I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton 9780228013716

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McGill-Queen’s/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History Martha Langford and Sandra Paikowsky, series editors

Recognizing the need for a better understanding of Canada’s artistic culture both at home and abroad, the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation, through its generous support, makes possible the publication of innovative books that advance our understanding of Canadian art and Canada’s visual and material culture. This series supports and stimulates such scholarship through the publication of original and rigorous peer-reviewed books that make significant contributions to the subject. We welcome submissions from Canadian and international scholars for book-length projects on historical and contemporary Canadian art and visual and material culture, including Native and Inuit art, architecture, photography, craft, design, and museum studies. Studies by Canadian scholars on non-Canadian themes will also be considered. The Practice of Her Profession Florence Carlyle, Canadian Painter in the Age of Impressionism Susan Butlin Bringing Art to Life A Biography of Alan Jarvis Andrew Horrall Picturing the Land Narrating Territories in Canadian Landscape Art, 1500 to 1950 Marylin J. McKay The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada Edited by Carol Payne and Andrea Kunard Newfoundland Modern Architecture in the Smallwood Years, 1949–1972 Robert Mellin The Codex Canadensis and the Writings of Louis Nicolas The Natural History of the New World, Histoire Naturelle des Indes Occidentales Edited and with an Introduction by FrançoisMarc Gagnon, Translation by Nancy Senior, Modernization by Réal Ouellet

Museum Pieces Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums Ruth B. Phillips The Allied Arts Architecture and Craft in Postwar Canada Sandra Alfoldy Rethinking Professionalism Essays on Women and Art in Canada, 1850–1970 Edited by Kristina Huneault and Janice Anderson The Official Picture The National Film Board of Canada’s Still Photography Division and the Image of Canada, 1941–1971 Carol Payne Paul-Émile Borduas A Critical Biography François-Marc Gagnon Translated by Peter Feldstein On Architecture Melvin Charney: A Critical Anthology Edited by Louis Martin

Making Toronto Modern Architecture and Design, 1895–1975 Christopher Armstrong

Canadian Painters in a Modern World, 1925–1955 Writings and Reconsiderations Lora Senechal Carney

Negotiations in a Vacant Lot Studying the Visual in Canada Edited by Lynda Jessup, Erin Morton, and Kirsty Robertson

Sketches from an Unquiet Country Canadian Graphic Satire, 1840–1940 Edited by Dominic Hardy, Annie Gérin, and Lora Senechal Carney

Visibly Canadian Imaging Collective Identities in the Canadas, 1820–1910 Karen Stanworth

I’m Not Myself at All Women, Art, and Subjectivity in Canada Kristina Huneault

Breaking and Entering The Contemporary House Cut, Spliced, and Haunted Edited by Bridget Elliott Family Ties Living History in Canadian House Museums Andrea Terry Picturing Toronto Photography and the Making of a Modern City Sarah Bassnett Architecture on Ice A History of the Hockey Arena Howard Shubert For Folk’s Sake Art and Economy in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia Erin Morton Spaces and Places for Art Making Art Institutions in Western Canada, 1912–1990 Anne Whitelaw Narratives Unfolding National Art Histories in an Unfinished World Edited by Martha Langford

The Global Flows of Early Scottish Photography Encounters in Scotland, Canada, and China Anthony W. Lee Tear Gas Epiphanies Protest, Culture, Museums Kirsty Robertson What Was History Painting and What Is It Now? Edited by Mark Salber Phillips and Jordan Bear Through Post-Atomic Eyes Edited by Claudette Lauzon and John O’Brian Jean Paul Riopelle et le mouvement automatiste François-Marc Gagnon Jean Paul Riopelle and the Automatiste Movement François-Marc Gagnon Translated by Donald Winkler I Can Only Paint The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton Irene Gammel

Mary Riter Hamilton, War Material, ca. 1920, oil on cardboard, 18.5 × 23.8 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-165, Copy negative C-102987.

the story of battlefield artist mary riter hamilton

Irene Gammel

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston | London | Chicago

© Irene Gammel 2020 ISBN 978-0-2280-0391-5 (cloth) Legal deposit fourth quarter 2020 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 Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: I can only paint : the story of battlefield artist Mary Riter Hamilton / Irene Gammel. Other titles: Story of battlefield artist Mary Riter Hamilton Names: Gammel, Irene, author. Series: McGill-Queen’s/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation studies in art history. Description: Series statement: McGill-Queen’s/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation studies in art history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana 20200299115 | ISBN 9780228003915 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Hamilton, Mary Riter, 1867-1954. | LCSH: World War, 1914-1918—Art and the war. | LCSH: War artists—Canada—Biography. | LCSH: Painters—Canada—Biography. | LCGFT: Biographies. Classification: LCC ND249.H355 G36 2020 | DDC 759.11—dc23

Contents Acknowledgments ix

Here’s Where the World Ends: An Introduction 3 1

Through Love and Loss 11

2

Becoming Mary Riter Hamilton 28

3

The Home Front 48

4

Becoming an Artist-Witness at Camblain-L’Abbé 69

5

In the Valley of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire 100

6

Among the Gravediggers in Écurie 127

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A War Studio in Arras 154

8

Market among the Ruins of Ypres 172

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The Somme and the Forgotten Sites 199

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Close Calls in Flanders 223

11

My Candle Is Almost Burnt Out 238

12

Into the Limelight 266

13

Going Home 288 Epilogue: I Have Been Lucky 299

Chronology 309 List of Exhibitions 319 Note on Transcriptions 323 Notes 325 Bibliography 371 Index 385

Acknowledgments

From navigating muddy trenches to years of stark poverty, Mary Riter Hamilton safeguarded her paintings and sketches through great adversity. Loyal to her country and family, she donated 227 works to the Public Archives of Canada (now Library and Archives Canada), distributing her remaining works among her extended family and friends, whose descendants have since served as stewards of her paintings, ephemera, and memories. I thank the executor of Mary Riter Hamilton’s work, Ronald T. Riter, and his wife Roberta for their unstinting support: they opened their Vancouver home to me and made available their treasures, many of which hung on walls throughout the house, and some even stored under their bed. I am equally grateful to the descendants of Margaret Janet Hart on Vancouver Island who generously donated Hamilton’s battlefield letters to my mlc Research Centre Archive, and to all descendants who shared with me rare works in their possession along with granular insight into Hamilton’s family history. They include the late Mary W. Higgins (1916–2016) in Victoria, bc, daughter of Hamilton’s close friends Rosalind and Henry Young; Mae and James A. Pankiw in Miami, mb; Murray Riter in Darlingford, mb; John Riter in Miami, mb; Lorna and Lorne Stevens in Winnipeg, mb, Lorna being a descendant of the Zimmerman branch of the artist’s family (her great-greatgrandmother was Eliza Jane Zimmerman); and Theresa Thomas in Logan Lake, bc. I am grateful to the late Margaret (Peggy) Thorburn (1933–2014) in Calgary, ab, for donating a silk scarf painted by Hamilton and to Thorburn’s nephew Duff Shaw in Mississauga, on, a former professor at Ryerson who met with me and my team for lively discussions. I thank the Uno Langmann Gallery in Vancouver for sharing their beautiful Mary Riter Hamilton art collection – Uno’s passion for the artist was a special treat. I thank Michael Weinberg in Toronto, whose prescient collection of early Canadian women artists deserves further research; Fred Johnson in Thunder Bay, on; and the anonymous private collectors. I thank

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art collector Ash K. Prakash both for his keen art historical engagement of Hamilton’s work and for connecting me with the owners of her works. The research and writing for this book has taken me on a decade-long journey through Canadian and global archives and museums whose staff shared their time, expertise, and holdings. In Canada, they include: Library and Archives Canada Preservation Centre in Gatineau, qc, for providing generous access to Mary Riter Hamilton’s paintings on three separate visits and for continuing to preserve her work; and Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, on, for providing digital reproductions for over seventy works. In the process of chasing down Hamilton’s widely dispersed work, I gratefully acknowledge those who provided digital reproductions, information, and permissions. They include, in british columbia: the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Museum of Vancouver, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Museum of the Royal Westminster Regiment in New Westminster, the Penticton Art Gallery, and the Heffel Fine Art Auction House in Vancouver; in manitoba: the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the J.A.V. David Museum in Killarney (especially Joyce Dietrich and Betty Sorenson); the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, ab; and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax. For information on Hamilton’s life and career, I thank the Bruce Land Registry Office in Walkerton, on; the Bruce County Museum & Cultural Centre (especially Jim Whytock and Deb Sturdevant) and the Bruce County Historical Society, both in Southampton, on; William (Bill) and Alma Steel in Guelph, on; St Paul’s Anglican Church in Clinton, on; the City of Thunder Bay Public Art Collection; and the Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society. For information on Hamilton’s career, later life, and battlefield journey, I thank the Archives of Manitoba and the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections in Winnipeg; the Archives of Ontario and the Art Gallery of Ontario Library & Archives Collection in Toronto; the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto; the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria; and The War Amps and the National Gallery of Canada Library & Archives in Ottawa. For invaluable access to trench maps, I am grateful to the McMaster University Library Digital Archive in Hamilton, on. My research has benefited greatly from consultation with international archives. They include, in belgium: the In Flanders Fields Museum Research Centre in Ypres; Archives de la ville d’Ypres (Stadsarchief Ieper); and Westhoek Verbeeldt in Poperinge; in france: Éditions Ismael and L’Argonnaute Digital Archives at La Contemporaine in Paris; Musée des Beaux-Arts in Arras; Les Archives du Pas-de-Calais in Dainville; and Ministère de la Culture (France)– Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine–Diffusion rmn-gp; in germany: Akademie der Künste in Berlin; Bröhan-Museum, Landesmuseum für Jugendstil, Art Deco und Funktionalismus in Berlin; Hessische Landesbibliothek in

Acknowledgments

Wiesbaden; Kunstbibliothek Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz; Landesarchiv Berlin (Fotosammlung); Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz (especially Wolfgang Hamm); Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen 1867 e.V. Archiv; and Berliner Stadtbibliothek; in the united kingdom: the Imperial War Museum in London; in the united states: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Library of Congress in Washington, dc; and in australia: the Australian War Memorial in Campbell. While every effort has been made to locate copyright holders, I would be happy to hear of any errors or oversights. This book has been fuelled by the energy, curiosity, and excitement of many students and fellows at Ryerson University who have engaged with the artist’s work and story both through course work and at the mlc Research Centre. I thank Kate Atkinson, Esther Berry, Alexandra Chronopoulos, Sydney Dale-McGrath, Emma Dunn, Justin Dyck, Sasi Evani, Zainab Feroz, Henry Gomes, Michael Guyenot, Justin Hovey, Kristen Jess, David Jones, Anna Krentz, Vicki Lee, Fin Lemaitre, Teresa Maljar, Jaclyn Marcus, Sara McGuire, Michael Pereira, Joel Rudewicz, Catherine Russell, Victoria Shariati, Shalika Sivathasan, Rebecca Thursten, Nick Vani, Jason Wang, Nancy Webb, Nina Zeller, and Stefanie Zuccarini. I extend special thanks to the following key research assistants for their invaluable contributions: Jenny LeRoy and Alyssa Mackenzie helped research and organize this project in its early stages; Danielle Van Wagner, an archival sleuth extraordinaire, helped me establish a timeline – a most challenging task – and has continued to provide expertise since becoming Special Collections Librarian at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto; Kailey Havelock helped with the editorial framework; Myriam Couturier and Scott Sparrow assisted with the editing and securing of images and copyright permissions; and Cameron MacDonald supported the intricate and timeconsuming process of fact-checking the chronology and research with impressive archival and intellectual prowess. For discussions and support, I thank my excellent colleagues at Ryerson University, including Naomi Adelson, Alison Matthews David, Robert Dixon, Catherine Ellis, Marco Fiola, Paule Laberge, Janet Lum, Ingrid Mida, Karen Mulhallen, Doina Popescu, Dale Smith, and Allison Urowitz; and colleagues elsewhere, including Caitlin Bailey at the Canadian Centre for the Great War in Montreal, historians Piet Chielens, Dominiek Dendooven, and Jan Dewilde in Ypres, Marguerite Helmers at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Kristina Huneault at Concordia University, Mark and Georgina Kelman in New York City, Andrea McKenzie at York University, Jane Devine Mejia in Vancouver, Francis Naumann in New York City, historian Dave Nicholson in Thunder Bay, and Henry and Patricia Srebrnik and Ian Dowbiggin at the University of Prince Edward Island.

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I thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canada Research Chairs program for their invaluable support; and the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science for infrastructure support for the mlc Research Centre, which facilitated this work. For a publication subvention, I thank the Aid to Scholarly Publication Program of the Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences; for subventions to reproduce images in colour, I thank the McGill-Queen’s/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History grant and the Office of the Dean of Arts, Ryerson University, the latter also providing a subvention grant for preparing the index. I thank the team at McGill-Queen’s University Press, especially editor-in-chief Jonathan Crago for his superb visioning and enthusiastic championing of this book; and the two anonymous peer-review readers for their excellent feedback; the designer for an attractive cover and layout that takes readers inside of Hamilton’s work; Eleanor Gasparik for her admirable attention to detail and thoroughness in copyediting; and Stephen Ullstrom for excellent work on the index. On a more personal note, the research for this book resonated with my own family history. Growing up in Germany, on the border between Germany and France near Alsace-Lorraine, I come from a family with deep roots in the turmoil of warfare to which border states are often subjected. Both my grandfathers took part in the First World War, and even though their experiences were largely overshadowed by the more recent memory of the Second World War, my mother took a keen interest in my research on Mary Riter Hamilton, offering insights into what motivated Hamilton’s urgent drive to paint the battlefields. In these conversations, I first learned that my grandfather, who had been taken prisoner by the French, was tasked with cleaning the battlefields as a punishment after trying to escape, a traumatic task that he never talked about openly. He only divulged his experience to one of his children, who shared it with his sister – my mother – who in turn passed it on to me along with his letter home and the original photograph depicting my grandfather with his fellow prisoners. It was a detail that resonated with me as I researched and wrote about Hamilton’s presence in the post-Armistice battlefield, and I want to thank my mother, Gertrud Gammel, for it. In this journey of researching and writing, my most heartfelt thanks go to my partner, Jean-Paul Boudreau, who was dean of arts at Ryerson when I started this book and is now president and vice-chancellor at Mount Allison University; despite his own hectic schedule, he found the time to accompany me on three battlefield trips and on visits to family members, supporting the research with unparalleled passion, generosity, and intellectual depth.

Acknowledgments

As I write these acknowledgements, we are in the second month of the covid-19 lockdown. Hamilton’s focus in painting the duality of destruction and recovery has never seemed more prescient, providing timely lessons for an entire generation marked by the trauma of a pandemic that they will remember for decades to come. I dedicate this book to the students who have been involved with Mary Riter Hamilton’s work at the mlc Research Centre and who will help advance this research in the future. I also dedicate it to those who have safeguarded her work to this day.

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J.F.H., Map of the Western Front 1915–18, in H.G. Wells, The Outline of History (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1921), 1039. Courtesy of McGill University. Mary Riter Hamilton painted in Arras, Vimy, Lens, Loos, Ypres, Dixmude, and at the Yser Canal, as well as further south in Albert, Peronne, and east in Cambrai and Mons.

