerson’s Educational Museum see Stirling 1989, 252–79. In his search to acquire a representative sample of paintings and artwork from all periods he visited London, Antwerp, Frankfort, Munich, Florence, and Rome. Former Governor in Chief of Canada Sir Edmund Walker Head (1805–1868) and Lady Head, both amateur artists (Gibson 1978), helped Ryerson choose works for the Educational Museum collection. Head had translated and edited A Handbook of the History of Painting of the German, Dutch, Spanish and French Schools by Franz Theodor Kugler (1808–1858) (London, 1848), which he and Lady Head recommended Ryerson consult before making his purchases. According to Pevsner, Kugler was the first art historian, as Professor of the History of Art at the Academy of Art in Berlin in 1833 (Finch 1974, 8). For a catalogue of his purchases in 1855–56 and 1866–67 see Catalogue of plaster casts, paintings, engravings and other reproductions of works of art in the Museum of the Education Department, 1884. Interest and research into Ontario’s postsecondary art schools have been limited to studies by Bruce 1983, Wood 1986, Stirling 1989, and Chalmers 1993. For an exceptionally fine study of the Griffith’s artistic activities in London see Davis 1989 and Poole 1984, 24, 27, 33, 36, 48–9, 53, 57, 62, 106, 209. Precedent for this unique collaboration was inspired by John C.L. Sparkes, Head of the Lambeth School of Art and Design, whose students designed and executed a large portion of the Doulton “art pottery.” Initially, when the Ontario School of Art was established in 1876, the committee consisted of seven members: five osa artists, the council president, and one representative of the education department. In 1882, when

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the Education department took control of the Ontario School of Art, the committee was increased to ten members: seven osa, the council president and vice-president, one representative of the education department. In 1884 all osa members resigned and severed their connection with the Ontario School of Art citing government interference. In 1883–84 the curriculum was reorganized. The elementary or primary – “Grade B” – courses remained the same, but the Advanced and Technical courses were grouped together under the title of Second or High – “Grade A.” A third category was established with four courses under the title “Special Subjects”: “Painting in Oil and Water Colours; Modeling in Clay and Wax, Wood Engraving, including Pictorial Work, and Wood Carving” (rme 1883–84, 241–2, lac). Ida N. Banting was on staff of the Hamilton Art School 1885–87 (Stirling 1989, 439, 462). Moss was principal of the Ottawa Art School from 1883–87 (rca of Arts Papers, rca Minute Books 1880–1906 mg28 I 126, vol. 17, February 1886, 52, lac). Both Harper 1970, 232 and MacDonald 1967, vol. 4, 1,316 have incorrectly stated that Moss was principal from 1883 to 1885. He taught watercolour classes at the aam from 1892–1901. In 1882, artists John Arthur Fraser and T. Mower Martin recommended that the newly formed rca financially support life classes; however it was not until 1885 that annual grants were distributed to art schools in Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal (rca of Arts Papers, rca Minute Books 1880–1906, mg28 I 126, vol. 17, 1886, 18, 30, lac). For a brief history of the rca see Hill 1980. Stirling 1989, 366, footnote 3. In 1887, George A. Reid and William Cruikshank were responsible for the life classes in Toronto but due to poor attendance used the grant to purchase casts for the Toronto Art School (rca of Arts Papers, rca Minute Books 1880–1906, 7 January 1887, 55, 20 April 1887, 57, lac). The Canadian Manufacturers Association awarded four silver medals to students who designed “a diploma, carved panel for a sideboard, summer cottage, and a medal” (rme 1887–8, 228, lac). In 1893, Brockville Art School offered “a large list of prizes” (rme 1893–94, 131, lac). In 1894 some Hamilton residents contributed forty dollars and a medal for local prizes” (rme 1894–95, 226, lac). In 1892, the Toronto Carpet Manufacturing company offered money for “the best emblematic design for a carpet ... and more than one engraving and lithography company ... offered prizes for the best designs” (rme 1892–93, 284, lac). In 1897 an anonymous benefactor donated two prizes each for drawing and painting

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Notes to pages 96–100

from life, and three for “designs suitable for industrial purposes” (rme 1897–98, 155, lac). Pottery (rme 1887–88, 189, lac); “Colours, Chromatics and the Permanency of Pigments, History of Ornamentation; Units and Motives of Design, Artistic Furnishing” (rme 1890–91, 316, lac); eight lectures on the “Technicalities of Design” specifically for the steel and metalwork industries; “Mathematical Instruments and how to use them; Color in Art, Artistic Furnishings” (rme 1890–91, 256, lac); “Artistic Needlework, Lace, Furniture and Furnishings, Decoration of the Drawing Room, Artistic Jewellery” (rme 1891–92, 253, lac); Stained Glass, History of Architecture, Wood Carving, Furniture, and Composition of a Picture (Canadian Architect and Builder 8, no. 5 (May 1895): 68). Reid was president of the osa, 1897–1901; rca, 1906–09; and principal of the oca, 1912–18 (Harper 1970, 262). Royal Academy Archives, London. Royal Academy Ledger Book 1825–90. Cruikshank entered the schools as a probationer on 17 January 1870 at age twenty-two recommended by Thomas Heatherley (1824–1913), Headmaster of the Heatherley School of Art. Connoisseur 1940; Neve 1978a, 1978b. In 1845 James Matthew Leigh (1808–1860) opened Leigh’s Art School in London modelled upon his experiences in Parisian ateliers. Upon his death in 1860 Thomas Heatherley became the new principal until his retirement in 1887. Heatherley’s had established a fine reputation with low affordable fees that attracted amateurs and professional artists, male and female, to draw and paint from life. Heatherley’s was a magnet for many of the PreRaphaelite painters and “students preparing portfolios of antique drawings to qualify them for entry to the Royal Academy Schools” (Neve 1978b, 448). Between 1903 and 1909 he taught drawing from the antique and life (oca Archives, Central Ontario School of Art and Design, Toronto, Prospectus 1904, 6). In 1913 he is listed as teaching only the antique class at the oca (oca Archives, oca Prospectus 1913–14, n.p. 2). rme 1883–84, 237, lac. In March 1883 Patterson replaced L.R. O’Brien who resigned as one of the provincial art examiners. Robin M. Paley taught watercolours, design, and freehand drawing at the Ottawa Art School (rme 1887–88, 192, lac); Mrs Cowper-Cox, Ottawa Art School (Major-Marothy 1984, 5); Miss F. Kinton, Kingston Art School (rme 1887–88, 194, lac); Robert H. Whale, St Thomas Art School (rme 1892–93, 282, lac); Mrs Leith-Wright, Hamilton Art School, “late of the Royal School of Art Needle Work at South Kensington” (rme 1894–95, 266, lac; Canadian Architect and Builder 8, no. 6 [June 1895]: 77).