(… To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead;) Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances, Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;) Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth, Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us? What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics, Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains? WA LT W HI T M A N, “ T HE W OUND-DRE S SER,” 18 65 1

If as you and others tell me, there is something of the suffering and heroism of the war in my pictures it is because at that moment the spirit of those who fought and died seemed to linger in the air. Every splintered tree and scarred clod spoke of their sacrifice. Since then nature has been busy covering up the wounds, and in a few years the last sign of the war will have disappeared. To have been able to preserve some memory of what this consecrated corner of the world looked like after the storm is a great privilege, and all the reward an artist could hope for. M A R Y RI T ER H A MILTON, 1922 2

To this day the [Mary Riter Hamilton] collection at the National Archives of Canada remains one of the most poignant and sweeping wartime memorials from the period. P EN T IC TON A R T GA L L ER Y, 2019

Here’s W here the Wor ld Ends An Introduction

If I did not come at once it would be too late. M A R Y RI T ER H A MILTON, 1922 1

She blankets the Vimy Ridge in shades of ocean blue. On a hot day, an eerie silence hangs over deserted ground, the battlefields depleted from the grind of bloody clashes. Under the haze, the rippled metal of an observation post flickers red-brown in the sun. A lone boot rests on ochre clay. The landscape, once beautiful, lies ravaged by four years of violence known collectively as the Great War. Standing tall and intent in her skirt, blouse, and hat, she works under the stifling sun in this violated terrain. An observer spotting this stranger through binoculars might see her as an apparition – or at the very least, a perplexing presence – to be so matter-of-factly engaged with brush and oils and canvas in such a setting, as though there is no other place she would rather be than in northern France in the aftermath of war. Since the battlefields were considered a male domain, she had to overcome many hurdles to get there. Yet that ordeal is nothing compared with the journey through the horror that lies at her feet once she arrived. Today, Mary Riter Hamilton’s oil painting of that day, entitled Entrance to Canadian Observation Post on Lorette Ridge (1919), testifies to that which she witnessed a hundred years ago, before the battlefields were restored by human hand and nature. With a special security pass, I was able to contemplate this work and hundreds of others in the underground vault of the Library and Archives Canada Preservation Centre in Gatineau, Quebec, which houses the largest collection of Hamilton’s work – 227 paintings and drawings – amid a total of 425,000 works of Canadian art. Having descended into the depths of the bunker in a noiseless

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I.1 Mary Riter Hamilton, Entrance to Canadian Observation Post on Lorette Ridge, 1919, oil on canvas, 46.3 × 63.5 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-89, Copy negative C-132011.

elevator, the archivist and I step out into a silent room, hearing nothing but the clicking of our shoes on the concrete floor. The archivist draws out the sliding walls; the soft rattling of wooden frames chatters against the stillness of the vault. The walls carry approximately fifteen paintings on each side, bearing the weight of expressive moments snatched by Mary Riter Hamilton. Her signature, often overwriting scenes of mud and water and barbed wire, proclaims her the protagonist of this journey through the land of the living and the dead. Another wall slides into view, and there it is. In front of me, the entrance to the observation post beckons, an invitation a century old, the rust-red corrugated metal dulled from the heat of that far-away day. Invited by this painting into the past, I find myself at the first exhibition of Hamilton’s war art in Vancouver. The year is 1919, and I observe the painting hanging on the wall alongside others depicting the effects of war: here, a trench on the Vimy Ridge with an

Here’s Where the World Ends: An Introduction

intricate camouflage netting; there, a derelict tank outside of Monchy-le-Preux; the open-air columns of the destroyed Cathedral of Arras. I walk among attendant soldiers with missing limbs – perhaps the single lost boot belonged to one of the amputees. Or perhaps not, I think, before crossing the crowded room. Alone, at the age of fifty-one, Hamilton criss-crossed the wartorn Pas-deCalais in France and the Fields of Flanders in Belgium; but maps and catalogues can hardly quantify the immensity of her odyssey. She was an ardent patriot, whose life was shaped by heartbreaking and unusual turns. At the height of her career, she felt compelled to risk it all to paint the war zones of Europe. A trailblazer, she fought against gender conventions that kept women off the battlefields, and against the men of the Canadian elite who did their best to shun her from official recognition. In refusing to follow the scripts written for her, she helped to build the Western art community into what it is today, while more generally inspiring a generation of Canadian women through her life and art. And yet her legacy has become obscured, her name relegated to the sidelines of art history. “Official War Art: Where Are the Women?,” 2 Australian art historian Catherine Speck asks rhetorically. Draped in flowing gowns, women typically allegorized peace and represented the nation, as opposed to shaping it. But among the era’s battlefield artists are a handful of women artists who refused to sweep the traces of war underneath the rug3; among them, Mary Riter Hamilton stands out. Rejected for official war service not once but repeatedly, she became a self-appointed war artist, performing her service outside of the framework provided by the official war art program. In so doing, she delivered on her task in a manner that gives her a special status: as Canada’s first female battlefield artist, a bold and independent humanitarian artist who dove headlong into the turmoil of the Great War’s aftermath to emerge with a new vision of empathy and a new art. While the intervening century has seen many of her artworks grace the pages of books and anthologies related to the epoch-defining war, her name and uniquely fascinating life story have remained unfamiliar to Canadians. This fact presents a loss to the nation, its people, and its identity. It is for the sake of these collectives, as well as for the soldiers, for women, and for the artist herself, that the following pages tell her story. Who was Mary Riter Hamilton? The personality of this painter, etcher, and pastel and textile artist has remained shrouded behind apocryphal myths that she herself helped to cultivate in order to navigate a sexist society. She is described as gentle and soft-spoken, and yet she wielded an iron will. Presenting herself as perennially young, she manipulated official records, which have confused curators and biographers to this day. Many of her supporters have seen fit to proclaim her “too modest to secure the recognition which is due her talent as an artist,” 4 and yet she actively shaped her career, organiz-

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I.2 Mary Riter Hamilton at Great

Central Lake, Vancouver Island, BC, 1913–14, photograph. Mary W. Higgins Collection, Victoria, BC.

I.3 Mary Riter Hamilton (second from right) swimming with her friends Rosalind Young (second from left) and Dr Henry Esson Young (right) at Great Central Lake, Vancouver Island, BC, 1913–14, photograph. Mary W. Higgins Collection, Victoria, BC.

ing her trans-Canada exhibition in 1912 to national acclaim. Moreover, the oftrepeated Empire Loyalist background obscured her German heritage; yet when she reached the battlefields, she broke with convention by including the German crosses at Passchendaele in her mourning (see figure 11.12). Each myth both embeds a truth and buries a secret. This subversive duality, a tension between social commitment and seclusion, communication and secrecy, fuels Hamilton’s life and work. Whereas her early portraits show a stylish and attractive young woman, later photographs show her outdoors walking, boating, and swimming, revealing a lively and athletic woman with a sense of humour. Intelligent and

Here’s Where the World Ends: An Introduction

fiercely independent, she fought gender prejudice like her contemporary Emily Carr – a resemblance amplified by their late-in-life reputations as eccentric artist-geniuses and dog-loving loners prone to flying into rages. An enigma of the first order, Hamilton left many traces and a body of artworks but no cohesive arc describing how the work came about. The biographer struggles with a dearth of primary information regarding Mary Riter Hamilton, who left no diaries and few letters since she was a terrible speller and didn’t like to correspond. Although she did give a good number of interviews, these sources are marked by an eerie internal inconsistency – the dates don’t add up – and journalists from the era are clear that Hamilton set limits on what she would share. However patchy and incomplete, a key source in writing this book and a compass in navigating her story has been Hamilton’s own voice as found in the letters she wrote from the battlefields and which the descendants of her patron, Margaret Janet Hart, graciously donated to my research centre at Ryerson University (many of these are reprinted here in full for the first time).5 The moment I received Hamilton’s battlefield letters in 2015 – the largest collection of handwritten letters by Mary Riter Hamilton – marked a breakthrough in the present research. They came to me in the shoebox in which they had been stored in the attic of Hart’s home on Vancouver Island, many still in their envelopes with dates and postmarks placing Hamilton in space and time, others tucked protectively into a vintage car manual. These letters, which took hundreds of hours to scan, transcribe, and annotate with the help of student research assistants, allowed me to immerse myself in Hamilton’s life. They give glimpses of a woman travelling alone through life, embracing her freedom and chosen responsibility as a witness to the violence of war. Enlarged on the screen like forensic artefacts, these letters allowed me to reconstruct a continuous timeline and the most cohesive narrative of Hamilton’s battlefield experiences to date. But even with these letters, there remain many weeks and months where the textual evidence is insufficient, consistent with the painter’s refrain: “I cannot talk, I can only paint.” 6 Thus, to some extent, my method has relied on the paintings themselves to supply visual clues. For this reason, each painting has been described and contextualized in my databank in a process that has taken a decade of research, including three trips to the battlefields of Flanders and France in 2012, 2014, and 2019. The method was to locate each painting in space and time by sifting through thousands of archival and online photographs and artworks as well as through military records,7 corroborating also the artist’s presence near the sites she names in her work. In other words, being there is central to the process of reconstructing her biography and understanding her art. Hamilton’s expedition ran parallel to the Canadian War Memorials Fund, which, from its inception in November 1916, commissioned and exhibited a total

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of over 800 works in paint, sculpture, and print by some one hundred artists, and ultimately, in a young settler nation, as Maria Tippett writes, made a “contribution to the maturation of an indigenous school of painting in Canada.” 8 While this official art program produced a multiplicity of styles and collectively covered the key sites, Hamilton’s large collection of at least 320 paintings and sketches, in contrast, filters the Canadian war experience through the lens of one singular artist-reporter as she travelled to the countless sites where Canadians had fought. A civilian painting the aftermath, she insisted on travelling to the most remote areas, tracking the craters of the hinterland and visiting the sites of battles lost as well as won, to mourn the dead not included in the official war art. Like Walt Whitman’s poetic speaker in the epigraph to this book, who aims to “be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth,” she too chose to become a witness to the story of a nation, which was also a story of the nation’s “deepest remains.” 9 In doing so, and while navigating a volatile and stressful world, Hamilton raises questions about war and postwar epistemology and the aesthetic form of witnessing. What is witnessing? Jay Winter writes that witnesses are “people who were there” and “whose memories are part of the historical record.” 10 Witnessing means becoming imprinted by the experience since witnesses often “bear traces of their injuries in subliminal ways.” 11 The documentary medium marshals evidence, engages history, and presents a truthful record, but as theorists of witnessing, such as Hillary Chute, highlight, records themselves are constructed because the act of witnessing unfolds within the process of art making. Moreover, for witnessing to take place, there must be urgency, a need to commemorate and record, whereby the work bears the marks of this urgent practice. Or as Hamilton herself put it: “‘I came out … because I felt I must come, and if I did not come at once it would be too late, because the battlefields would be obliterated, and places watered with the best blood of Canada might be only names and memories.’” 12 n Because myth permeates both the archival record and many period biographies of Hamilton, I decided to set the record straight by personally travelling to most of the archives, carefully viewing and photographing the evidence, and talking directly with her descendants. In Vancouver, and again in Toronto, I met with Ronald T. Riter, Hamilton’s great-nephew and the executor of her estate, photographing and cataloguing every piece of evidence she left behind. In Vancouver, Uno Langmann, whose gallery holds many of Hamilton’s works, greeted me by declaring in a booming voice that any friend of Mary Riter

Here’s Where the World Ends: An Introduction

Hamilton was a friend of his too! On Vancouver Island, I met with the descendants of Margaret Janet Hart, who later donated the letters mentioned above, just as the late Margaret (Peggy) Thorburn (1933–2014) of Calgary donated her research materials to my centre. In Ypres, I connected with the researchers and archivists of the In Flanders Fields Museum located at the site of the Cloth Hall, where Hamilton spent so many weeks and months painting, and which holds relevant, never-before-seen sources to her story. Even though Hamilton’s war collection includes at least 320 works in oil, pastel, charcoal, pencil, and print, scholarly studies to date have largely confined their exploration to the selected battlefield works that Library and Archives Canada (lac) has made accessible online. While this is an excellent and convenient resource, only 68 of 227 images are available via lac’s online exhibition at the time of writing, meaning that the majority of her war work – and indeed the earliest war works with powerful impressions — are yet to be introduced and explored. While some of the works are now lost, others are resurfacing, such as the painting Arras, 1919 (1919), which was sold at auction in South Africa in May 2019.13 With my team of student assistants, I was able to retrieve a great many of these works. A number of them are introduced in this study, including works held by the Museum of the Royal Westminster Regiment in New Westminster in the Greater Vancouver Region, which represent the earliest war works she painted. As these engagements with holders of battlefield paintings show, subjects like Mary Riter Hamilton take a community to resuscitate. Although previous studies have been insufficient, there is some good work that has been helpful. In Victoria, British Columbia, curator Robert Amos published pioneering research in an extended catalogue essay in 1978,14 drawing on unpublished material from the Mary W. Higgins Collection in Victoria (left by Hamilton’s friends Rosalind and Henry Esson Young). In Winnipeg, art historian Angela Davis was a flag-bearer until her untimely death in 1994, leaving her exhibition catalogue essays as well as extensive research in the University of Manitoba archives.15 Historian Brian S. Osborne has focused on the thematic duality of destruction and reconstruction he saw performed in many of Hamilton’s artworks,16 while Marguerite Helmers has read Hamilton’s work through the lens of visual rhetorical theory, seeing the battlefield artworks both as experiences of place and as acts of remembrance that actively invoke audience response.17 To this list, I wish to add my own approach, which explores the modern dimensions of Hamilton’s art by considering, for example, her focus on steel bunkers and concrete in her representations of St Julien and the Second Battle of Ypres.18 A recent study, No Man’s Land: The Life and Art of Mary Riter Hamilton (2017) by Kathryn A. Young and Sarah M. McKinnon, deserves special mention, as it takes readers on a first book-length journey through Winnipeg, Berlin,

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Paris, and northern France. But despite the emphasis of the book’s title, and over a dozen colour war art reproductions, Young and McKinnon’s battlefield discussion is limited. With just thirty-five pages of text on the subject, no more than an extended essay, its very brevity exposes the project’s challenges and reveals the need for a separate study. In addition, the book contains numerous inaccuracies. For example, Young and McKinnon assert that “within a month of her arrival in France, Hamilton sent her first letter to Margaret Hart from Arras, thanking her for the fruitcake that she had received when collecting her mail in Paris.” 19 The actual autographed letter proves without doubt that it was neither written to Hart nor written within a month of Hamilton’s arrival in France. The letter was written to Hart’s daughter Ellen, with whom Hamilton shared a more informal friendship, and the date thereon is actually 7 May 1920 (mailed in an envelope postmarked 14 May 1920), a full year later than asserted by Young and McKinnon. This date is all the more consequential since within the stressful context of the battlefield, a year is like a compressed decade, with experiences and changes accumulating fast. As chapter 7 documents, this particular letter is among the longest and most elaborate of the entire correspondence, providing remarkable granular detail on Hamilton’s mental and social life one year into the two-anda-half-year expedition. Also – and with this I take particular exception – Young and McKinnon argue that Hamilton’s paintings are essentially similar to the official war paintings produced at the time, leaving the reader to wonder: what exactly are Hamilton’s particular aesthetic and ethical contributions? In the end, given the frequency of factual confusion,20 the battlefield discussion and method in No Man’s Land is often unreliable, which is most unfortunate as the authors’ intentions – introducing new source material and helping to bring an under-appreciated artist back to life – are clearly laudable. The task of offering an analysis of Hamilton’s vast body of war work, along with establishing a reliable timeline and narrative of the battlefield events, remains to be performed. This first comprehensive study of Mary Riter Hamilton on the battlefield includes a narrative propelled by a reconstructed timeline of events and an in-depth engagement of the battlefield paintings. By taking readers inside and through the events, through the twists and turns of her adventurous life, through the underbelly of the war and the home front, this book hopes to energize others to continue expanding this research. As journalists contemplated the shattered lands depicted in her work, they asked about her own experiences in the battlefield, to which Hamilton replied: “Yes, it was like living in a graveyard … but I felt this was a duty that someone must do, and I thought I would try to do it.” 21

T hrough Love and Los s

Affect is what sticks, or what sustains or preserves the connection between ideas, values, and objects. S A R A A HMED, 2010 1

A c en t u ry a fter H a m i lton a r r i v ed on th e battlefi elds, modern-day researchers struggle to assemble fragments of her story from the sparse relics preserved by friends and family. The incompleteness of these records has prompted sustained disagreement among scholars over the details of Hamilton’s life, spanning back to her birth in 1867 – or was it 1869? Or 1873? Hamilton’s birth and baptism certificates are absent in the archives,2 and as such, her story begins with a mystery. At the time of writing, many auction houses, museums, galleries, and webpages list her birthdate as 1873,3 while Young and McKinnon’s 2017 book repeatedly lists her birthdate as 1868, acknowledging the uncertainty only in an endnote.4 However, her most probable date of birth is 7 September 1867; multiple sources have been used to triangulate this. Her marriage certificate states that she was twenty-one years old on 17 July 1889. The census corroborates this: she was three years old on 2 April 1871, and thirteen years old on 4 April 1881. Many scholars find confusion in the 1869 birthdate listed on her death certificate; however, the Ontario Civil Registration did not begin until 1 July 1869, and thus this delayed date may be indicative of the year in which her birth was recorded provincially. Hamilton, of course, contributed to this confusion herself with frequent revisions to the ages she claimed later in life.5 Though John Saul Riter and Charity Zimmerman named the youngest of their five children Mary Matilda, in the family she was known as May, then a

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popular name. Surrounded by siblings, uncles, aunts, and cousins, she grew up in a one-storey frame house in Bruce County, Ontario, in the small community of Culross, near Teeswater – the Teeswater River flowing through their property. The Indigenous name for the river – Ah-ta-yahko-sibbi, The Drowned Lands River – should have been an omen, but it did not deter John from settling here in 1857 when he bought land together with his business partner Elijah Coryell.6 Two years later, in July 1859, John, twenty-seven, and Charity, twenty, married in the Kincardine Wesleyan Methodist Church.7 By the time of their marriage, the families of both bride and groom already lived in Culross, informally linked via Charity’s sister Margaret Zimmerman who had married Elijah Coryell a few years earlier. By this time, the enterprising Coryell had co-operated with others to build a dam on the Teeswater River to provide power to operate a sawmill.8 When the Coryells relocated around 1859,9 Elijah sold this sawmill to John, and new relatives, mostly brothers and sisters, from both sides of the family settled nearby. These comings and goings of family members before Mary’s birth underscore that both John and Charity hailed from large families and cultivated partnerships with family members, fostering family and community support as a means of survival in a harsh pioneering landscape. John Saul Riter was the first-born of farmers John Riter and Maria Reed,10 whose ancestors were English and Irish, respectively, and whose religious affiliation was Methodist. Charity’s parents, John Zimmerman and Esther Stafford,11 were prosperous pioneer farmers in Acton, Ontario, some seventy kilometres west of Toronto, and they were Catholic,12 no doubt fuelling Mary Riter Hamilton’s later keen interest in the Catholic iconography of France. The Zimmerman ancestors had made their way to Canada following the American Revolutionary War (1775–83), bringing with them stories of upheaval and a fierce sense of community and equality that Charity passed on to her children.13 The Zimmermans’ ancestors were Pennsylvania Dutch – but not actually Dutch, as Hamilton would claim during the war; they had a distinctly German background, their ancestors hailing from Baden near the Black Forest.14 As a farmer and sawmill operator, John Saul Riter had claim to a large and prosperous homestead, a small part of which he cultivated to provide oats, potatoes, and hay to the community in addition to lumber and employment. By 1860, he had acquired new Crown land and expanded his holdings.15 He served as a town councillor and sat on the school board, as well as on the local road and the bridge committees. John was a well-respected and thriving member of the community – that is, until 1867, the year of Mary’s birth. By 1868, his name is no longer mentioned in the town minutes in any major roles. Today, only the newspapers and Teeswater historians provide insight into the events that

Through Love and Loss

irrevocably changed the life of the Riter family, bringing turmoil, financial hardships, and a temporary nomadic existence. The town historians recall stories of household items like spoons and ceramic shards being found more than a century later in the lots once occupied by the Riters, the remains emblematic of the sudden uprooting of the family. On my visit to Culross, a three-hour drive northwest of Toronto, passing Mennonite horse-drawn buggies on the way, I travelled the same concession roads along which the Riters had lived and worked, cultivating the land with horse and ox. I found the old dam on the Teeswater River, with remnants still standing in Concession 10. Here, in the winter of 1868, a spark in the sawmill ignited a fire that burned down the Riters’ mill and the farm, with the subsequent spring flood washing out the dam and destroying the surrounding land. John was ruined. From the ashes of this site, he valiantly attempted to forge a new existence, even applying for a liquor licence to build up a new livelihood with a tavern, but he appeared a shadow of his former self, and was forced to sell his lots to his neighbours. Saddled with five young children, the eldest just seven and the youngest an infant, Charity took charge and acted as the legal signatory in the family’s purchase of a small house in Teeswater in 1869, which she sold again a year later to purchase a modest plot of farmland in Culross.16 Stripped of everything, the family had to slowly rebuild its existence, a long process that taught Mary lessons of hardship and survival. From her mother, she inherited resourcefulness and understated humility; from her father, the courage to dream ambitious dreams. Mary attended the one-room school, where she was perceived to be “clever and ‘different’ in some indefinable way,” as one of the schoolmates, a boy from her neighbourhood, later recalled for a journalist, elaborating: “Even then she was ‘making pictures’ – an activity which people looked on as a bit freakish.” 17 Being different, Mary found her emotional compass with people who were sympathetic to creative expression, such as her mother, whose drawings and sketches she admired,18 and her brother Joseph, who as a child made ornamental carvings. Later she recalled a telling anecdote for a friend who repeated it thus: “As a child she used to hang around paint shops and revel in the signs and landscapes displayed as advertising. On one occasion she admired one of them so much that one of the men gave her some brushes and paint and told her to copy the one she liked best. This happened to be a landscape with a waterfall and some rocks. She copied it faithfully and when she went home she showed it to her brother [Joseph] who claimed it as his. When later she learned to paint she replaced it with something else.” 19 According to a 1916 biographical account based on an interview of how she came to be a painter, she shared a few anecdotes including that “her rare pennies were spent for water colors, which she

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used in every spare moment.” 20 The same account notes that “there was little time on the new Canadian farm to trace relationships, and it was seldom that the hard-working mother found time to tell her children stories of the wars or of the trials of the early pioneers.” 21 In these later interviews, family hardships and tragedies are hinted at but never explicitly stated. And yet in August 1878, Mary, just a month short of her eleventh birthday, had her first encounter with violent death, when her paternal grandmother, Maria Riter, née Reed, at the age of seventy, was killed by a freight train on Grand Trunk Railway. Her large gravestone still stands today in the cemetery of what was then Esquesing Township, Ontario, located within what is known today as the Halton region, some sixty kilometres northwest of Toronto. Little is known about how this event affected Mary and her family. According to the myths repeated in newspapers and biographies, Mary was raised in Clearwater, Manitoba. However, records show that she was actually fourteen years old when the Riters sold their Ontario farm and moved to just outside the young hamlet of Clearwater, nestled in a valley near the midwestern American border. Here, they made a second start as farmers, several of Charity’s sisters having preceded the Riters to Manitoba.22 The experience of this new land and new life made a deep impression on Mary. These were the ancestral lands of the Cree, Ojibway, and Dakota peoples, known for their sacred rituals, their sweat lodges, their reverence for the land, and their burial mounds; and today, at least one of Hamilton’s descendants in Manitoba recalls stories of friendships with Indigenous peoples.23 Years later, Mary would draw portraiture of Nakoda Stoney men and women in Alberta, of which I have been able to locate two works, an oil and a pastel. Her oil End of Day, Stony [sic] Indian Reserve (1912) depicts an androgynous figure in the centre in front of the teepee and another teepee rising to the left, with the blue and grey Rocky Mountains along the horizon in the far distance. The smouldering red fire and the smoke rising in the left foreground, along with the tautness of the teepee and the woollen shawl wrapped around the figure’s shoulders, speak of endurance. At the same time, there is little connection between the figure portrayed and the viewer, a theme continued in Nakoda Stoney Mother and Child, 24 the pastel portrait of an unnamed woman who appears to represent her nation and gender: she carries a heavy burden, the toddler on her back only slightly more curious than the mother in connecting with the viewer. More positively, Hamilton puts the focus on textiles – the distinctive pattern of the handmade shawl and head-scarf. Later journalistic accounts locate the training ground for a new artistic sensibility on the prairie: “The brilliant carpet of flowers in Spring time, the golden grain, the gorgeous sunsets satisfied her love of beauty.” 25 Evoking idealized settler values of beauty, the newspapers say little about the hardships on these

Through Love and Loss

1.1 Mary Riter Hamilton, End of Day, Stony [sic] Indian Reserve, 1912, oil on canvas, 45.5 × 55.5 cm. Museum of Vancouver Collection. Gift of Mrs R.S. Chamberlain, PA 58. Photograph by Museum of Vancouver.

windy flatlands, or the “soddies” (i.e., sod houses), adapted from Indigenous practices, that served as homes in many parts of Manitoba before wooden structures were built. Today, both Riter and Zimmerman family descendants in Manitoba recall details of poverty and hardship. Indeed, a great tension sprang from Hamilton’s remote upbringing and privation. On one hand, this pioneer setting made her “A Canadian Artist” who was “full of enthusiasm and anxious to

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1.2 With their “soddy” (sod house) in the background, Mary’s sister Clara Currie and her children, n.d. [ca. 1890s], photograph, 10.16 × 15.24 cm. John Riter Collection, Miami, Manitoba.

spread the love of art in her native land.” 26 On the other hand, privation fuelled her lifelong hunger for what she had missed growing up, including equal access to art education and galleries, as she “longed to see a real picture and to have a teacher.” 27 This tension was hard-wired in Mary’s personality as strength and vulnerability, instilling also a lifelong concern with social justice and sympathy for the underdog. Unable to find a teacher in the prairie town, Mary used every available tool and medium, “learn[ing] china painting from a book. The Art Amateur, a magazine of those days came into her hands, so she experimented by herself. She was always trying to get someone to instruct her, but found very little help.” 28 The Art Amateur, published from 1879 to 1903, was a popular New York monthly aimed mainly at helping women cultivate art in the household, and was filled

Through Love and Loss

1.3 Mary Riter, early 1880s, photograph, Margaret Thorburn Collection.

with useful information on painting in oil, pastel, and watercolours, drawing, engraving, and photography, as well as china painting, ceramics, embroidery, and lacemaking. Infused also with the values of the Arts and Crafts movement, the magazine celebrated the ideals of handmade craftsmanship and art, and discussed collecting and exhibiting. She explored multiple media, painting on china and silk as well as on paper. During the early 1880s, The Art Amateur also ran a series by Mary Gay Humphreys on the art of dress, discussing the use painters could make of fabric, emphasizing its artistic and creative potential.29 A rare bust photograph shows the young art amateur Mary Riter, her head bowed with eyes turned upward, a decorative comb in her hair, soft bangs and strong eyebrows framing her face, showing off her art in dress with an elaborate veil of daisy wheels draped over her hair. The veil opens to reveal a tight bodice, and her chest is confidently turned to the camera, an intimate and flirtatious pose. It also mimics the heaven-bound gaze of the Virgin Mary in paintings by Anthony van Dyck, which were featured in The Art Amateur. As her elaborate persona suggests, the Riters’ youngest had no intention of trying to eke out a living in the bush country. She was busy fashioning

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intricate dolls’ hats that earned her prizes at the competitive fair in Emerson, then a booming railway town of 10,000 inhabitants near the border with North Dakota. Since Joseph was employed in Emerson, 170 kilometres from the Riter home, Charity had encouraged Mary to learn the art of hat making in the city. Mary started her apprenticeship in the millinery shop of Mary A. Traynor, which typically involved learning the trade from design, to fitting, to repurposing, and working with textiles such as felt and wool, and with accessories such as ostrich and pheasant feathers. A widow, Traynor managed her business independently, no doubt helping instill a sense of independence and entrepreneurship in her apprentice. After adopting a baby girl, Ethel M. Traynor (born in February 1883),30 Traynor decided to relocate her business to Port Arthur, in the Thunder Bay District in Ontario, some 660 kilometres east. Mary made the bold decision to accompany her, with the stated purpose being to help care for the child and to continue millinery studies with Traynor.31 In later life, she remembered the fierce conflict this act provoked with her mother, whom Mary had not consulted prior to leaving. Perhaps Charity feared that her attractive daughter, still a minor, might be taken advantage of in a silvermining town – where indeed, Mary promptly met her first beau, a boy named Calder who worked in the local printing house.32 Charity eventually accepted Mary’s flight, a decision perhaps made easier by the fact that her eldest daughter, Clara, was also living in Port Arthur. Yet the two sisters were heading in opposite directions. In October 1884, Clara married George David Bryson in the town’s Presbyterian Church, but lost her husband soon after the wedding. A few months later, she was back in Derby, Manitoba, and gave birth to Bertha (Bertie) Bryson, who would become an important presence during Mary’s battlefield years. While Clara would make ends meet with farming, Mary, by contrast, stayed in Port Arthur and experimented professionally: “After a while she gave up the millinery study at Port Arthur and took up fancy work. The first of this was crewel work in mottoes.”33 In either 1885 or 1886, she returned to Manitoba for an extended visit, deepening family relationships and her friendship with Aurelia Widmeyer from Clearwater, who had married politician Robert Rogers in 1885. The couple became Mary’s lifelong allies and later helped propel her career as an artist. n On this long visit to Manitoba, Mary had her photograph taken in Winnipeg wearing a fetching hat with white trimmings, a white dress, and a coat adorned with a white flower. With earrings, a locket, and pin, her selfrepresentation was exceptionally elaborate. On her return to Port Arthur, on 4 May 1887, the Daily Sentinel welcomed her: “Miss M. Riter, formerly of this

Through Love and Loss

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1.4 Mary Riter at around age eighteen, Winnipeg, n.d. [ca. 1885–87], photograph by American Art Gallery Photographer’s Studio, Winnipeg. Lorna Stevens Collection, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

place, arrived to-day from Winnipeg where she has been for some time.” 34 Nineteen-year-old Mary temporarily stayed at the Northern Hotel, which boasted views of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the north shore of Lake Superior. Sometime after her return to Port Arthur, she met twenty-four-year-old Charles Watson Hamilton, a new arrival in town. Like Mary, he was a traveller. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio,35 he had been raised by his uncle, William B. Hamilton, a merchant and shoe manufacturer in Toronto, and his wife, Almira, in whose home Charles grew up with seven cousins.36 At the age of eighteen, Charles relocated to London (Ontario), where his biological father worked as a labourer, and then settled in Port Arthur in 1887. Here, he worked for the dry goods (textile) business C.H. Strutt & Co. before forming his own textile company. Charles remains a mysterious figure in biographies of Mary, descriptions of him often couched in idealizing cliché (“Her husband was a refined gentleman and encouraged his girl wife to read and study” 37). I was thrilled to discover two evocative photographs of him among Ronald T. Riter’s possessions in Vancouver of items Hamilton had left her family at the time of her death. When I opened a much-handled leather portfolio the size of a notebook, in one pocket was a portrait of young Charlie, as he was then called, wearing breeches,

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1.5a Mrs Alex Hamilton (May Warnock) and son

1.5b Charles Watson Hamilton, ca. age thirty,

Charlie, ca. 1870–71, photograph by James Inglis,

portrait photograph. Ronald T. Riter Collection,

Montreal. Montreal, Van Wagner–Hamilton

Vancouver, BC. Photograph by MLCRC (Jean-Paul

family fonds, Series F 4486, Container B861994,

Boudreau), September 2012.

Folder 8-0-28, Archives of Ontario, Toronto.

striped stockings, and an embroidered vest, leaning into his mother’s voluminous skirts.38 The photo was taken in Montreal, presumably as a memento that she wanted her son to have; her death would sadly disperse the family, leaving Charles an orphan to be raised by relatives in Toronto. The other photo, in sepia, of the adult Charles, revealed his regular features, his neatly groomed sideburns fashionably long and widening at the bottom. Gazing slightly sideways to the camera, smart and friendly, he comes across as a man who aims to please. Even his careful appearance – tapered collar, four-hand knot of the tie, and high-buttoned morning coat – suggests an endearing diffidence, masking the fact that he was the son of a modest labourer. On the back, written in Mary’s hand, is his name and the place, Port Arthur. In looking at the couple’s respective photographs, it’s easy to see a matching physical and intellectual sensibility. Dressed to impress, this pair intended to rise above their humble social backgrounds. In October 1888, Mary’s talents were recognized at the West Algoma Annual Fair, where she was a repeated prizewinner, as the Sentinel reported. In the

Through Love and Loss

“Ladies’ Department” exhibition, twenty-year-old Mary won first place for “specimen crewel work,” “crochet on wool,” and “specimen Ar[r]asene,” a delicate embroidery technique.39 She also won first prize at the fair in the Fine Arts division, in the category “flowers painted in oil.” 40 In the spring, Charles and Mary launched the Paris Dry Goods House, selling clothing and employing a dressmaker, while the top floor showcased Traynor’s millinery. On 4 March 1889, four days after the shop’s grand opening, the editor of the Sentinel created interest around the store, explaining to readers: “The ‘Paris’ dry goods house has a new advertisement today. It will be seen that the firm’s name is C.W. Hamilton & Co., comprising Mr Hamilton and Miss Riter. Both are well and favourably known to the people of Port Arthur and require no recommendation.” 41 The newsworthy couple was on the rise – together! A few months later, when they eloped, the Sentinel fuelled the intrigue: “Mr C.W. Hamilton went east today. He stated that he went on a purchasing trip, but his friends are satisfied that there is more than that in the trip.” 42 Charles and Mary married in July 1889 at St Paul’s Anglican Church in Clinton, Ontario.43 Although both bride and groom indicated their religion as Presbyterian, Mary chose the same Anglican priest who had married Joseph Riter a few years earlier – Mary again signalling the bond she felt with her brother. When I visited Clinton in July 2014, I found St Paul’s Anglican Church set back from the street, just metres from Mary’s brother’s residence in Clinton. A brochure indicated that this lovely church, which had been built in 1865, had been equipped with a new organ and stained-glass windows in the years just before Mary’s wedding. Looking at its sun-baked brick glowing and stained glass refracting many colours, it was easy to imagine the organ piping up, the bride and groom entering the cool interior of the church 125 years earlier. Local newspapers announced the “joyous event when Mr C.W. Hamilton, a prosperous merchant of Port Arthur, was united in the holy bonds of matrimony to Miss May M. Riter, also of Port Arthur.” 44 While there are no extant wedding photographs, the newlyweds treated themselves to a honeymoon on board the ss Campana, sailing through the summer waters of Lake Superior on their return to Port Arthur.45 Mary was a passionate woman, and in later years, her hunger for romantic attachment is evident in her idealized references to Charles. As a married couple, Mary and Charles made their home at the intersection of Pearl Street and Court Street in a two-storey, seven-room rented house, a spacious dwelling for a young couple without other family members or live-in help. This meant that Mary was busy with decorating, laundering, cleaning, and cooking, whereas their neighbours, up-and-coming merchants, listed children and Irish maids as members of their households.46 Sunday service was at St Paul’s Presbyterian Church, reflecting Charles’s Irish Presbyterian background.