Notes to page 100

19 20 21

22

263

Robert Holmes (1861–1930) studied at the Central Ontario School of Art and Design under Cruikshank c.1896, then at the Royal College of Art, London. He taught at the Ontario College of Art from 1912 to 1930 (Harper 1970, 161). Robert H. Whale (1857–1906) was a South Kensington graduate who also held “full Provincial Certificates” (rme 1889–90, 314, 1891–92, 259, lac). Whale’s assistants at the St Thomas Art School were A.J. Miller, who had “full Certificates and some in the advanced course,” and Miss S. MacKay, who held “full Primary and Advanced Provincial Certificates” (rme 1889–90, 314, 1891–92, 259, 1892–93, 282, lac). The Kingston Art School appointed Charles E. Wrenshall “gold medallist of 1886–87 and Jennie C. Shaw a graduate of the Ontario School of Art” as his assistant (rme 1886–87, 221, 1887–88, 190, lac). Wrenshall also was awarded a silver medal “for the highest marks” in the mechanical course. At the Ottawa Art School, Fennings Taylor taught the evening class in design and freehand drawing in 1887–88 and was “certificated by the Ontario Government school of art.” His colleague, J.S. Bowerman, was “certificated by the Ontario Government school of art” and taught practical geometry and perspective (rme 1887–88, 192, 1891–92, 257, 1892–93, 280, lac). In 1892–93 Taylor was “teacher of design, freehand, architectural and mechanical drawing, geometry and perspective.” In Hamilton, Arthur H. Heming held a “primary certificate” (rme 1887–88, 186–8, lac). Brockville hired “Robert Lindsay, a graduate of the Education department in the Art School course” (rme 1890–91, 255, lac) who taught evening drawing courses, and Celia Kearns, a bronze medallist for painting from life was responsible for the day painting classes (rme 1891–92, 251, lac). rme 1885–86, 108, lac. “Carleton Place Mechanics’ Institute ... reflect great credit on the teachers, who ... were trained at South Kensington.” rme 1882–83, 251–9, 1883–84, 232–4, 244–9, 1885–86, 111–12, 1886–87, 210ff, 1887–88, 156–60; 1898–99, 183–8, lac. mmfa Archives, Fonds d’archives John Watts p10/a/3. Manuscrits de John Watts Vol. 4, 1885, 413. “National Art Gallery-Curator’s Report. Appendix no. 27 Ref. no 62,973, 10 November 1885.” Dominion Annual Register and Review 1884, 206, and 1885, 351. Many thanks to Charles Hill, Curator of Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, who was unable to locate these drawings. rme 1886–87, 215, 1898–99, 188, lac. I would like to thank the Honourable Mrs Roberts, Curator Prints and Drawings, the Royal Collection, Windsor, for her help in tracing these drawings, which have not been located.

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Notes to pages 100–9

23 At the Paris Universal Exposition, 1878, “the Ontario Department of Education exhibited in six classes and won awards in each ... more awards than Britain and the other parts of the Empire won altogether” (Stamp 1978, 312). All in all 237 medals and diplomas were awarded to the Ontario education department, which had exhibited 580 specimens, samples of drawings and artwork from postsecondary art schools (rme 1885–86, 111–2, 1886–87, 215, 1898–99, 187, lac). The exhibits received particular attention and praise from H.C. Bowen, Principal of the Finsbury Art School, England. “The climax in international praise was reached at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. Twenty-one prizes went to Ontario” (Stamp 1978, 312). Both Sir Richard Webster, “Chairman of the British Royal Commission” to the exhibition and General Eaton “ex-commissioner of education in the us” lauded the Ontario education department (rme 1898–99, 189, lac). 24 rme 1897–98, 159, lac. From 1885 to 1898 women were awarded ten out of thirteen gold medals for the advanced drawing course; ten out of thirteen for the primary drawing course; ten out of fifteen silver medals for the industrial drawing course; twenty out of twenty-eight for special silver medals presented by manufacturers; seven out of ten bronze medals for painting from life; 1,800 out of 2,500 teachers’ certificates for the primary and 136 out of 178 for the advanced courses.