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Charles was athletic, often competing in interprovincial tournaments for the all-male Port Arthur Curling Club, tramping in the bush north of the city as part of the men’s snowshoe club, or meeting with the all-male Masons group. Their residence was just one block north of Cumberland Street, the town’s quickly developing commercial centre, where they operated their Paris House with the help of two employees. By Christmas, they advertised a large sale on flannels, blankets, sheets, and carpets, also announcing a new partnership and expansion with another associate, Robert Hamilton (no relation).47 Here, when he wasn’t making purchasing trips west to Winnipeg or Chicago or east to Toronto, Charles was busy. On family visits east, Mary forged connections with Charles’s uncle in Toronto, and with his cousin William, who was like a brother. Owner of W.B. Hamilton Boots and Shoes, his uncle had made a fortune by specializing in running and city shoes, operating his sprawling company from 15–17 Front Street. It was on these visits that Mary took her first formal lessons in painting from George Agnew Reid and his wife Mary Hiester Reid, who had their studio in the Arcade building, an indoor shopping mall, on Yonge Street.48 The painter couple, who were themselves emerging figures in the Ontario art scene, “kept open house for Toronto’s young art students; and by furnishing them with a room and a model kept the youthful artistic flame alive. In a social way also they offered a cordial welcome, with gracious and informal hospitality and relaxation, and also the valuable discipline which regular and supervised study enforced.” 49 Hiester Reid was a renowned artist who painted exquisite floral motifs as seen in her oil A Harmony in Grey and Yellow (1897)50 depicting a grey vase with roses rendered in myriad shades of white and yellow. While the work evokes the poetic infusions of the Aesthetic movement, as exemplified by James Whistler, floral motifs would be central to Mary Riter Hamilton’s later aesthetic. She also recalls a moment of pride when she painted her first human figure for another teacher on a family visit to London, Ontario, choosing to paint a male figure on a powder box: “the teacher was delighted and would not believe that she had [n] ever done [figures] before.” 51 For Mary, it was a time of financial prosperity as well as personal and creative fulfillment. By later accounts, “this time of happiness was all too short.” 52 n Snippets in old newspapers and family funeral cards give a glimpse of the family tragedies, many of which are missing in the biographical accounts of Mary’s life.53 Less than a year into her marriage, Mary received shocking news from Clearwater, where her eldest brother, John Thomas Riter, was

Through Love and Loss

farming. Her twenty-four-year-old sister Etta, a “bright and attractive girl … was in her usual health this morning but shortly after breakfast was seized with heart spasms and died after forty minutes of much suffering.” 54 Etta’s sudden death is evidence of what the family still terms the “Riter Curse,” referring to the family’s continued propensity for heart failure at a young age. The news devastated Mary’s parents: “the father of the deceased is seriously unwell at present and a great burden of grief has fallen upon Mrs Riter and Mr John Riter.” 55 Soon after, in December, John Saul Riter passed away at the age of fifty-nine, with barely a mention in the Manitoba newspapers, his former ambition and flamboyance obscured in the perfunctory death note, which does not state the cause of death.56 In Port Arthur, the community rallied around Mary, and Charles’s relatives sent flowers. Mary did not become pregnant until the third year of her marriage, a delay that departed from the era’s norms. When her water broke in late August 1892, her labour was difficult and would leave her with abdominal problems for years to come.57 The baby, a boy, was stillborn.58 The grieving parents buried their son in the local cemetery. Her later accounts indicate that Mary ignored her post-partum physical problems, neglecting to consult a doctor. A year and a half later, Charles returned from a weekend curling tournament in Winnipeg feeling under the weather but insisted on going into work the following two days. Charles relented on Tuesday afternoon, returning home to Mary, who called for a doctor. The paper reports that at “about two o’clock he returned home as he did not feel well. He was dead about one hour afterwards, notwithstanding all that his anxious wife and the doctor could do for him.” 59 With two of his Mason brothers having rushed to his assistance, Charles died at the age of thirty on 12 December 1893.60 There is real pathos in the Sentinel’s coverage of the funeral, revealing the communal nature of mourning during the Victorian era. The people of Port Arthur created a long cortège of mourners to the grave. Stores in town closed during the funeral, their doors draped in mourning for their beloved neighbour. The gravesite was crowded despite the brutal chill of nearly thirty degrees Celsius below zero.61 Judging by the heartfelt condolences Mary would later extend to family and friends in their grief (“I know how great must be your grief and my heart goes out to you with deepest sympathy”), it’s safe to conclude that if any small comfort could reach through her heartbreak, it was in the community of Port Arthur, which stood assembled as the casket was lowered into the ground. According to the newspaper, in addition to the Christian funeral rites, the Masonic rituals were performed, which typically involve the masons holding the acacia sprig as a symbol of eternal life, symbols that would later appear in her war painting The Supreme Sacrifice (n.d. [ca. 1920]).

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But more calamity was to come. Two days after Charles’s funeral, in the early morning hours of Friday, 15 December, a massive fire ravaged Port Arthur.62 The fire brigade could do little but watch as the violent blaze torched many of the town’s buildings before burning itself out. While the fire spared the Hamiltons’ warehouse, the smoke greatly damaged the furs, laces, and linens. Life seemed to have come full circle for Mary, back to the moment when her parents lost their farm and sawmill to fire. With the fire continuing to blaze at 4 a.m., life as she knew it came to a halt. Within a period of five years, she had lost her husband and baby as well as her sister, father, and business. However, in years and decades to come, these many losses were obscured in the romantic story of having lost her husband at an exceptionally young age. The refrain, “at twenty-three Mrs Hamilton was a widow,” later rang in the newspapers, and in some accounts, widowhood became her new identity as young as age eighteen, though in fact she was twenty-six. She had models for coping with the death of loved ones: her mother, a widow, was living an independent though modest life; her sister Clara had remarried and was now the mother of three (Bertie, Myrtle, and Hardie), maintaining a rural life in Manitoba and living in a soddie with her family (see figure 1.2). So for Mary, this volley of misfortune, which might have otherwise broken her, galvanized her into action, as she envisaged a new independent destiny. For the moment, she contacted an auction house and commissioned them to sell all surviving stock, which left her with about $3,500, the equivalent of $92,000 in 2020, to build a new life.63 Like many Victorian widows, Mary wore a locket containing a lock of hair; whether it was her stillborn son’s, or Charles’s, or a braided lock of the two is unknown. “For Victorians, whether hair was left raw or worked into intricate fashion and decorative forms, it was used for remembrance,” Esther Berry writes in her study on hair and mourning. “It was considered precious, like a relic, allowing intimacy and establishing physical communion with the donor. Severed locks represented the substance of the body therefore connecting corporeality, memory, and emotion.” 64 During this era, death was more public than it is today, as Philippe Ariès notes, “extend[ing] to include the entire community.” 65 Mary continued to wear her wedding ring, kept Charles’s photos close by, and six decades later would choose to be buried beside him (even though by then she lived thousands of kilometres away). These relics were “emotional chords” of a personal life,66 transporting the mourner into intensely private and intimate memories. Her widowhood endowed her with a remarkable freedom as well as with a capacity for empathizing with the suffering of others. Abandoning dreams of domestic happiness without forgetting them, she now boldly turned to art.

Through Love and Loss

n By the 1890s, Winnipeg was the largest city west of Toronto, and its vibrant art community helped refine the city’s business pragmatism and ambition.67 Settling in Winnipeg, close to her mother, Mary found a pair of women who taught ceramic painting (then called china painting). Resourcefully, Mary procured a kiln, securing a place for herself among these artists.68 She became an art teacher, working from her home studio instructing novices on the art of decorating earthenware; she also framed, marketed, and sold her own watercolours and ceramics. Compensating for her loss, she threw herself headlong into the creation of artistic community through female partnerships, becoming involved with the Winnipeg branch of the Women’s Art Association of Canada. As a member of the hanging committee for the women’s art exhibition in February 1895, she helped make selections to display art submissions from across Canada. By July 1897, just three years after her arrival, The Winnipeg Free Press celebrated her “Painting in China”: “She shows many beautiful things such as plates, fancy tea cups and saucers, lamps, tankards, and numerous other articles all exquisitely painted with handsome designs. The flower painting is especially attractive, the chrysanthemums being wonderfully executed. A punch bowl painted a dark maroon color with black berries inside is very pretty. A head of the great Rembrandt is especially well done.” 69 Reviewers also praised her curation of an all-encompassing environment, where visual art met music, food, and conversation. She exhibited her work and that of her students using wax candles and shaded lamps, with ambient effects amplified by students playing the piano. During this time of her professional art training, she expanded her focus beyond textile art, china painting, and watercolour to include engraving, working with wood or metal plates to make prints. Later, on the battlefield, Hamilton would draw on this experience to create several etchings (see chapter 7). Such integrative art making was central to the Arts and Crafts movement, a transnational movement from 1880 to 1920, distinguished by its focus on the decorative arts, and on multimodal art making including furniture, architecture, interior design, textiles, embroidery, prints, wood carvings, glass, ceramics, and even jewellery. Among the movement’s leading artists were John Ruskin in Britain, who celebrated the work of masons in his watercolours and drawings, and August Endell in Germany, who embraced Berlin’s city architecture as a way of creating a healthier relationship with the living city. Many of the Arts and Crafts practitioners were also social thinkers and critics of the Industrial Revolution, committed to transforming individuals and society, which would become a focus of Mary’s artistic choices.

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By now, her social and professional life no longer revolved around a husband and society’s heteronormative expectations but around women artists and a coterie of talented art students. But if tragedy had filled her with a new sense of purpose, it had not given her immunity from the Riter curse, which was to claim yet another victim. “All Alone, Joseph Riter Expires of Heart Failure Saturday Night,” the local paper in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, reported in July 1897.70 Mary’s beloved brother was just two days shy of his thirty-fifth birthday when he was found dead in bed by a neighbour in Sault Ste Marie, at the foot of Lake Superior, where he operated a liquor store. His widow, Etta, who was visiting her mother in Clinton at the time, was left with two young children and little money; she returned to Winnipeg and became a teacher. How was Mary affected by this tragedy? In later life, she “spoke in the highest terms of this brother who was very fond of her and took a great interest in her work.” 71 She bonded with all of her nieces and nephews, who later recalled sporadic visits, but was especially close to Etta and Harold. A poignant photograph speaks of the bond, showing her with her niece,72 the two slouching indecorously on a bench but clearly comfortable with each other, Mary staring at the camera like Manet’s Olympia (1863). The restlessness and long-distance studies that followed suggest that Joseph’s death may have added further fuel to Mary’s ongoing shift from conventional domestic life to her life as an artist. In the years leading up to the turn of the century and now in her early thirties, Mary made many trips to study art, as recorded in Winnipeg newspaper bits. She studied in Chicago, America’s second-largest metropolis, where the Art Institute of Chicago operated as both a school of fine arts and a museum. In August 1899, she headed to “New York to complete her art studies,” 73 and one assumes New York City, given her later familiarity with the metropolis, although George Reid and Mary Hiester Reid ran a painters’ colony in Onteora in the Catskills Mountains of northeastern New York State. In Toronto, she took a portrait class with E. Wyly Grier, who encouraged her to continue her studies overseas.74 She waited for the opportunity, which presented itself when her friend Aurelia Rogers “aided a very promising young violinist of Winnipeg in obtaining the best possible musical education in Europe.” 75 This young violinist was eighteen-year-old Jean Isabel Culver, who planned to study music in Berlin with her cousin Adina J. Falconer, a twenty-one-year-old pianist and university graduate. Hamilton could travel as their companion76 and financed her trip by auctioning off all her possessions. The vendor announced the sale of Hamilton’s artwork “hand-painted china, rare and valuable water colors and engravings, china kiln.” 77 The disposal of her kiln especially signals her desire for a new beginning.78 Today, the auctioneer’s list of the Hamilton estate reveals the comforts the artist was indefinitely relinquishing in pursuit of a life that had no use for them: “mahogany secre-

Through Love and Loss

1.6 Mary Riter Hamilton (right)

and Jean Culver (left) on boat, 1901, photograph. Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, BC.

taire, cobbler rockers, reception chairs, folding card tables, elegant chenille curtains, rugs, carpets.” 79 Inclusion of the sixteenth-century oaken bedroom suite on the list marks the substantive end of Mary’s mourning. A memento infused with the most intimate of memories – the bed where she lost her son and her husband – now helped her realize her dream of a radical new beginning. On the first Sunday in August 1901, she departed Winnipeg. “Mrs Hamilton and the Misses Culver and [Falconer] will spend two years at the art centres of the old country pursuing their studies.” 80 A snapshot taken on the boat shows her slender silhouette at the age of thirty-three, hatless, hair wispy in the wind. She flashes a rare toothy smile. Leaving the safety of home and family, she had no guarantee that she would be successful, but she embraced this existential watershed. Uncertain about the future, she chose the itinerant life of an artist.

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Becoming Mar y Riter Hamilton

I had always loved painting … and after the death of my husband, I went to Berlin and studied under Professor Skarbina. I had had a few lessons in Canada, but I was not at all sure that my talent was of the worth while order. However, I knew Professor Skarbina had the reputation of only retaining those pupils who showed talent and after a three months’ trial he told me that I had the gift and would arrive if I kept trying. After a prolonged stay in Berlin I went to Paris for two years and studied with [Luc-Olivier] Merson, [Jacques-Émile] Blanche, [Paul Jean] Gervais and in the Vitti Academy. During this time I took little excursions to Holland and to Venice. My first picture sent to the Paris salon was in 1904 and it was accepted, two more were hung the next year and three last year [1911]. M A R Y RI T ER H A MILTON, 1912 1

Genealogy … is … situated within the articulation of the body and history. Its task is to expose a body totally imprinted by history and the process of history’s destruction of the body. MICHEL FOUC AULT, 1971 2

There is no better illustration of the concept of “genealogy” as adapted by Michel Foucault from Friedrich Nietzsche than the story of Mary Riter Hamilton: within a decade, she would make a spectacular appearance, having carefully constructed her work and career, and then disappear into the silent annals of art history. But in the interplay of remembrance and oblivion, surviving fragments periodically dare to tell a counter-history; Foucault calls

Becoming Mary Riter Hamilton

this “the insurrection of the subjugated knowledges.” 3 Consequently, among the biographer’s objectives is to retrieve and make visible the dynamics that relegated Hamilton to such a shadowed status. As José Medina writes: “The critical and emancipatory potential of Foucaultian genealogy resides in challenging established practices of remembering and forgetting.” 4 The concern of this biography is with remembering Mary Riter Hamilton, who was herself concerned with remembering the dead and silenced of the First World War. Mary Riter Hamilton was coming into her own just as she was arriving in Berlin during the late summer of 1901. Her arrival inaugurated two decades of exceptional productivity and experimentation, when she was between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five. The work she produced during this time reveals the thrill of creativity, drawing on a seemingly inexhaustible amount of energy in painting and exhibiting, and in exploring the myriad aesthetic effects offered by oil, chalk, pencil, and watercolour. The faint traces of her movements can be exhumed in archival fragments. After settling at 123 Potsdamer Strasse – a street lined with apartment buildings and modern shop windows, where traffic was notoriously thick – she went to H. Rosenberg’s Buchhandlung and Leihbibliothek a few houses further down. There she purchased an opera guide and inscribed the endpapers with her name and address and kept this as a memento. She recorded the operas she attended, presumably accompanying the two young music students, Jean and Adina: Wagner’s sexually charged Tannhäuser on Monday, 10 September; Mozart’s Zauberflöte, on Saturday, 28 September; and Wagner’s Meistersinger on Monday, 30 September, as she neatly notes the German titles and the dates.5 “Berlin had been in the vanguard of the new approach to art for more than a decade,” as art historian Ross King writes,6 noting that Berlin artists were pushing against the conservative Academy, known for its history painting. Berlin was then attracting leading avant-gardists, including Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. Fifty-two-year-old Impressionist painter Franz Skarbina was a central figure of this movement, a member of the German Secession who recorded Berlin’s rapid transition. A photograph shows Hamilton with a group of nine other female students in Skarbina’s studio at Königin-Augusta-Strasse 41 (now Reichpietschufer, Tiergarten) on the Landwehrkanal.7 The student works shown in the photograph include two female heads, and the following newspaper reference could serve as a caption: “Her first ‘head’ was drawn in Berlin under the watchful eye of Franz Skarbina, who shortly after started her in ‘color.’” 8 Hamilton seems distracted in this photograph, eyeing the ceiling instead of the camera, allowing viewers a good look at her wedding ring, perhaps a convenient strategy to maintain her single life during an era when many female artists insisted on staying single (Käthe Kollwitz, who was then gaining a reputation for her avant-garde etchings in Berlin, was the famous exception, as she was

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2.1 Franz Skarbina, 1909, photograph. Berliner

2.2 Mary Riter Hamilton (second from right) in Franz

Leben 11, no. 1. The History Collection, Alamy

Skarbina’s Damenklasse, with unidentified classmates and

Stock Photo.

Skarbina in the background, Berlin, 1902–03, photograph. Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, BC.

married and a mother). With his focus on industrial landscapes such as bridges, railway tracks, and smoke haze, Skarbina’s influence is evident in Hamilton’s later experimentations with rendering the industrial effects of war. She understood that modern styles were born of an inward turn, each canvas inviting an artist to pioneer novel ideas, later expressing “her determination not to repeat herself.” 9 In doing so, her work would reference contemporaries like Skarbina, Monet, Singer Sargent, and Whistler, as well as old masters like Bruegel, El Greco, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt. Eighteen months later, in 1903, after Jean and Adina had returned home to Winnipeg, Hamilton was again at a watershed, ready to take the next step in her education as she embarked on the journey from Berlin to Paris. Later, she remembered meeting a red-haired girl on the train, an artist, “who swept her off to the Latin Quarter of Paris that housed the eager colony of artists. She [also] remembered the old French cabbie who drove them, and how his horse was lame

Becoming Mary Riter Hamilton

and they proceeded mile after mile through Paris at a dead walk.” 10 Inscribed “Paris,” her oil The Russian Student (n.d.)11 shows an artistic redhead in a green garment. In this rare granular memory, her focus on the vibrant colour of the girl’s hair and the horse’s frailty foreshadows central concerns that thread through Hamilton’s life and work, including human vulnerability and social justice issues, as seen in paintings such as Rent Day (n.d.), Mission of Charity (n.d.), and Les Pauvres (ca. 1906–09).12 In Paris, she immersed herself in what Robert Amos describes as “this ‘industry’ of art education,” 13 which brought scores of international students to Paris to study at the private academies. One such was Vitti Academy, where Hamilton studied portraiture with JacquesÉmile Blanche; she also studied painting with Paul-Jean Gervais and Luc-Olivier Merson. While Maurice Cullen, Laura Muntz Lyall, Sophie Pemberton, George Reid, and Mary Hiester Reid had studied in Paris before the century’s turn, Emily Carr arrived later,14 leaving Hamilton with the impression that Canadians were underrepresented in Paris. However, her stay did overlap with that of several notable Canadians, including Ontario-born Frank and Caroline Armington and A.Y. Jackson, and James Wilson Morrice of Montreal.15 Besides painting, her interest in the modern is evident by her attendance at Erik Satie’s Le Fils des Étoiles at the opera in April 1904 and at a dance performance by Isadora Duncan.16 By 1905, she exhibited her first three works – her watercolour A Dutch Interior, Laren and two oils, Abazia [sic] di St Gregorio and Interior of Court Abazia [sic] di St Gregorio, depicting the Benedictine abbey in Venice and its picturesque interior courtyard – at the exhibition of the Société des Artistes Français at the Grand Palais, known simply as “the Salon.” 17 An additional Venice scene was exhibited in 1906, its title, An Impression of Venice (1904),18 foreshadowing the collective title Impressions of the Battlefield by Mary Riter Hamilton to her first sixty-four battlefield paintings in 1919. Exhibiting her paintings “on the line” was a milestone that she marked with a photo shoot, sending a poignant photograph (figure 2.3) to her family in Manitoba. She stands at the easel displaying her painting of the Abbazia di San Gregorio’s interior courtyard, inviting her viewers to scrutinize her and her prizewinning work. Her palette is so close, the viewer can almost touch its chipped edge, the tool marking the painter and mediating the viewer’s relationship with her. Below the palette, she signed the photo in flamboyant gold ink: With love, from Paris [?], May, 1905. The same session produced profile and portrait (figure 2.4) photos, the latter revealing her strong jawline and deep-set eyes, overshadowed by prominent brows, the expression contemplative and accepting. Contrasting the contemporary Parisian fashion that she depicted in her paintings of society women (see figure 2.8), her smocked blouse is bordered with beautiful embroidery evoking folk art and the Aesthetic dress of the Arts and Crafts movement. Moreover,

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2.3 Mary Riter Hamilton in Paris, 1905, photograph.

2.4 Mary Riter Hamilton in Paris, 1905, photograph.

John Riter Collection, Miami, Manitoba. Gold-ink

Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, BC.

inscription by the artist in the bottom area.

one of her teachers was Symbolist painter Luc-Olivier Merson, who painted religious motifs just as she would paint churches, as in two undated works of Notre Dame de Paris: her watercolour Notre Dame and oil Interior of Notre Dame. By contrast, the same pose in profile, with her neck stretched upward and her right hand curling around an invisible paintbrush, reveals a more secular ambition.19 Ultimately, these photographs mirror the same duality between antimodern and modern concerns that marks her work. The turn-of-the-century mechanization and fragmentation of everyday life created anxiety, prompting what T.J. Jackson Lears describes as an antimodern impulse, which was manifested in “longings for a regeneration at once physical, moral, and spiritual. Some of these longings led backward, imaginatively invoking the intense experiences of the medieval craftsman, warrior, or saint.” 20 Exemplified in the Arts and Crafts movement, and often associated with Ruskin, the antimodern contested the authority of liberal and bourgeois

Becoming Mary Riter Hamilton

2.5 Mary Riter Hamilton, Mission

of Charity, n.d. [ca. 1905–11], oil on canvas, 59.7 × 48.5 cm. Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Gift of Rev. and Mrs W.G. Wilson, 1956.009.001. Photograph by Stephen Topfer.

culture, embracing instead a profound interest in Catholicism and the Virgin Mary; in Germany, the movement even strove to recuperate pre-historic maternal rights. The academic concepts of modernity and Modernism (along with the attention paid to many of the subsidiary movements attached to it, such as Cubism, Fauvism, and Futurism) have long privileged the study of the modern over the antimodern, the latter relegated to the shadow of the former. This ignorance is partly to blame for the neglect of Hamilton’s early work, which had a distinctly religious interest, as seen in Mission of Charity (ca. 1905–11), depicting a nun with a food basket visiting the house of a sick person; Sister M–, a Catholic nun in her black-and-white habit saying her rosary; Father Confessor, a Franciscan brother in his brown habit with hands folded in prayer near the Virgin Mary’s shrine; and her untitled Cathedral Interior,21 a space of quiet respite from the chaotic world, whose high peaked Gothic architecture speaks of transcendence. These paintings, and the fact that she had a little shrine of the Virgin Mary in her studio, counter modernity’s supposed spiritual corruption or bankruptcy.22

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2.6 Mary Riter Hamilton, Easter

Morning, La Petite Pénitente, Brittany, [ca. 1905], oil on canvas, 117.4 × 82.2 cm. Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Gift of Mrs Horace Crawford, G.45.152. Photograph by Ernest Mayer, courtesy of the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

These same ideals underpin her oil Easter Morning, La Petite Pénitente, Brittany (ca. 1905),23 painted in Pont-Aven,24 Brittany’s painter colony, and the masterpiece of Hamilton’s 1906 exhibition tour in Canada.25 She chose an interior scene, eschewing the locale’s characteristic granite soil and wild seascape made famous by Gauguin over the preceding decades. On a dark wooden-planked floor, she frames the subject on both sides with a curtain and column to emphasize the act of selecting and staging a peasant girl for a work of art. While the girl’s formal white coiffe and dusty-rose apron displays the same elements of local colour as in Gauguin’s Breton Girls

Becoming Mary Riter Hamilton

Dancing, Pont-Aven (1888), there is an ironic tension. Her sabots, looking like heavy appendages, are not on her dancing feet as in Gauguin’s work, but have been cast off for comfort. The rosary is wrapped around her wrist like a handcuff, its crucifix dangling at the hem of her skirt, and the Bible sits unopened. It’s Easter morning, the most sacred day of the year in the Catholic faith, and yet this penitent girl is modelling for a painter; her downward gaze directs the viewer inward, highlighting ambivalence, emotion, and individuality. Hamilton ultimately refutes the myth of a timeless primitive peasant culture as a safeguard against modernity. Where Gauguin used a fresco-like matte finish to further heighten the sense of an old primitive society, Hamilton uses the same oil for Easter Morning as she uses for Portrait Study of Madame X (n.d),26 which depicts a society woman. Indeed, Easter Morning finds its complementary opposite in Hamilton’s undated Madame X, the title echoing John Singer Sargent’s scandalous Madame X (1884), which almost ruined the reputation of both the subject, a well-known socialite, and the painter by alluding to the sitter’s infidelity. Looking right at the viewer, Hamilton’s society woman wears the dark-blue Edwardian fashion of half-mourning, while her odd bodily torque draws the viewer to the dark-blue flower in her lap, barely visible but in close proximity to her genitalia – daring us to look. Accentuating the tenseness of her face, shoulders, and hands, Madame X performs her dissatisfaction, a woman in need of revitalization sexually or otherwise. Both works engage the interplay of timeless tradition and modernity. In December 1905, Hachette’s Lectures pour tous, a bimonthly illustrated family magazine with a national readership, published as their lead colour plate Hamilton’s take on the goose girl entitled Dans la neige de décembre: Les sacrifiées.27 Rendered in cool blue and white, the work depicts a Brittany goose girl on her way to the market at daybreak, stopping at a crossroads Calvary to contemplate the fate of the feathery charges in front of her. With the birds fluttering in the snow in the foreground, the girl’s hesitating sympathy is evident, while the impending sacrifice is announced not only by the title but also by the red of the rising sun. In this scene, Hamilton contemplates death – not human death, which is still too close and too personal, but animal death, where there is greater emotional distance. Just two pages further on in the same magazine issue, a haunting eyewitness account describes the disastrous effects of the September 1905 earthquake in Calabria, Italy, in which between 500 and 2,500 people were estimated to have died. Author Maxime Hélène describes in chilling detail the search for bodies amid the smell of rotting flesh. The anguish of people, the orphans, and refugees consigned to camps: these human scenes of the natural disaster are hauntingly similar to the scenes of destruction in the First World War. Among the illustrations, one particularly poignant drawing shows the

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2.7 Mary Riter Hamilton, Dans la

neige de décembre: Les sacrifiées, in Lectures pour tous, December 1905, colour plate facing, 185. Mary Riter Hamilton Collection, MLCRC, Toronto.

Stefanaconi church in ruins with the sculpture of a saint that had survived, with the caption: “Dans l’église en ruines, une statue est restée intacte.” 28 A decade and a half later, Hamilton would paint one of the very first images of the war-ravaged Cathedral of Arras with striking similarity in Interior Arras Cathedral, showing statue of Virgin that escaped injury (1919),29 asserting her role as an eyewitness.

Becoming Mary Riter Hamilton

From 1904 to 1911, except for 1906 when she returned home to visit her mother, Hamilton spent winters painting in her studio in the Latin quarter neighbourhood: “her first studio being on the Rue de la Grande Chaumière, her last being on Rue Notre Dame des Champs.” 30 By 1906, she had studied with Spanish-born Claudio Castelucho, who would later share with her his own war art, as well as with Canadian-born painter Percyval Tudor-Hart, who would later become known for his war camouflage art.31 During this time, she painted interior scenes and landscapes, while her summers were spent on sketching trips, tramping through Italy (Venice), Holland (Laren), Germany (where she may have met Lawren Harris), Austria, and Spain. In Spain, she painted A Spanish Fishing Village (Fontarabia) (n.d.),32 depicting the white laundry enlivening the village with its spontaneous movement. This evocative work was purchased by the Duchess of Connaught and is now on display at 7 Rideau Gate in Ottawa, Canada’s official guest house for international dignitaries. On several occasions, she travelled to Giverny, to Claude Monet’s famed garden near Paris, one time with Edith Langley and a good cook, as a friend reports: “This young lady was from the US Brooklyn and she and her sister [Louisa] had an income of about a thousand dollars a month. They had been in Germany studying and came to Paris, where the Post Impressionists kept them busy entertaining, when meeting Mrs Hamilton they became tired of their other friends, and went off to the country with her.” 33 These visits to Giverny marked a turning point in Hamilton’s style. It was here that she painted Market Scene, Giverney [sic] (1907),34 a work prominently featured in Ash K. Prakash’s Independent Spirit: Early Canadian Women Artists. While her early, pre-1906 style was vivid and immediate and laced with emotional nuance, revealing her to be “en route to modernism, [but nonetheless remaining] entrenched in classicism,” as Prakash argues, Hamilton “fully absorbed the tenets of the French Impressionists” 35 by the time of her second sojourn in Paris. Hamilton’s composition of the Giverny market performs the fleeting relationships of modernity. Using loose brushwork, she effectively renders transient connections and disconnections, the figures overlaid with flickers of light. She models the solid forms of the peasant women against a background of abstraction, with “natural light accentuat[ing] the spontaneity with which Hamilton speckled her figures, a characteristic that aligned her with the development of modernism in Canadian Art.” 36 Her most highly priced work to date, Hamilton’s Giverny market scene sold in 2010 via Sotheby’s to a Paris collector for ca$88,750. Meanwhile, the same transition of style can be observed by juxtaposing her Dutch Woman Knitting (1904),37 a realistic rendering of a woman expertly handling two pointed needles within the confines of a dark and compressed room, with both Young Lady Seated by a Knitting Woman (n.d.; figure 2.8), where the knitter is more abstract but confined to the background,

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2.8 Mary Riter Hamilton, Young Lady Seated by a Knitting Woman, n.d., oil on canvas,

signed lower right “Mary Hamilton,” 55.9 × 38.1 cm. Uno Langmann Limited Fine Art, Vancouver, BC.