chapter five 1 Alexander McKay, the supervisor of schools for the City of Halifax, should not be confused with Dr Alexander Howard MacKay, Superintendent of Education for the Province of Nova Scotia during much of the same time period. 2 Miss Smith is Miss Ottie Smith, drawing teacher at the Nova Scotia Normal School from the early 1880s until 1914. She was a former student of Walter Smith (no relation) at the Massachusetts Normal School. 3 Founded in 1887, the Victoria School of Art and Design changed its name in 1925 to the Nova Scotia College of Art, in 1968 to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and in 2003 to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. 4 Known through popular films for her sojourn at the court of the king of Siam (1862–1867), Anna Leonowens lived in Halifax from 1876 to 1897. She moved there with her daughter Avis and Avis’s husband, Thomas Fyshe, who accepted a position as manger of the Bank of Nova

Notes to pages 109–36

5 6

7 8 9

265

Scotia. She quickly became involved in social and educational causes and was active in the suffragist movement in the city. Alexander McKay died in 1917 at age seventy-six. Winifred Gabriel is the author’s grandmother. She was born in Victoria, bc, in 1886, the youngest of four children. Her brother and sisters had all been born in Manchester, England. Their father, Edward Gabriel, the son of a Manchester textile mill owner, emigrated to Victoria in 1881. He died in 1895 after breaking his back in an accident. Shortly after the accident, Winnifred and her siblings were sent to England for their schooling, returning to Victoria to complete high school. Her brief teaching career ended in August 1906 when she married John Crockett of Courtenay, bc. They settled on a farm in the area and raised ten children. A second Normal School opened in Victoria in 1915. For a list of Normal Schools in Canada see Phillips 1968, 580. Kyle also became the organizer of industrial education for bc in 1914 and retired in 1938. After serving as supervisor of drawing for the Vancouver School Board from 1910 to 1914, W.P. Weston (1879–1967) was appointed art master at the provincial Normal School in Vancouver, a position he held until 1946.

chapter six 1 The authors wish to acknowledge the work of Julia Olivier who translated large parts of this paper. 2 The notion of “living art” is a translation of the term “l’art vivant” used in France in the 1920s and borrowed by French and English Canadian art critics during the 1930s (Trepanier 1998, 67). 3 Emphasis in the original. F. Brandtner, Undated journal. Courtesy of Heather Robertson, Montreal. 4 S. Ari, Telephone interview with Leah Sherman, October 17 2001, Montreal. 5 A. Savage, Information Sheet for Parents, 1940. Savage Archives, Concordia University, file 45, item 12.5. 6 “Jeunes élèves des Beaux-Arts et naturalistes exposent au Musée,” Le Soleil, Quebec, 12 May 1950, 32. 7 National Gallery of Canada, Library and Archives, Catalogue. World Children’s Art Exhibition [Exhibition Records]. Box 5.5c. 8 J.O’Connor, Linch (1944), Influences regrettés (sic). Lettre de protestation adressée au président et au conseil de l’Art Association. Service des

266

Notes to pages 136–49

archives et de gestion des documents de l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Fonds d’archives du frère-Jérôme. 12p1.1/2. 9 V. Myette, Interview with Suzanne Duquette, October 13 2000, Montreal. 10 Lettre reçue du gérant de l’une de nos principales maisons d’affaires de Montréal. (1944). 22 juil. Service des archives et de gestion des documents de l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Fonds d’archives du frèreJérôme. 12P2.2/1. See also G. Jeanson and L. Cloutier, Répertoire numérique détaillé du Fonds du Frère-Jérôme. Montréal: Service des archives, Université du Québec à Montréal, 1981. 11 “Children Make Modernist Art,” Montreal Daily Star, March 14 1949, 5.

chapter seven 1 This chapter is part of a broader interdisciplinary research study entitled “‘As the Child Grows so is the Nation Formed’: Visuality and the Exhibition of Democratic Ideals in Canadian Schools, 1930–1960.” Funded through a Social Science and Humanities Research Council standard grant, the study focuses on the relationship among political ideologies, cultural policy, and the function of the arts (visual and performing arts) in English-speaking schools in Canada between 1930 and 1960. I would like to thank Paul Stortz for his thoughtful suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper. 2 William Morris, (1962). “The Decorative Arts,” in News from Nowhere and Selected Writings and Designs, edited by Asa Briggs, 103–4 (London: Penguin Books). 3 On the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Canada, particularly its effects on tertiary formal educational systems, see E.L. Panayotidis, “The Bureaucratization of Creativity: The Art and Industry Controversy at Central Technical School, 1931–1949,” Journal of the William Morris Studies, 15 (2003): 9–34, and “‘Every Artist would be a Workman, and Every Workman an Artist’: Morrisian and Arts and Crafts ideas and ideals at the Ontario Educational Association, 1900–1920,” in William Morris: Centenary Essays, edited by Peter Faulkner and Peter Preston, 165–71 (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1999). 4 W.J.T Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995); Norman Bryson, Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Regime (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); John Walker and Sarah