Becoming Mary Riter Hamilton

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2.9 Mary Riter Hamilton, Maternity,

1906, oil on canvas, 96.5 × 71.1 cm. City of Thunder Bay Public Art Collection, The City of Thunder Bay.

and Knitting (ca. 1910),38 a stripped-down version of the same motif against a cream-coloured background. In the latter work, the knitter’s fingers fuse with the needles and white wool, with the knitted object tumbling from her hands, down her lap, as the broken brush strokes mimic the rhythmic looping and tumbling movement of the work. While embracing the freedom of her single life, unencumbered by the duties germane to a wife or mother, Hamilton nonetheless continued to choose maternity as her subject. A popular theme in Impressionist and Symbolist painting, it is perhaps best exemplified in Mary Cassatt’s Maternity (1890),39 where white and pink dominate and the baby is an active participant, suckling mouthfuls of milk. Hamilton’s treatment, however, is more ambivalent, inscribing modern

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2.10 Mary Riter Hamilton,

Breakfast Time, Paris, ca. 1911, watercolour, 30.48 × 45.72 cm. Michael Weinberg Collection, Toronto. Photograph by TPG Digital Art Services.

ironic effects. On the surface, Maternity (1906), painted in oil in 1906, celebrates the intimate mother/child connection amplified in the soft roundedness of the bodies, her breasts, and the heads of mother and baby, and the sensuous touch of skin on skin.40 Yet a darkening curtain to the right and a shadow over the mother’s eyes suggest a woman who is more tired than blissful; her fingers strain to facilitate latching and the flow of milk, while the baby lies still, as though asleep. Meanwhile, the immediate foreground is a compressed stage displaying a piece of yellow fruit that looks like one of Cézanne’s flattened balls serving only a decorative purpose. The empty dishes on the table, including a blue china tea set, recalls the professional china art making of Hamilton’s early widowhood and, juxtaposed with an unpainted china bowl and plate, introduces a semiotic play of presence and absence. Hamilton later willed this oil painting to the city of Port Arthur in memory of her son and husband, emphasizing its role as a work of remembrance, perhaps her first piece of memorial art. Her 1912 Winnipeg exhibition catalogue lists at least six maternity scenes,41 and with the help of art historian and collector Ash K. Prakash, I was able to locate two remarkable watercolours in Michael Weinberg’s Toronto collection of early Canadian women’s art. The first, Breakfast Time, Paris (ca. 1911; figure 2.10), reprises the nursing scene at the table with a wider view, adding two toddlers, their white and pink colours blending with the brightness of the table – another

Becoming Mary Riter Hamilton

2.11 Mary Riter Hamilton, Mother

and Child, n.d., watercolour on paper, 24.8 × 27.9 cm. Michael Weinberg Collection, Toronto. Photograph by TPG Digital Art Services.

fixture of domesticity. One of the toddlers, seated in a high chair, mimics her mother by holding a doll in her arm; the other child, further back, looks animated, possibly upset. Meanwhile, the mother’s expression is neutral, unengaged. While the children are abstracted, their identities obscured, it is the nursing woman who compels the viewer’s curiosity, her pose raising questions about her intersecting identities as a mother, nursemaid, and painter’s model at this empty breakfast table. Compared with her Maternity, there is an increased abstraction that, along with the intentional lack of background detail, further heightens the psychological impact of the painting. The second watercolour, Mother and Child (n.d.; figure 2.11), reinforces the impression of a modern Madonna through its pyramid structure. The work depicts a woman in her late thirties, with high forehead and angular jawline, her stare revealing a combination of determination, exasperation, and frustration. Her arms enfold the baby, bundled in soft purple and cradled in her lap at the pyramid’s base, while the pyramid’s top is formed by a harvest-gold scarf covering a head of premature grey.42 Infused with modern psychological and social content, the woman’s stare into empty space takes viewers into the subject’s psychic or existential reality. Both paintings describe a similar modern, inward turning. There is also a biographical dimension to this motif, as seen in her undated oil The Artist’s Studio,43 where the mother assumes the pose of the Pietà

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2.12 Mary Riter Hamilton, Flower Market, France, n.d., oil on board, unsigned, 19.7 × 25.4 cm

(size with frame 30.5 × 35.6 cm). Uno Langmann Limited Fine Art, Vancouver, BC.

figure, Michelangelo’s Virgin contemplating the peaceful body of Christ, her hands refraining from touching the baby.44 The title and Hamilton’s painting paraphernalia to the right make this work self-referential, and by using the modernist technique of breaking the fourth wall, the work renders the absence that gave birth to her art. Hamilton’s canvas captures both her artistic identity and the motherhood she sought and lost. She conveys this tension by contrasting the chair occupied by mother and child to the left with the blank canvas and empty stool to the right. Years later, absence would figure centrally in her war work along with themes of reconstruction, art encoding both loss and repair. Griselda Pollock writes that “the spaces of femininity are those from which femininity is lived as a positionality in discourse and social practice.” 45 Hamilton’s works compel with their female-centred perspective by representing the spaces of femininity not only as the kitchen, the dining room, and the sickroom but also the flower and vegetable market. Flower Market, France (n.d.; figure 2.12)

Becoming Mary Riter Hamilton

depicts a woman at her modest workbench framed by a doorway, placing her at the threshold between inside and outside. The surrounding red and green flowers fuel her agency in making artistic arrangements, just as Hamilton makes her own aesthetic choices by recording the scene, her vision fuelled by vibrant colours. Thus she encodes her positionality as an artistically driven, independent, expatriate woman from Canada. During the final years of her Paris sojourn, Hamilton cultivated friendships with like-minded artists, including Symbolist painter and lithographer Adele Watson.46 Like Watson, Hamilton lived a single life surrounded by friends, and found fulfillment in her work. Unlike Watson, who was well-to-do, Hamilton lived in voluntary poverty, sleeping on a collapsible bed at night, showing no interest in a second marriage or in luxury. She supported herself by teaching and partnered with the Lebanese writer and artist Kahlil Gibran, who was similarly driven as an artist, as she recalled, and their collaborative art school was well patronized.47 Gibran, nineteen years her junior, cultivated romantically charged platonic relationships with several older women. The pair went sketching together, flirting and teasing each other, and she recalled that when losing a wager to Gibran, he claimed her small studio shrine of the Virgin Mary as his prize.48 They left Paris in the same year – Gibran heading to New York, with Hamilton’s Virgin in tow. Months earlier, in December 1910, Hamilton had received news of yet another family tragedy: her older sister Clara had died at the age of forty-six on her farm in Saskatchewan, leaving her husband a widower with five children to care for, the two youngest just ten and thirteen years old; he relocated to Alberta and soon remarried. By November 1911, Hamilton returned home to Miami, Manitoba, to her ailing, grief-stricken mother. She brought with her a large and inspired Paris collection of 150 paintings and drawings, along with impressive skills, experience with the world of art, international friends, and new ideas. Her goal was to return soon to Paris, the modern city where she was intently productive and thriving as an artist. n It was a new Mary Riter Hamilton, as she now signed her canvases, who arrived in Winnipeg in the late fall of 1911. In one photograph (figure 2.13), her fashionable attire like a power suit only barely softened by the whimsy of the long-stemmed flower at her slim waist, she confidently stares into the camera; in another, she stands swathed in a single-button coat, then an avant-garde design, the unusual combination of materials suggesting her own creative hand. Instead of submitting her work to the annual shows organized by the National Gallery, where a board of self-appointed tastemakers made their yearly selections

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of paintings, Hamilton had taken a leaf from the independent artists in Paris. In a spectacular cross-country homecoming tour, she now displayed 150 paintings, drawings, and sketches in oil, watercolour, pencil, and charcoal to enthusiastic audiences across the country. The tour started at Townsend Gallery in Toronto (20 November–2 December 1911), garnering effusive acclaim from critics. In Ottawa’s Wilson Gallery (15–27 January 1912), she met the new prime minister, Robert Borden, who purchased a work and whose wife organized a women’s gathering as a tribute to Hamilton. She sold three paintings to the Duke and Duchess of Connaught (he was then Canada’s governor general) and spent a day in the studio of their daughter, Patricia, who was among Hamilton’s most vocal admirers.49 By the time her tour reached Montreal and Winnipeg, it was under the patronage of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, gathering national momentum as it travelled to the west coast.50 In a feature article for Canadian Magazine in October 1912, Florence E. Deacon provided an in-depth critical reading of Hamilton’s work, noting the painter’s free brushwork, versatility of medium, and boldness of design. “All Mrs Hamilton’s work has ‘life.’ One does not need to be told that she paints because she wants to or because painting absorbs her whole thought and being. This is why her work unfailingly pleases: it is vital. It is also big and confident.” 51 The Western-Canadian newspapers hailed her as “one of the greatest of Canadian artists, and who so her critics declare will one day rank among the great artists of the world.” 52 Today’s silence surrounding Hamilton has much to do with the contested vision for constructing the nation through art, which today requires the disruption of a Foucauldian genealogy to make visible the submerged counterhistory – namely, the artistically and socially nonconforming – and awakens many voices through the recovery of long obscured letters and newspaper articles. Thus a newspaper reference reveals that Mary Riter Hamilton first met the chair of the National Gallery’s advisory board, banker and philanthropist Sir (Byron) Edmund Walker, in Toronto where he lived and visited her exhibition. Her work, the sixty-three-year-old was quoted in the newspaper as saying, was “masterful in coloring, adroit in draughtsmanship, deft in handling of tones and values, and poetic in treatment of atmosphere and sentiment.” 53 But when Hamilton hoped that her work would be included in the gallery, the Advisory Arts Council brushed her off. In a private letter to Walker, Eric Brown, the director of the National Gallery, wrote, “The social excitement will blow over when Mrs Hamilton leaves Ottawa.” 54 Not only was he wrong but also the lack of inclusion of artists from Western Canada, and of Canadian work more generally, was a vexing problem; the gallery’s anglophile and centrist focus was well known. Hamilton, who was wrapping up her exhibition in Montreal in chilly February, intuited that her case for inclusion in the National Gallery was foundering.

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2.13 Mary Riter Hamilton, n.d.

[ca. 1911–12], photograph. Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, BC.

So, when she learned that one of the three Advisory Arts Council members lived in Montreal, in her typically forthright way, she decided to pay him a visit. On a cold Saturday in February, she marched up to the door of 152 Mansfield Street, the residence of Dr Francis J. Shepherd, and rang the bell. Striding in with full confidence and a folder of evidence, Hamilton voiced her concerns with unflinching conviction. She showed Shepherd letters from members of parliament who advocated for the purchase of her paintings for the National Gallery. She said Brown’s explanations were absurd. Hamilton was barely on the train to Winnipeg with her paintings when Shepherd wrote to Walker about this unpleasant visit, in a letter marked “Private” with double underlining at the top: “I fear she is rather a dangerous person with her many friends and admirers and to allay the talk going on I think it would be advisable to buy one of her pictures later. She has sold 12 here and ought on the whole to have done well, but the fact

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2.14 Mary Riter Hamilton’s printed advertisement for drawing, painting, and sketching

classes at her studio at 514 Fort Street. Mary W. Higgins Collection, Victoria, BC.

that in spite of Government pressure you and I have not seen fit to select one of her pictures seems to rankle … She lives in Winnipeg and says the real west ought to be represented by those who have been recognized abroad and whose art is much better than many whose pictures are in the National Gallery.” 55 In the same letter, Shepherd refers to Hamilton dismissively in terms of her “childishness” and her “martyrdom” for the sake of art,56 the latter a negative term then used to dismiss suffragettes. “She says she is not leaving any important pictures for our Exhibition [where National Gallery paintings were selected] because of the expense.” 57 Western artists were disadvantaged, incurring high shipping costs to present their work for selection in central Canada. In other words, she refused to comply with rules established by the gallery, revealing her bold defiance of institutional power. Her dedication to building the art scene of the west was deeply felt in the community, as seen in her support for building the Winnipeg Art Gallery, donating the plaster casts from her Paris studio to the adjacent Arts and Crafts society to help in the teaching of art.58 By March 1913, when her exhibition tour reached its final stop at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia, she was there with her mother. Finding

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welcome respite from her travels in the coastal capital, she decided to relocate her studio to Victoria. She had become enthralled with the idea of painting Canada and decided to stay and paint landscapes. She advertised the opening of her classes in drawing and painting from life as well as sketching classes in the outdoors. The women of the Victoria University Women’s Club became her lobbyists, launching a letter-writing campaign to Edmund Walker that lasted into 1914. For Walker, however, Hamilton had crossed the Rubicon. In a letter to Shepherd, Walker summed up his feelings: “I quite agree with all you say regarding Mrs Hamilton, but that she should speak of me as having a personal spite against her is absurd, because while she was in Toronto I showed her every possible kindness.” 59 No doubt Walker was fixated on his kind comments to the press. Nonetheless, he had blocked her from having her work represented in the National Gallery’s permanent holdings. Walker, Brown, and Shepherd all agreed that such a troublesome woman, no matter how good her art, had no place in the nation’s gallery – claims that the official art arbiters would repeat when Mary Riter Hamilton announced her intention to paint the wreckage left on the battlefields in the following years.

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“Did I tell you about the series of Canadian scenes I am going to do and take back with me [to Paris]. Every one in Paris is so interested in this country. I got the idea from a series I saw of Norway done by a young Norwegian woman. It came to me that I could do as much for my Canada.” Mrs Hamilton is very diffident over the artistic possibilities of Canadians and would especially like to see an art gallery in Winnipeg. “The eastern cities have some art, she explained, and besides they are near New York, but the west is so far from everywhere.” M A R Y RI T ER H A MILTON, 1912 1

Coming to the Pacific Coast in 1913, Mrs Hamilton says she still remembers the breathtaking beauty of Vancouver, as she saw it looking back from the rail of a ship on her way to Victoria. N AOMI L A NG, 1952 2

Beginning in November 1911, Hamilton publicly discussed her intentions to paint Canadian landscapes, initiating a new phase of her professional career, as enthusiastically discussed in the Western-Canadian press: “Mrs Hamilton intends to make a complete set of studies of Canadian life, especially in the western provinces.” 3 As art historian Ann Davis confirms, “most frequently it was a trip abroad, some foreign experience, that precipitated an awareness of Canada’s special qualities. [A.Y.] Jackson, for instance, began to ‘see’ his own country after he had been in Europe for several years: the result, in 1910, was his canvas The Edge of the Maple Wood.”4 Tom Thomson first visited Algonquin

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3.1 Mary Riter Hamilton, Mount Rundle,

3.2 Mary Riter Hamilton, The Bend, Bow River, Forty Mile

Banff, n.d. [1912], oil on board, 54.3 × 41.0 cm.

Creek, Rainy Day, 1912, oil on board, 26.67 × 21.59 cm. Uno

Collection of Glenbow Museum, Calgary.

Langmann Limited Fine Art, Vancouver, BC.

Provincial Park during May 1912 and composed his first paintings of the Canadian landscape that year. Meanwhile, Hamilton visited and painted Banff National Park in the summer of 1912, producing inspired landscapes of the Rocky Mountains, including Sunrise, Lake Louise (1912), Trail, Lake Louise (1912), Lake Louise (1912), Mount Rundle, Banff (n.d.; figure 3.1), Bow River, Forty Mile Creek, Rainy (1912; figure 3.2), and Canadian Rockies Sketch (1912; figure 3.3), that remain almost entirely unexplored in Canadian art history. Sadly, the whereabouts of many works, including depictions of Indigenous peoples – “‘Indian Chief,’ ‘Buffalo Bobtail,’ and several others” 5 – are now unknown. However, those available and the large number suggest not only her distinct vision for including a strong western focus in the construction of the nation through landscapes but also a vision that begins by acknowledging the Aboriginal presence on the land before the arrival of the settlers. The fact that she makes them a key part of her

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3.3 Mary Riter Hamilton,

Canadian Rockies Sketch, 1912, oil on canvas board, 23.7 × 22.2 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Mary Riter Hamilton Collection, R5966-1, Copy negative C-144751.

collection reveals her inclusive vision of Canada. When arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson arrived in town, he sat for her portrait before leaving on his expedition with two of Hamilton’s paintings on board. In the spring of 1914, she was able to exhibit her Canadian collection at the Winnipeg School of Art, which opened its first exhibition with the best work from among its inaugural cohort of 140 students. This was a major exhibit of works exploring WesternCanadian life to which “Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton, of Victoria, bc, ha[d] contributed a large and beautiful collection of oils, water colors and pastels.” 6 By May 1914, she had at least forty new canvases of Canadian landscapes covering Alberta, British Columbia, and Manitoba, but almost lost this new work to a fire when the coal-oil stove exploded in her studio at 514 Fort Street. “The

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blazing oil had scattered about the studio and down the stairs. A large number of paintings, the work of Mrs Hamilton, were in danger of being destroyed.” 7 Fortunately, as Victoria’s The Daily Colonist reported, the firemen subdued the flames with chemicals instead of water, thus sparing her work and leaving minimal damage – totalling only $25 (or $565 in 2020).8 Even though the fire was harrowing, reminiscent of the fire that swallowed the home of her parents in Culross in 1868 and the fire that destroyed an entire block in Port Arthur in 1893, these blazes were minor compared to the flames that would ravage the world a few months later and whose aftermath she would witness personally. Today, her small but evocative oil-on-canvas Sawdust Burner (n.d.),9 which Amos aptly describes as “anything but conventional,” 10 provides insight. Painted in cool blues and greys, with the sawdust burner on a slope behind the house and a body of water in the foreground, the charred trees overlook the scene from the top. As this painting looks backward and forward, it echoes the disastrous end of the Riter family sawmill, and foreshadows the charred and ghostly trees she will paint in her war collection. On 4 August of that year, life in Canada changed overnight. Recruitment posters went up, soliciting volunteers to serve the mother country. Many citizens of Victoria rushed to answer the call in the name of their British ancestry, and the town was soon decked in khaki. “From the outbreak of the war, Mrs Hamilton felt the urge to go overseas,” said Madge Macbeth, who would later summarize the events: “As the way seemed closed, she devoted herself to whatever relief work synchronized with her fine talents. She donated pictures to numbers of patriotic organizations, notably a lovely picture of Lake Louise which was raffled by the Red Cross. For private theatricals, she became an expert scene painter, and curtains, furniture and costumes all profited by her artistic brush.” 11 Victoria newspapers confirm her activities, which included painting a canine: a portrait of the Victoria Red Cross fundraising hero Muggins the Spitz; saddled with two wooden boxes with slots on top, he collected an astounding $21,000 (over $250,000 in 2020).12 An August snapshot features Hamilton with three sailors at the wharf in Victoria, with an inscription in her hand: “I wonder where these poor boys are now. I sent them each a copy of the news as well as the snapshots.” 13 Still, when the winter brought a lull in the war, normal life seemed to return, and in early 1915, she travelled to San Francisco, where she exhibited Les Pauvres (1906–09) and An Old Italian Wife (n.d.) at the World’s Fair. During the First World War, she painted and drew portraits to support herself. These included an oil portrait of Henry Esson Young, one of the founders of the University of British Columbia, where the painting is held today.14 She also made drawings of Rosalind Young and her children. Moreover, she painted large oil portraits of women, several of which I located at the J.A.V. David Museum