Notes to pages 149–56

5

6

7

8 9

10 11 12 13

14 15

16

17

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Chaplin, Visual Culture: An Introduction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997); Richard Leppert, Art and the Committed Eye: The Cultural Functions of Imagery (Colorado, Westview Press, 1996). Walter Abell, “Democracy and the Arts,” p. 1. Peter Haworth Papers, “Art Education,” 5033/4/9, Queen’s University. “Art and Democracy” was part of a series of four broadcasts aired on cbc radio in May 1944. Brief presented by the Ontario Chapter of the Federation of Artists at the Royal Commission on Education (1945). Peter Haworth Papers, “Art Education,” 5033/4/9, Queen’s University. Brief presented by the Ontario Chapter of the Federation of Artists at the Royal Commission on Education (1945). Peter Haworth Papers, “Art Education,” 5033/4/9, Queen’s University. “Coast to Coast.” Canadian Art, 5, no. 3 (Winter 1948): 139. Dot Tuer (1992) has noted that the search for national unity in the 1940s shares much with the contemporary efforts to confront issues of cultural diversity and public funding in the arts. Abell, “Democracy and the Arts,” 1. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 1. Herbert Read’s 1943 book Education through Art, was pivotal in contemporary discussions about the role of arts in the educational system and in relation to industry. The name was later changed to Works Project Administration. The role of advertising images, particularly war conscription posters, needs little elaboration here as to its specific intent. Yet it is an important reminder of how strategically visual images made available particular ways of seeing the world. See for example Joyce Zemans, “Envisioning Nation: Nationhood, Identity and the Sampson-Matthews Silkscreen Project,” Journal of Canadian Art History 19, no. 1 (1998): 6–40. “Establishing the Canon: Nationhood, Identity and the National Gallery’s First Reproduction Programme of Canadian Art, Journal of Canadian Art History 16, no. 1 (1992): 7–35. “A Digest of a Brief Presented on June 21st, 1944, to the Special Committee on Reconstruction and Re-Establishment in Ottawa, by Sixteen Representatives of Cultural Societies in Canada.” Peter Haworth Papers, “Art Education,” 5033/4/9, Queen’s University. Although I don’t mean to unduly emphasize a conspiratorial intent at work in these artist-driven agendas, a virtual manipulation of public opinion and values by artists, it would be wrong not see it for what it was: a homogenization of the elite notion of liberal humanism at work.

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Notes to pages 157–64

18 This exhibition, first shown in 1945, was organized by the Ontario Handicraft Guild in conjunction with the Royal Ontario Museum. 19 Virginia Wright (n.d., 142) has noted how the craft community, at midcentury, “was the first to define its new design mandate.” 20 Alison Beale (1993, 75–90) aptly illustrates the importance of Canadian arts broadcasting in Canada as a way to make transparent the shifts in citizenship policy from “subject” to “citizens” that have occurred over the last century. 21 Provincial Arts and Industrial Institute Papers, Eric Brown to the Secretary of the Provincial Arts and Industrial Institute (11 November 1920), Public Archives of British Columbia.

chapter eight 1 Scott 1920. Scott was reporting for the period from September to December 1919. Soon after, to create a body of drawing specialists for the schools, Scott conducted teachers’ classes after school two days a week (ibid.). 2 Kitsilano Junior/Senior High School, 1941, 2. 3 See H. Cameron, S. Ursulescu, P. Snelgrove, pers. coms. 2002. The interviewees are cited alphabetically at the end of this chapter. 4 Kitsilano Secondary School 1995. 5 The schools historically have been referred to in various ways: Kitsilano High School (prior to 1927), Kitsilano Junior and Senior High School(s) after 1927, and at times Kitsilano High Schools (1940s); Kitsilano Secondary School (after 1960); also familiarly referred to as Kitsilano and Kits. Britannia High School is also referred to here as simply Britannia; Vancouver Technical School is referred to as Van Tech. 6 Anne Wong, pers. com. 2002. 7 I am using the term secondary schools to refer to schools serving grades seven to twelve and in some cases thirteen, even though the word was established by the Chant Commission in 1960, after the period covered by this study. 8 Vancouver Technical School 1937, 73. The VanTech is the name of Van Tech’s student yearbook, the name it has maintained since the 1927 edition. Earlier yearbooks were named Tech Annual. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 1936, staff list. Each issue of The VanTech to 1947 carried a staff list noting the subjects each teacher was teaching.

Notes to pages 164–72 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26

27 28

29 30 31 32

269

Ibid. 1947, staff list. Ibid. 1932, 38. Ibid. 1934, 23. See Elliott 1934. Ibid. 1939, 52. Ibid. 1934, 20. Ibid. 1939, 21. Ibid. 1942, 9. Ibid. 1936, staff list. Ibid. 1940, 56. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 56. Ibid. 1947, staff list. Elliott 1934. Britannia’s yearbooks and student interviewees Alexander, 1930s, and A. Wong, 1940s. “Art Students Have a Busy Year,” The Haida (1950), n.p.; the other school was Prince of Wales High School, in Three Feathers Annual, 1947, 90–1. Waites, McQueen, and Pattison 1941, 107, note that 800 out of 1,275 students were in grades seven and eight, thus accounting for over sixtytwo percent. Putman and Weir, 1925, 58. Wytenbroek completed his study in a graduate course with education historian Patrick Dunae at Malaspina University College in Nanaimo, bc. Dunae is editor of “The Homeroom: British Columbia’s History of Education” web site. Vancouver School Board 1927, Report on Drawing. Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Art 1927. S.P. Judge, Letter of Reference, 26 August 1937, Special Collections, ubc. Photograph by Dorothy Howard, in Shadbolt’s class from September 1927. Because part-time teachers were paid separately and not listed in the Department of Education’s Public School Reports, official records do not confirm Shadbolt’s presence as a teacher at Kits this early. There is only one small extant photograph taken by one interviewee of Shadbolt with some of the class and that informant’s memories place Shadbolt at Kits in the 1927–28 school year. Doris Shadbolt confirmed that her husband started teaching at age eighteen (which corresponds) but she did not know at what school. Shadbolts’ Vancouver School Board employment record summarizes his teaching years prior to the 1930s as a total

270

33

34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58

59

Notes to pages 172–97

made from part-time work (File a, 4b, Shadbolt collection, Special Collections, University of British Columbia). For information on William Weston as an art master at Vancouver Normal School, see Rogers, Anthony (1987), “W.P. Weston, artist and educator: The development of British ideas in the art curriculum of bc public schools.” Unpublished phd dissertation, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Staff dates of service are according to staff lists on database produced by Kits volunteers in keeping of librarian. Teachers’ part-time work is not included in the listing. Scott, Weston, and Judge 1924; and Weston 1933. Kitsilano Junior/Senior High Schools, 1942, n.p. Ibid., 1930–31, 7. Ibid., 1936–37, 42. Ibid., 1939, 32. See ibid., 1930–31, 35. Ibid., 1936–37, 61. Ibid. Kitsilano Junior/Senior High Schools, 1947, n.p. Ibid., 1948, n.p. Ibid., 1936/37, 43. Ibid., 1946–47. Ibid., n.p. Ibid., 1936, 42. Ibid. Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Art 1927, n.p. Kitsilano Junior/Senior High Schools, 1947, n.p. Ibid., 1936, 43. Ibid., 42/43. Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Art 1925, n.p. The yearbook confirms this in a biographical note on one graduating student, saying that “she is another of the students in 12c who spend their afternoons at the art school” (Kitsilano Junior/Senior High Schools 1947, n.p.). Ibid., 1950, n.p. British Columbia, Department of Education, 1923–24. As shown in Stephenson 1998, 232. Based on an analysis of fifteen of the most popular art education textbooks published in the us during the depression era and World War ii. J.D. Wilson, pers. com. 1998; James Gray, pers. com. 2002.

Notes to pages 212–37

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chapter nine 1 The second edition of Children and Their Art appeared in 1970 with the added author Al Hurwitz, at that time a supervisor of art for Dade County Schools, Florida. The third edition (1975) also lists Gaitskell and Hurwitz as coauthors. The fourth edition, 1982, lists Gaitskell as first author with Hurwitz and Michael Day (art educator at Brigham Young University, Utah). Gaitskell died in 1985. The fifth edition (1991) drops Gaitskell and gives Hurwitz and Day as authors, as does the sixth (1995) and seventh (2001) editions. Each new edition updates the material and adds or replaces some photographs. However, the chapter organization and much of the text is as it was in the first edition.

chapter ten 1 It’s Fun to Draw (n.d.). Revision of “Young Manitoba Listens,” School Broadcast Branch (Winnipeg, mb: Department of Youth and Education, n.d., 2). 2 Ibid., 3 3 These include: Let’s Make Pictures. Atlantic school broadcasts, 1953–55, for New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. In collaboration with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and affiliates; Manitoba School Broadcasts 1970–71 (Winnipeg, mb: Manitoba Department of Youth and Education and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation); Creative Hands, Alberta School Broadcasts 1974–75 (Edmonton, ab: Audio Visual Services Branch, Department of Education); Pictures in the Air, Guidebooks to audiotape programs, Provincial Education Media Centre (Richmond, bc: Ministry of Education, 1982); Young Saskatchewan Looks and Listens: A Guide to School Broadcasts and Telecasts Presented for Elementary Schools of Saskatchewan, 1969–70 (Regina, sk: School Broadcasts Section, Department of Education). 4 Teacher Guide to Television Programs 1975–76 and 1978–79 (Edmonton, ab: Audio Visual Services Branch). 5 Access Network Video Catalogue 1982–87 (Calgary, ab: Access Network), 97. 6 Access Network Video Catalogue 1982–87. 7 J. Cawood, letter to the authors, 3 March 1999, Parksville, bc. 8 Ibid.

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2 Index

Abell, Walter, 149, 151, 156 Académie Julian, 72, 75, 79, 82, 259n40 adult artist period, 6, 10–14 aesthetic education, 26 Alberta (curriculum), 13, 19–20, 243n4 Alberta Access Network, 231, 234–5 Alberta College of Art, 14 Alexander, Irene, 163 Alford, John, 156 Althouse, J.D., 22 apprenticeship system, 6, informal; 191 Ari, Sylvia, 126–7 Armory Show, 121 Arnold, Mathew,152 Art and Man, 214 Art Association of Montreal (aam): School of Fine Arts, 52, 65–6, 70–6, 79, 84, 93, 123, 127, 135, 137, 140, 144, 257n26, 259n45; scholarships, 77, 79; instructors, 83; child art

exhibitions, 131–2, 141–2 art gallery and museum education, 26, 28, 244n10 Art Gallery of Hamilton, 26, 81 Art Gallery of Toronto, 17, 125, 137 arts and crafts, 22, 159–60; as curriculum, 97, 98 Arts and Crafts Movement, 10, 19, 111, 113, 118, 147, 159–61, 266n3 Arts and Crafts Society of Canada, 159 arts education, 29, 211, 242 Artscape, 238 arts in education, 211, 215 ArtsSmarts, 242 Atkinson, Ernest, 25 Augsburg’s drawing series, 110, 118 Ayre, Robert, 132–3, 139, 143

Baigent, Richard, 89 Bailey, Henry Turner, 114 Barbeau, Geraldine, 140 Baron Byng High School, 123–4, 131–2 Barrie Mechanics’ Institute, 31–46 Bauhaus, 23, 27 Bethune, Dr Norman, 4, 19, 25, 126 Beveridge, Miss, 178 Bird, Harrington, 61, 67 Black, Sam, 25 Blaikie, Fiona, 215 Blair, David, 117, 118 Blakstad, Rolph, 179, 186–90, 198 Board of Arts and Manufactures for Upper Canada, 36–8 Borduas, Paul-Émile, 25, 69, 128, 129, 130, 135, 140–1, 146, Bourassa, Napoleon, 52, 54, 254 Brandtner, Fritz, 19, 25, 131, 134, 145 Britannia High School,