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3.4 Mary Riter Hamilton with sailors, 1117 Wharf Street, Victoria, BC, 30 August [1914–17],

photograph. Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, BC. Inscription in Hamilton’s hand on verso reads: “I wonder where these poor boys are now. I sent them each a copy of the news as well as the snapshots.”

in Killarney, Manitoba. The women’s clothing styles suggest Hamilton painted them during the war years, allowing viewers to track the changes in women’s self-representation from the Edwardian era to the war era. The young woman depicted in Lady in Hat (n.d.; figure 3.5a) exhibits the fashion of 1916–18 with a very low neckline and a small, distinctive hat rakishly pitched forward. The middle-aged woman in Pensive Lady (n.d.; figure 3.5b) wears her hair pulled back and a dress featuring a round neckline edged in black piping that a respectable woman would not have worn in a painting done in the previous decade. Lady in Riding Habit portrays the fashionably athletic woman in bowler hat and kidskin gloves; Elderly Lady Sitting With Hands Clasped shows a woman wearing a suit jacket with pointed lapels, holding eyeglasses in her hands as if she might pore over the newspapers in search of war news; and Sitting Woman depicts a young, stout working woman in a dark-blue skirt and stripped down to her white camisole, with her back turned as she hefts a large metal bowl.15 Maria Tippett has documented the war’s disruption of art making, showing how it diverted sponsorships away from public art institutions and arts soci-

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3.5a Mary Riter Hamilton, Lady in Hat, n.d., oil,

3.5b Mary Riter Hamilton, Pensive Lady

85.1 × 54.0 cm. J.A.V. David Museum, Killarney,

(lady leaning on hand), n.d., oil, 73.0 × 45.1 cm.

Manitoba. Gift by Harry and Elizabeth Elliott from

J.A.V. David Museum, Killarney, Manitoba. Gift

Vancouver (donated 1981).

by Harry and Elizabeth Elliott from Vancouver (donated in 1981).

eties and toward the war effort. Hamilton felt this disruption first-hand. In the summer of 1915, the government of British Columbia, via Dr Henry Esson Young, commissioned her to paint the portraits of fifteen lieutenant-governors to ornament Government House in Victoria. She had finished seven portraits when the new Liberal government cancelled the commission. She nonetheless completed the commission in full before the end of the war but was never paid for the lion’s share of this work.16 The war also dispersed many artists’ groups, including the Vorticists, Germany’s Der Blaue Reiter, and Italy’s Futurists; in Canada, the Group of Seven, “in its formative stages before the war, ceased to exist during it.” 17 At the same time, many artists were involved in the war as

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3.6 Mary Riter Hamilton, Apple Blossoms, n.d., oil, 33.7 × 38.7 cm. Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

Gift of Mary W. Higgins. Photograph by Stephen Topfer.

soldiers. In the spring of 1915, the Second Battle of Ypres had introduced the horror of gas warfare, prompting A.Y. Jackson to sign up as a soldier. Otto Dix served as a machine gunner, Paul Klee as an infantryman, and William Roberts as a gunner, while others were involved in sketching panorama observation maps.18 With thousands of casualties, women at home were encouraged to refrain from mourning publicly; instead, they were asked to channel their sorrow into patriotic activity. Hamilton also continued to paint Canadian landscapes on Vancouver Island, as seen in her oil Apple Blossoms (n.d.; figure 3.6), The Entrance to Rappahannock, Victoria, bc (1915),19 and the unsigned Victoria Garden (n.d.),20 to name but a few. In the first work, she celebrates the transience of spring in an exuberant

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3.7 Mary Riter Hamilton (left)

painting in the Woods, Port Alberni, Vancouver Island, with Rosalind Young (right), 1913–14, photograph by Leonard Frank. Mary W. Higgins Collection, Victoria, BC.

shower of white apple blossoms: the perspective shifts further away on a diagonal, the trees blurring into each other like multiple perspectives on a singular tree; at the moment the trees come into their own, they are deconstructed and disappear into space. Likewise, the second work, a pastel drawing, depicts a beautifully manicured pathway, running left of centre past bright-green grass and neatly bordered with trees and shrubs, toward a gate marked with stone plinths. As she placed the mansion completely outside of her painting, the trees and curated entranceway suggest a sense of stability, while the absence of the mansion itself creates a liminal space, the composition on the cusp of turmoil and stability. Indeed, the viewer is standing right at the stonework, not quite inside, but visually entering, located on an ambivalent threshold. The historical records reveal that the owner of the Rappahannock mansion had gone bankrupt in the economic recession of 1913, and the house stood empty by the time Hamilton painted the scene. Around this time, a photo shows her with her friend Rosalind Young in the woods at Port Alberni, in Central Vancouver Island at the head of the Alberni Inlet. While Hamilton paints, Rosalind leans against a huge tree reading a book. In September 1915, Hamilton uncharacteristically gave three Vancouver Island oil paintings full dates, among them two oils on cardboard, Echo Bay, Nanaimo Evening, September 5th, 1915 (1915; figure 3.8a) and Echo Bay, Nanaimo Harbour, Early Morning, September 6th, 1915 (1915; figure 3.8b). As the viewer peers across the water in the first, evening view, man-made structures appear to hover close

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3.8a Mary Riter

Hamilton, Echo Bay, Nanaimo Evening, September 5th, 1915, 1915, oil on card, 12.7 × 17.78 cm. Collection of Peter Wright. Photograph by Penticton Art Gallery (Elizabeth Laing).

3.8b Mary Riter

Hamilton, Echo Bay, Nanaimo Harbour, Early Morning, September 6th, 1915, 1915, oil on card, 12.7 × 17.78 cm. Collection of Peter Wright. Photograph by Penticton Art Gallery (Elizabeth Laing).

to the ground in the background; however, in the second, early morning view, only the landscape can be discerned and the perceptions of the previous night seem erased. It should be noted that the internment camps, which opened in Nanaimo at the onset of the First World War to round up Ukrainian nationals as enemy aliens, closed on 17 September 1915, just days after Hamilton painted there,

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3.8c Mary Riter

Hamilton, Section of the North Arm Fraser River taken from 20th Street, September 16th, 1915, 1915, oil on card, 12.7 × 17.78 cm. Collection of Peter Wright. Photograph by Penticton Art Gallery (Elizabeth Laing).

suggesting her curiosity about war-related settings and her awareness of how the population was kept in the dark. Just a few kilometres from New Westminster, where she would exhibit her war work in 1919, she painted Section of the North Arm Fraser River taken from 20th Street, September 16th, 1915 (1915; figure 3.8c). In September, Hamilton’s beloved mother, Charity Zimmerman Riter, died just weeks before her seventy-eighth birthday, the event likely disrupting Hamilton’s painting on Vancouver Island. The grieving daughter returned to Miami, Manitoba, where her brother’s farm and her mother’s shack were located on a ledge at the foot of a hill known as Riter Hill.21 Hamilton paid for a headstone for her mother and placed it; she collected her mother’s sketches and drawings and vowed to keep them (though they are lost today). She also kept the mourning card with the names of both her parents, and she gave a long interview paying tribute to her mother.22 Later, Hamilton indicated that she first applied to be a war artist in 1915 or 1916, meaning she did so after her mother’s death. “In 1915, or 1916, I wrote to sir Edmund Walker offering my services as an artist on the British front. I was very anxious to go overseas and was keenly disappointed not to obtain permission either then or later.”23 Hamilton’s recollection is interesting since by 1915 Germany had painters at the front and by 1916 the French had commissioned two painters. However, the official Canadian War Memorials Fund (cwmf) was not born until late 1916 and was the brainchild of Lord Beaverbrook, a New-Brunswick-born millionaire then stationed in London, whose funds fuelled his patriotic fervour to document the Canadian war

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effort in paintings.24 He personally funded artists to make sketching trips to the battlefields and subsequently commissioned them to paint selected scenes on large canvases in their studios, typically in London. The commissioned artists were given a uniform and rank, a badge, a car and driver, a helper, free lodging, and a lucrative income, which made this program extremely desirable among artists; by the war’s end, there were almost a hundred painters on Beaverbrook’s payroll.25 However, since Beaverbrook was not very knowledgeable about art, he relied on advisers – notably art critic Paul Konody in London and Sir Edmund Walker in Toronto – to help him select appropriate artists. This had several important consequences for Hamilton’s involvement: beyond a strained relationship with Hamilton, Walker was at odds with Beaverbrook’s ambitious program, and thus delayed setting up a committee to select artists to travel overseas.26 He did not believe that the war should be chronicled as it evolved, in all its ugliness and carnage, but should be rendered years after its ending, with an allegorical gloss elevating the nation’s sacrifice and heroism – as eventually realized in the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, with its two classical pylons in marble soaring into national consciousness, sublimating the war’s horror. Moreover, in the hands of Walker and Brown, the Canadian War Art program firmly relegated women war artists to home-front art. Although Frances Loring and Florence Wyle received commissions for bronze sculptures, with a focus on women in factories and on the fields during the war, not a single Canadian woman was commissioned to travel overseas, revealing the patriarchal segregation of genders and the exclusion of rebel women like Hamilton, who would have to fend for herself. Today, the earliest record I have been able to locate regarding Hamilton’s application to become a war artist is dated 9 January 1917, when her lobbyist was the thickly moustached Colonel Henry Appleton, a retired military man and art collector in Victoria, who took her case all the way to the prime minister’s office. “The French have long employed their best artists on the fighting line to gather records of the sort,” he told Borden before launching into his hard pitch: “As I understand you are personally acquainted with Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton and her high qualifications for work of this sort which she is eager to be invited to undertake though too modest to press her case, I, being an old friend and admirer of her work, take the liberty of reminding you of her.” 27 The colonel continued: “I may say that owing to the war, she will be glad of, indeed needs, the employment it would bring her – and I am sure that her terms would be such the Government would instantly approve of – just enough to cover her needs in reason, and a very moderate commission for work accepted.”28 Hamilton hoped the prime minister, who had once hosted her at a dinner, would issue a special permission for her expedition. Instead, he forwarded her request to the ossified Edmund Walker, the chairman of the National Gallery’s Advisory

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Arts Council, with a request to consider Hamilton’s case. The note was lost in bureaucratic channels and failed to yield any productive outcome. Yet Hamilton persisted. By April 1917, the newspaper headlines splashed news of the massive battle in bold: “Canadians Take Ridge of Vimy,” 29 which swept the nation in patriotic fervour. Although 3,598 men were killed, the battle was a major national triumph for Canada since Canadians were successful where the military veterans of Britain and France had not been. This notoriety triggered a new wave of volunteers, also precipitating Hamilton’s action, which no doubt was further fuelled by the fact that, also in April, her niece Matilda (Tildi) E. Green enlisted as a nurse. On 15 April 1917, Hamilton wrote again to Walker: Dear Sir Edmund, A friend [who] recently made my desire known to Sir Robert Borden to have the opportunity to proceed to France in order to paint scenes commemorating the services of the Canadian army for the Government informs me that Sir Robert had referred the matter to you as Chairman of the Advisory Committee appointed to consider this and cognate matters relating to memorials of the war. I venture to write and ask, as the season of the year is at hand favoring work in the field and now that events of the highest moment are taking place at the front if my desire and eager hopes have any chance of being fulfilled. As you are personally acquainted with my work, you will know as to my competence for the service. There are many subjects that support themselves at once for pictures of historical interest, the details for which can only be collected on the spot at the present time. Some of these can be done in rear of the line such as the return after action of troops & prisoners, groups of prominent officers & men. Scenes on won battlefields, and among ruined towns such as Ypres Arras etc –; while occasion may offer also to record the actual scene of battles, night bombardment etc so that I need never be idle. Hoping for the favor of hearing from you. I am faithfully yours Mary Riter Hamilton 514 Fort Street Victoria BC April 15th 1917 30

Walker, normally a prompt letter writer, waited three weeks to respond. He usually used honorifics and last names in his correspondence, but his letter to Hamilton was downright chilly. On 9 May 1917, he wrote: Dear Madam I have forwarded your letter of the 15th instant to Mr Eric Brown, Director of the National Gallery and Secretary of the Advisory Arts Council referred to therein. Chairman B.E. Walker 31

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It was clear that he had no interest in any friendly relations with Hamilton; he even brandished his chairman title when he normally signed simply B.E. Walker. Hamilton was up against a wall, and during the months of silence that followed, her chances of travel overseas looked more and more unlikely, arousing frustration and determination in equal measure. In October 1917, after almost five years in Victoria, Hamilton relocated to Vancouver to take up a new teaching opportunity. It was from Vancouver that she wrote directly to Lord Beaverbrook of London, England, who was recruiting official war artists to be sent to the front line, fully funded. But all her efforts led to the same person who had stymied her every initiative to that point: Edmund Walker. In early 1918, he received a letter from Beaverbrook’s secretary requesting his opinion on the work of Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton since Beaverbrook hoped to employ her as an official war painter. Despite his otherwise prolific letter-writing capabilities, Walker ignored the secretary’s message. A few weeks later, the secretary duplicated Beaverbrook’s message with a reminder,32 to which Walker replied with an angry note: “I shall not be able to answer regarding the qualifications of […] Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton for a fortnight or so. I could say now that Mrs Hamilton is a most persistent wire-puller.” 33 This odd term – an old Victorian stereotype – was indisputably sexist. Since women could not openly exercise power, Victorian women were often accused of masquerading feminine docility in public while privately pulling the strings of male pawns to achieve their goals. A month later, writing to Lord Beaverbrook, Walker questioned women’s eligibility for the title of overseas war artist – insistently implying that the four men he had selected should be considered first. His letters implied the following question: even if women were allowed to go overseas on behalf of the nation, should a woman like Mary Riter Hamilton be among them? Did a woman with so many ideas but so little docility have the right vision or character for Canada? This was indeed a crucial identity-forging time for the young nation, and the powers that be knew it. For Walker, a woman’s temperament was a crucial consideration. Thus, he put the proverbial nail in the coffin of her candidacy: “I may add in confidence that I do not in any event think Mrs Hamilton desirable [for service].” 34 But times were changing, and where others would have given up, Hamilton redoubled her efforts. Although women were officially barred from the battlefields, 2,500 Canadian women travelled overseas to help the wounded soldiers. Many – including Hamilton’s niece – served as nursing sisters, while others with minimal training contributed as Voluntary Aid Detachment (vad) auxiliary nurses or as nurses’ helpers behind the front lines. To qualify for

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service, Hamilton trained as a masseuse, but this effort too was unsuccessful since there were many more women volunteers than positions, and Hamilton was past the age limit. In 1918, Walker and Brown selected the first four men, J.W. Beatty, Maurice Cullen, C.W. Simpson, and F.H. Varley, to travel overseas and paint the war, compensated by Lord Beaverbrook’s War Memorials Fund. Walker and Brown also gave generous home-front commissions to J.E.H. MacDonald; Arthur Lismer, who painted ships in dazzle (camouflage) patterns in the Halifax Harbour; and Hamilton’s former teachers, E. Wyly Grier and George Reid – the latter two, rather conveniently, members of the committee that made the selections.35 Meanwhile, Hamilton never received a single commission, not even to paint the home front, and she was excluded from the official Canadian War Memorials Fund for the remainder of the war. “In some cases we have omitted the names of artists who are gifted but difficile,” Hamilton’s former teacher Grier wrote about the committee selection.36 As late as November 1918, writing from the Fairmont Military Hospital, Major Wendell B. Shaw appealed to Lord Beaverbrook, careful to reference Hamilton’s suitable character: “Mrs Hamilton has a very retiring disposition and is too modest to secure the recognition which is due her talent as an artist, but she is well suited for work in France, as she has had occasion to ‘rough’ it in her work. While willing and anxious to follow suggestion from you … her idea is to paint places and scenes in France which are associated with Canadians (behind the front line).” 37 But Lord Beaverbrook was too self-protective to put himself in the crossfire between Hamilton and the men who led the National Gallery. He needed to maintain a good relationship with Canadian art officials since he envisioned Ottawa as the place to build a home for his war art collection, which would later become the Beaverbrook Collection at the Canadian War Museum. A month before the Armistice, Hamilton’s niece Matilda Green died of pneumonia (presumably the Spanish flu) in the military hospital of Étables at the age of thirty-two,38 while Hamilton’s nephew Sergeant Hardie Currie, who had served in the 10th Battalion and had been wounded at Cambrai, survived and returned home. On 4 January, the Canadian War Memorials exhibition, based on the work of over a hundred artists commissioned by Beaverbrook, opened in London. Although Hamilton never commented on this exhibition, which attracted some 2,000 visitors, its opening seemed to coincide with a final breakthrough in her efforts. In the history of war and Canadian war art, hers was the voice of counter-history, refusing to be subsumed into and silenced by the official account, though she still required official permission. When at last she received permission to travel overseas, it was with the support of the same men she sought to honour in her work.