300 162–7, 163, 164, 198–9, 268–9 British Columbia College of Art, 166 British Columbia, curriculum, 115–19, 162–8 British Council, 134, 136, 285 Brother Jérôme, 141, 146 Brown, Eric, 160 Brymner, William, 66, 73–84, 124, 257n26, 259n45 Cameron, Hamish, 169, 174, 176–8, 180–1, 189–90, 192–6, 198 Canadian (Dominion) drawing manuals, 90 Canadian Academy of Arts (later Royal Canadian Academy of Arts), 71, 93 Canadian Arts Council, 155 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (cbc), 221, 223–4, 229–33, 235, 239–41, 271n3 Canadian Conference of the Arts (cca), 25, 242 Canadian Education Association, 22, 223 Canadian Group of Painters, 166 Canadian Review of Art Education, 216, 244n9 Canadian Society for Education through Art (csea), 22–3, 27, 155, 210, 216, 217, 244n9 Carnegie Trust, 18; Corporation, 127, 137; award, 178; Centre, 185 Carr, Emily, 171, 173, 214 Casselman, A.C., 110; drawing texts, 10, 112 Cawood, John, 232, 236, 237, 240 Central League of School Art, 114

Index Central Ontario School of Art, 13, 95–6, 98–9. See also Ontario College of Art Chant Royal Commission, 24, 197 Charlesworth, Lyla, 175–6, 194, 198 Chauveau, Pierre-JosephOlivier, 53 Chesneau, Ernest, 76 child art, 3, 6; child art era, 14–23; and modernism, 120–5, 129–39, 144–6 Child Study Movement, 10, 16 children’s art. See child art Children’s Art Centre (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), 137 Children’s Art Centre of Montreal, 126, 133 Cianci, Vito, 171, 177–8, 180, 189–90 Cizek, Franz, 16, 17, 19, 126–7, 133, 136, 143, 145 Coghill, Joy, 169, 198 Cole, Henry, 48–51, 64, 70, 86–7, 89, 98, 102, 253n3, 257n29 Colonial and Indian Exhibition, 42 Columbian Exposition, 100, 264n23 Comfort, Charles, 23 Committee on Reconstruction and Re-establishment, 155 Concordia University (Sir George Williams University), 25, 210 Conseil des arts et manufactures de la province de Québec (campq), 52–70, 74, 82, 84, 99, 101, 253n7, 254n14, 255n17, 256nn19,24, 257n25 Conway, Gary, 217

Council of Ministers of Education, 230 Council of Public Instruction, 8, 63, 84, 255n17, 257n27 Courtney, Richard, 211, 215, 218 Couturier, Father MarieAlain, 139–40 crafts, 10, 99, 202, 229; as handwork, 15, 110; as handicrafts or handcrafts, 14, 156, 158–9, 160; as craftwork, 170; clay, 195 Crane, Walter, 43, 111 Creelman (Miss), 178, 180, 187, 189 Cruikshank, William, 99, 259n1, 261n13, 262n17 Cryderman, Mackie, 18 Cullen, Maurice, 81, 83, 124 D’Amico, Victor, 24 Dawson, J.W., 3, 4 de Boisbaudran, Horace Lecoq, 75, 258n32 decorative art, 37, 64, 66 de la Sizeranne, Robert, 131 de Tonnancour, Jacques, 135 Dewey, John, 16, 21, 153, 201 Dickenson, John, 39 Dierlam, Howard, 22 Dillworth, Ira, 171 Discipline-based art education (dbae), 28, 202, 206, 216 Dodd, Eric, 226, 239 domestic science, 114 Dow, Arthur Wesley, 12, 111 Duquette, Suzanne, 140 Dyce, William, 49, 57, 60 Dyonnet, Edmond, 62 64–6, 68–9, 81, 83, 99 Eakins, Thomas, 99

Index École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, 51 Écoles des Beaux Arts, Montreal and Quebec, 13–14. See also Fine Arts Schools of Montreal and Quebec Edson, Allan, 71, 77, 83 Educational Museum (Ryerson’s), 9, 52, 86–7, 89, 101, 260n4 Eisner, Elliot, 24 Elliott, Lewis, 191 Emily Carr College of Art and Design (formerly Vancouver Art School), 237 Emma Lake School, 25 Fast, Lynette, 215 Faunt, Jessie, 176 Federation of Canadian Artists, 155, 156, 159 Feldman, Edmond, 24 Feldman’s technique, 28 Field, Pauli, 194 Fine Arts, 17, 25, 72, 74, 80, 99, 128, 129, 131, 132, 140, 214, 274, 276, 282, 287 Fine Arts School of Montreal, 140. See also École des Beaux Arts, Montreal Fine Arts School of Quebec, 128–9, 131–2. See also École des Beaux Arts, Quebec Flather, Donald, 163 Forbes, John Colin, 41 Foster, Michael, 228, 240 Foucault, Michel, 47 freehand, drawing, 39, 42, 57–60, 64–7, 69, 82, 88, 98, 109, 111–12, 115, 118, 164, 248n39, 263n18 Free Masonry, 40 Freemasons, 34 Froebel, 10, 126 Fuller, Buckminster, 23

Gabriel, Winifred, 115–17, 265n6 Gagnon, Clarence, 77–9 Gagnon, Maurice, 128, 130–1, 141, 143–4, 146 Gaitskell, Charles Dudley, 5, 7, 13–14, 21–24, 207, 210, 212–13, 216–19, 244n7, 271n1 Gardner, Howard, 29, 244n11 gay and lesbian: caucuses, 213; artists, 214 Genis, Jim, 178, 190 Getty Institute, 28 Girard, Henri, 132–4 Gray, James U., 164, 169, 174, 179, 183, 192–3, 195–8 Great Exhibition of Industry of All Nations, London, 49 Group of Seven (painters) 4, 17, 123–4, 127, 154 H.B. Beal Technical and Commercial High School, 18 Hamilton Art School, 92–3, 95–8, 100, 261n9, 262n18 Hamilton Arts and Crafts Association, 159 handicrafts. See crafts Harris, Lawren, 23, 154, 156, 159 Harris, Robert, 71–3, 79, 83, 257n26, 258n32 Harrison, Elizabeth, 212 Hart, Florence, 212, 213 Hawkley, Fred, 191 Haworth, Peter, 156, 267nn5–7, 16 Healy, Sinclair, 226, 239 Hébert, Louis Phillipe, 66 Henry Shaefer-Simmern, 23 Hughes, James L., 112, 243n3 Hunter, James, 40

301 Indian and Colonial Exhibition (1886), 59, 100 industrial art education, 45, 55 industrial drawing, 9. See also mechanical drawing, freehand drawing Industrial Exhibitions, 46, 115; St Louis, 114 Jaques, Betty, 138 Jarvis, Alan, 23, 230 Judge, S.P., 170–1 King, H.B., 169 Kitsilano High School, 162–4, 166–7, 192–3, 194–5, 197, 268–70; art collection, 178–80; art-related clubs, 187–92; facilities and equipment, 169–71; teachers, 171–8; yearbook, 180–7 Knowledge Network, 237 Kyle, John, 118, 265n8 Labor Arts Guild, 158 Lady Teachers’ Association, 115 Laliberté, Alfred, 66–7, 69 Lanier, Vincent, 24 Leduc, Ozias, 69 Lemieux, Jean-Paul, 128–9, 131, 134, 140, 142 Leonowens, Anna, 4, 9, 109, 264–5n4 Lewis, Margaret, 171, 174, 175 Lewis, Stephen, 217 linear drawing, 6, 7–9, 52, 54. See also industrial drawing, mechanical drawing, freehand drawing Lismer, Arthur, 4, 16–18, 21–3, 25–6, 110–11, 118, 123–6, 131–3,

302 137–9, 140, 143–5, 244n6 London Exhibition (1862), 49, 51 Lowenfeld, Viktor, 20–1, 23, 146 Lyman, John, 126, 127, 132, 133 MacDonald, J.A.S. (Jim) 190, 193, 195, 198 MacDonald, Jock, 25 MacDonald, Moira, 171, 176–7, 193, 196, 198 MacDonald, Murray, 20, 232 MacDonald, William, Sir (MacDonald Schools), 108, 109 MacIntosh, Ian, 190 manual training, 10, 13, 108, 114, 118 Marquis of Lorne, 71, 100 Maslow, Abraham, 23 May, S. Passmore, 9, 40 41, 43 McCarthy, Doris, 25 McCarthy, Michael 214, 215 McCrae, M., 179 McCurry, Harry, O., 131–2, 134, 136 McFaul (Drawing books), 10, 110, 112, McInnes, Dermott, 177, 198 McInnes, Graham, 133 McKay, Alexander, 9, 104–7, 109–10, 112, 264n1, 265n5 McLeish, Betty, 224, 227, 240 McLuhan, Marshall, 23 Mechanical Drawing, 37–9, 42. See also linear drawing, industrial drawing, freehand drawing Mechanics’ institutes, 6, 31, 32, 34–35, 38–41, 45, 54, 92, 244nn1,2, 246n15, 248n37, 253n8

Index Mechanics’ Institutes Association of Ontario, 38 Melvin, Grace, 170, 175, 190, 192–3, 287 Merrett Campbell, 156–7 Moffat, Margaret, 115 Montreal Mechanics’ Institute, 31, 32, 52, 54, 55, 70, 253n8, 254n15, 257n30 Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 17, 78, 80 Morris, William, 10, 113, 147, 152, 161, 266nn2,3 Moss, Charles E., 81, 83, 93, 261n10 Muhlstock, Louis, 143 Mulcaster, Wynona, 22 Multiculturalism, 28 multiple intelligences, 29, 244n11 National, the 18, 56, 100, 128, 131, 134, 135, 144, 148, 154, 157, 166, 213, 214, 223, 229, 230, 242, 254, 257, 259, 263, 267, 281, 287 National Advisory Council on School Broadcasting, 223, 229 National Art Education Association (naea), 23, 213 National Film Board (nfb), 148, 230, 241 National Gallery of Canada, 18, 80, 100, 131, 132, 157, 160, 166 National Produced in Canada Exhibit, 126–7 National Symposium on Arts Education, 242 Newfoundland (curriculum), 13, 15–16, 223, 226, 230, 271n3, Normal Schools: British Columbia, 14, 265n7; Nova Scotia (Teachers’

College), 14, 108; Saskatoon, 14, 22; Toronto, 110. See also Teachers’ colleges Nova Scotia, 10; Department of Education, curriculum, 14, 24, 27, 103–12, 115–16, 118–19, 222, 226, 230, 264n1, 271n3 Nova Scotia College of Art, 20, 243n1. See also Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Victoria School of Art and Design Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 16, 210, 243n1 Nova Scotia Free School Act, 3, 104 Nutt, Elizabeth, 111, 118 O’Brien, Lucius, 5, 18, 89, 90, 112, 262n18 Ontario Association of Teachers of Art (oata), 155, 217. See also Ontario Society for Education through Art Ontario College of Art (oca), 13, 98–9, 124, 139, 262n17, 263 Ontario College of Education (oce), 210 Ontario Department of Education (Ontario Ministry of Education), 22, 101, 201, 205, 207 210, 222, 237, 238 Ontario Education Television Committee, 237 Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (oise), 210–11, 215 Ontario School of Art, 88, 91, 95, 99, 112, 260n7, 263n18 Ontario Society for Education through Art (osea), 155, 213, 217, 218, 219

Index Ontario Society of Artists (osa), 41–2, 86–94, 98–9, 101, 112 Open Learning Institute, 237 Ornamental Drawing, 37, 39 Ottawa Art School, 90, 91, 93, 261n10, 262n18 Papworth, John, 49 Paris Universal Exposition, 74, 100, 264n23 Paris World’s Fair (1937), 127 Pattemore, Arnel, 213 Pellan, Alfred, 128, 135 Peterson, Roy, 188 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, 9, 55, 87, 89, 100 Piaget, Jean, 146, 201 picture study, 13, 15, 110, 243n5 Pinhey, John, C., 60 Pinneo, Paige, 128 Pinot, Charles François, 75 postmodern, postmodernism, postmodernist, 27–8, 213–15 Prang, drawing books, 10, 12, 114 Princess Louise, 71, 100 Purvis, James, 39 Putman Weir Report, 167, 168, 169 Quebec Department of Education (Quebec Ministry of Education) 223, 234, 239 Queen’s University, 210 Radio College, 223, 224 Raphael, William, 71, 83 Read, Herbert, 20, 22, 23, 136, 145, 216, 244n6, 267n13 Reading, Arthur, 111 Reconstructionist(s), 148, 150, 152, 156

Redgrave, Richard, 50, 57, 253n3 Reeve, Helen, 181–2 Reid, Bill, 186 Reid, George Agnew, 89, 92, 98–9, 261n13, 262n16 responding to art, 26, 28 Reynald, 132, 134–5, 292 Richardson, Marion, 18, 134, 143, 145 Robertson, J.W., 108–9 Rogers, Otto, 25 Rollston (Miss), 164, 167 Rose, Muriel, 158 Ross, Allistar, 188, 195, 198 Ross, Denman, 111 Rousell, Claude, 25 Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (rca), 65, 71, 73, 89, 112 Royal College of Art, 51 Royal Commission on Learning (Ontario), 203 Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, 25, 155 Ruskin, John, 10, 43, 76, 102, 113, 152–3, 250n40, 259n42 Ryerson, Egerton, 7, 52, 86, 98, 111, 283 Saskatchewan Department of Education, 29, 236 Saskatchewan Government Correspondence School, 222 Sato, Heidi, 181 Savage, Anne, 23, 25, 77, 123, 124, 127, 128, 131, 132, 137, 145, 265n5 Schwartz, Bernard, 232, 235 Scott, Charles, 162, 268n1 Scott, Marian, 19, 25, 126 Seath, Ethel, 128, 131 Semple, Jessie, 113–15, 243n3

303 Senécal, Irene, 140, 142, 145, 146 Seton, Ernest Thompson, 42 Shadbolt, Jack, 25, 171–3, 192, 269n32 Shaw, Duncan Alexander, 41, 44 Sheffield School of Art, 111 Smith, Annie, 215 Smith, Gordon, 25 Smith, Lewis, 106 Smith, Ottie, 109, 264n2 Smith, Walter, 7, 8, 11, 56, 59, 62–4, 82, 84, 88–90, 98, 104, 106, 112, 118, 253n5, 254n16 Smith system, 55, 56, 57, 61, 62, 88, 255n17, 256n19 Snelgrove, Peter, 174, 177, 178, 181, 183, 189–90, 193, 195, 198 social reconstruction, 19, 147, 149, 150, 153, 154, 155, 159, 161 Société d’art contemporain (Contemporary Art Society), 127, 136 Soucy, Jean-Baptiste, 129 South Kensington: school, system, museum, 7–9, 13, 41, 48–64, 70–2, 82, 84–92, 98–102, 105–6, 111, 117–18, 254n14, 263n19 Sparkes, John, 100 Spry, Daniel, 39 Steele, Bob, 24, 25, 196 Taylor, Audrey, 139 Taylor, Frederick B., 157–8 Taylor, Marlene, 232, 240, Teachers’ colleges, 14. See also Normal Schools Technical Instruction Act, 51

304 Templé, Edmond M., 62–5, 84, 255–6 Templé system, 62 Tomlinson, R.R., 145–6 Toronto Art School, 91, 261n13 Toronto Art Students League, 94 Toronto School Board, 111, 112, 113 Toronto Technical School, 98 University of Toronto, 210, 214, 217, 219, 220, 278, 280, 283, 288 Ursulescu, Stephen, 174–6, 178–9, 183–5, 187, 189–95, 199 Van Luppen, François, 71, 83

Index Vancouver Art Gallery, 26 Vancouver School of Art, 14, 270n50,54 Vancouver Technical School, 163–6, 167, 191, 198–9, 268n5,8 Victoria School of Art and Design (vsad), 9, 16, 109–11, 243n1. See also Nova Scotia College of Art, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design visual culture, 30 Wartime Information Board, 148 Weaver, A.E. 106 Western Ontario (University of), 210, 214 Weston, William, 25, 66,

118, 171–2, 190, 265n9, 270n33 White, Rusell, 169–170, 173, 191, 196, 199 Williamson, Eva, 169–70, 175, 199 Winnipeg School of Art, 13 Women’s Art Association of Canada (waac), 159–60 Wong, Anna, 163, 199 Wong, Bill, 164–5, 199 Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project, 153 Wynn Wood, Elizabeth, 150–1, 155–6, 158 Wytenbroek, John, 169–73, 199, 269n28 Ziegfeld, Edwin, 23, 24