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n By 1919, the men of the Amputation Club of British Columbia gathered every Monday night at Vancouver’s Elysium Hotel. They were a support group, trying to regain their bearings and a sense of normalcy after four long years of war. Except for a few vocational programs, the government that had led them into the war had largely abandoned veterans in the aftermath. In a photograph printed in the veterans’ magazine The Gold Stripe, the men are lined up like a regiment, those who had lost limbs in the front row, every second soldier missing a leg. The Amputation Club of bc was emblematic of the 172,000 men who returned to Canada with wounds, 3,461 of them with amputated limbs and 9,000 of them suffering from shell-shock (now called post-traumatic stress) – a stigmatized illness that few admitted to publicly.39 As the newspaper reported in January: “Mrs Hamilton, who has shown a sympathetic interest in the Returned Soldiers, has generously promised a picture to the ‘Amputations Club of bc.’” 40 As a widow, Hamilton had long developed a habit of cultivating close friendships with younger men, often in their early thirties. There is no evidence that indicates physical intimacy in these relationships, though one cannot help but notice a likeness between these men and her late husband, who had died at the same age. Among the photographed soldiers was James Alexander Paton, known to friends as Alex Paton, who is standing in the back row: a skinny man dressed in civilian attire staring at the camera with intense eyes. A machine gunner who had survived the bloodbath of the Somme and the Vimy Ridge offensive, he suffered a “blighty” in Avion and returned to Vancouver.41 By late 1918, he had launched The Gold Stripe, a magazine dedicated to wounded soldiers, a “gold stripe” being the brass clip medal given to wounded soldiers in recognition of their injuries and suffering. Since Paton later expressed his conviction about the value of making a record of oil paintings immediately after the war, it’s easy to imagine the pair working together to bring this idea to life. The Gold Stripe would facilitate Hamilton’s trip to the war zone, and in turn, she would send the editors her paintings for publication in order to help raise funds for the wounded soldiers. The Gold Stripe’s own masthead indicated that net profits went to the Amputation Club in Vancouver to benefit the wounded men. This unilateral business transaction did not distract Hamilton from her mission to take on the Great War; on the contrary, in a world where “patriotism and profit went hand in hand,” 42 Hamilton, buoyed by idealism, provided the moral antidote to war’s materialism by refusing to benefit from its destructive effects. In January 1919, when Paton went to welcome the Seaforth Highlanders veterans returning from Europe, Hamilton was there, painting the war-weary troop carrier The Empress of Asia, which carried these soldiers. She painted The

The Home Front

3.9 A group of members of the Amputation Club of British Columbia, Alex Paton in 4th row, 2nd from the

right, black and white photograph, The Gold Stripe 1, December 1918, 10. Original photograph City of Vancouver Archives, colour added by Canadian Colour.

Return Home (1919; figure 3.10) and its variants – entitled The Empress of Asia and The Asia.43 This debut war painting featured the prow cutting through the water in the early morning haze, the soldiers leaning over the bulwarks waving their arms, the flags of red and blue flying from the masthead. With the Rocky Mountains indistinct in the foggy background, recalling the style of the “tinted steam” paintings by J.M.W. Turner and Claude Monet,44 The Return Home was Hamilton’s point of departure as a painter of the conflict’s aftermath. Besides the painting of this military vessel, she left only one other home-front work, a pastel triptych meditating on the long war (n.d.; figure 3.11). The first panel, Red Cross Knitter, depicts the early stages of the war: a Red Cross box to be shipped to the front stands ready to receive socks knitted by a mother; her son’s portrait hangs on the wall, reflecting the new normal of wartime Canada. The second panel, A Letter, shatters this normalcy when the parents receive the bad news, and the third panel, The Visitation, configures the pair’s grief. Revealing Symbolist influences, Hamilton draws the Angel of Death comforting a woman who has lost her son, her husband in turn leaning on his wife for comfort. In this depiction, Hamilton assumed her role as a painter for a grieving nation, a nation whose government, in her opinion, had not done right by either its wounded soldiers or its artists. On 15 January 1919, the Vancouver World first announced Hamilton’s travels to Europe. On 1 February, Hamilton gave a long interview to the Western Woman’s Weekly that reveals her sharp criticism and counter-stance to the

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3.10 Mary Riter

Hamilton, The Return Home, 1919, oil on canvas, 81.0 × 50.1 cm. Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Photograph by RAW Photography.

The Home Front

government’s position. “This is not only a personal wail. What have we, I would ask, in British Columbia or even in Canada in the way of a national feeling for art?” she asked interviewer Anne Perry, who saw fit to provide a platform for the “Noted Woman Painter and Patriot Speaks of our National Needs.” 45 Hamilton continues: “If, indeed, the people of this province wish to erect a permanent and useful memorial to the men who have fallen in the war why would they not think seriously of building and endowing an art gallery and school? Nothing surely could be finer for both those who are gone and those who are to come.” 46 Hamilton’s idea to commemorate the war in a way that would benefit the soldiers intersects directly with the tenets of the Arts and Crafts movement, which advocated the creation of war memorials that were both artistic and socially useful, thus helping to shape the debate surrounding war memorials.47 In 1925, it would lead to the founding of Memorial University in Newfoundland as a living memorial for those who died in the war. As Hamilton’s bold criticisms suggest, she did not have an official government sponsorship, and neither was she linked to any official war artists’ program. She was a renegade with a fresh perspective on the war and war art, whose very exclusion fuelled her defiance: “I go to Europe in order to paint the scenes where so many of our gallant Canadians have fought and died, because this can only be done successfully before the reconstruction of France and Belgium has really started.” 48 But how feasible was her plan for a counter-expedition in a postwar context, when currencies were unstable and food prices extremely high? What concretely was the material basis for this journey? First, as she indicated on her travel documents, her passage was paid for by her employer,49 that is, The Gold Stripe, which also may have paid for the return shipping of paintings; later, she would acknowledge receiving a small cheque for paintings, but there are no further details. Second, Hamilton herself fundraised for her expedition by exhibiting some one hundred paintings in Vancouver (as she had done previously in 1901 when she sold her artwork and furniture); this also explains the flurry of media coverage as seen in the Vancouver Daily World, which on 21 January invited readers to the artist’s final exhibition before her departure: “This gifted artist will soon leave Vancouver for France. There she will paint scenes of historic interest.” 50 The fact that she had only a few trunks of possessions suggests her lack of roots and her readiness to travel. Third, she still hoped to receive payment for commissioned portraits she had made of the fifteen lieutenant-governors of British Columbia, expecting the current government to honour the earlier government’s contract. Fourth, she owned eight shares in the Canadian Pacific Railway Company then valued at $908 (or $13,108 in 2020) as well as small properties – in Winnipeg, its value unknown, and Victoria, valued at $2,400 ($33,647 in 2020) – which she hoped to sell. And finally, there was interest in

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3.11 Mary Riter Hamilton,

Red Cross Knitter, A Letter, and The Visitation, n.d., pastel triptych. Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, BC. Photograph by MLCRC (Jean-Paul Boudreau), September 2012.

The Home Front

her work among the University Women’s Club of Victoria, where Hamilton had cultivated patrons who had championed her work in Victoria since 1913. One of them would assume a special, though sporadic, role in her expedition. This sometime-patron was Margaret Janet Hart,51 whose mother, Mrs McPhee, Hamilton had been commissioned to paint a few years earlier. The large lifesized portrait is still proudly displayed today by her descendants on Vancouver Island. Although Hart was not wealthy, she was financially comfortable, and after The Gold Stripe had commissioned Hamilton, Hart promised to make funds available to aid the expedition – though their understanding was vague, as later chapters will reveal. Moreover, Hart was making her townhouse available as a Red Cross hostel for returning nurses, and Hamilton stayed there in March, hanging some of her largest paintings on the walls for safe-keeping. She also entrusted Hart with a silk-wrapped bundle of jewellery and personal trinkets to store in her safe.52 Hart agreed to this plan after Hamilton reassured her that she would not hold her responsible for any of the stored items.53 Hart was left with the impression that Hamilton’s expedition would be a determinate journey, and Hamilton herself indicated that she would return within two years.54 But Hamilton’s plans would later change. This was one of the many examples where the plan did not match up with the actual events. After a frenzied departure from Victoria, Hamilton just caught her boat to Vancouver, where on 16 March, Paton hosted the artist and her friends at the Press Club and ensured that her luggage would be shipped all the way through to New York.55 That same day, she left on the train, embarking upon a journey that had taken thousands of Canadian soldiers eastward during the war years. She stopped in Winnipeg, where she stayed at the Fort Garry Hotel and convened with important allies; they included her old friends from Clearwater, Aurelia Rogers, née Widmeyer, a member of the Western Art Association, and Aurelia’s husband Robert Rogers, also from Clearwater and a long-time Riter family friend. Robert Rogers, an important politician in his own right, had spent the majority of the war as the federal minister of public works. Based on later correspondence, Hamilton handed Aurelia Rogers the keys to her Winnipeg property and asked her friend to sell it in order to help finance her expedition. From Winnipeg, the train pressed on past the northern foot of Lake Superior and the familiar hillside town of Port Arthur, where Charles lay buried. She counted twenty-six years since his death – years spent painting and building a highly successful career as an artist. She stopped in Toronto, then dashed to Ottawa before heading to Montreal. This was her last stop in Canada before travelling to New York, where she would board a ship to France. In a letter to Mrs Hart, she boasted of the endorsements she was receiving and thanked her patron and her daughter Ellen for their support. Her emotion was evident: “I

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3.12 Margaret Janet Hart, n.d.,

portrait photograph. Private Collection, Vancouver Island, BC.

am just leaving here for Montreal where I must show my passport to the French Consul General [Henri Ponsot]. You have no idea the ‘Red Tape’ I have had to face here. I should have felt discouraged, limp off, only that I am doing it for the ‘Gold Stripe.’ I realy [sic] haven’t got rested yet that last ‘Grand Rush’ in Victoria almost ‘finished’ me … I cannot thank you for all your kindness words wont [sic] come just a lump in my throat and when I think of you and dear Ellen doing my washing (I finished it here).” 56 She fretted regarding the passport control, because in her official travel documents, Hamilton claimed to be thirtyfive years old,57 an age in line with war work, but a bold claim for a woman of fifty-one. On 26 March, she was evidently able to pass inspection at the port in Montreal, presenting a youthful body and light-brown hair. Then – finally – on Wednesday, 2 April, in New York, Hamilton boarded the ss La Touraine, a French liner bound for Le Havre. With Lady Liberty melting into the receding city skyline, she was now a war worker for The Gold Stripe embarked upon a daring journey marked by uncertainties. But as she drew closer and closer to Europe, nothing could deter her from her long-awaited goal. Her letter with her final good-bye was on its way to Hart, her confidence palpable: “I’m hard to kill as you know.” 58

Becoming an A r tist-W itnes s at Cambl ain-l ’A bbé The Great War was one of ferocity, without chivalry and magnanimity, and sometimes without mercy. V ICTORI A CRO S S RECIP IEN T CY RUS W. P ECK , P O S T–F IR S T W ORL D WA R 1

The first day I went over Vimy … it was cold and snowing … I am glad to have seen it under hard conditions, for I want to get the spirit of it … I feel that it is fortunate that I arrived before it is too late to get a real impression. M A R Y RI T ER H A MILTON, 1919 2

Nations have long recorded their memories of war through landscape painting, as Catherine Speck writes in her book Beyond the Battlefield: Women Artists of the Two World Wars, but this art historical tradition has encoded a separation between the male front line of war and the female home front. Male war artists commissioned in Britain developed their own visual code that operated within the genre of landscape painting revealing the futility of human sacrifice and destruction of landscape, while artists commissioned in settler nations such as Australia or Canada transmuted death and destruction into patriotic imagery of national maturity. As Speck writes: “But this male-only perspective, and its implied front/home-front view of wartime space obscures a range of other spaces just behind the front where nurses and voluntary aides (vads) worked.” 3 Women who did not have to satisfy army commissioners were able to develop alternative perspectives and styles.4 Thus, at this point, it is critical to reflect on Hamilton’s shaping of a phenomenological approach to battlefield painting, as Hamilton saw her experience in the

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battlefields as a personal, intentional, and urgent witnessing of recent destruction. As she later explained her historic mission to a journalist: “It seemed to me that something was in danger of being lost. I did not come on any official mission, I had to come.” 5 On one hand, this method contrasts with that of artists who painted some of the most famous, albeit imagined, battle scenes: monumental and heroic, and composed in studios.6 On the other hand, her technique – which included the use of small intimate canvases – transcended other modern pleinair approaches to painting the battlefield in being more radically immersive and unsparing of herself to secure her scenes.7 Ultimately, she was concerned with a “new seeing,” not merely recognizing but seeing the war anew through direct experience and spontaneous urgently felt impressions. “Driven by the urgencies of re-seeing the war in acts of witness,” to apply the words of Hillary Chute in Disaster Drawn, a study of post-1945 documentary drawings, Hamilton “proposes an ethics of looking and reading intent on defamiliarizing standard or received images of history while yet aiming to communicate and circulate.” 8 Having fought institutional powers to assume a place on the battlefield immediately after the conflict, Hamilton also embarked on telling a counter-history, often physically heading in the opposite direction to that of the official army groups. This becomes clear as soon as she arrived in the militarized coastal city of Le Havre, then populated with barracks, bell tents, and canteens. Her arrival was eclipsed by the frenzy of demobilization: soldiers arriving in the city for final health checks and delousing baths before returning home to Canada via England. As the soldiers signed out, she signed in, preparing for the final shift of war work. In cultural memory, this final shift has been all but obliterated, obscuring the contributions of not only Mary Riter Hamilton but also the cleanup crews responsible for restoring the land and the gravediggers in charge of burying the bodies. Embracing the paradox of her position, Hamilton relied on a letter from decorated Vimy veteran Lieutenant-Colonel Cyrus W. Peck,9 who hailed from British Columbia and whose unit was the 16th Battalion (The Canadian Scottish), to help propel her through the military protocol. This protocol required that she travel from Le Havre to Paris10 since every traveller to the battlefields had to wait there for official permission to access the war zone. The landscape of Paris had changed dramatically since Hamilton had last seen it in 1911. Despite the morning newspaper Le Figaro’s reassurances that Paris was still the city of flânerie,11 the new reality included a host of desperate refugees whom the war had driven from their homes along the western front in France – beggars in tattered soldiers’ uniforms, wounded men without arms or legs, women in mourning – and anxiety about social unrest.12 Here, Hamilton’s first priority was to connect with the office of Canada’s commissioner general in Paris, who issued a letter that read: “Mrs Hamilton is engaged in making

Becoming an Artist-Witness at Camblain-L’Abbé

4.1 Detail of Battle Map of the Western Front 4 (Arras): Enemy Order of Battle, 29 April 1917. WWI Trench

Maps fonds, Enemy Order of Battle Maps collection, box 2, envelope 48, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON. The red boxes indicate locations where Hamilton resided, while the blue boxes indicate various painting locations in the region. Camblain-l’Abbé is located on the far left, three-quarters of the way up the map.

sketches and pictures in the battle area for publications which are being made under the auspices of one of the ‘Returned Soldiers Associations’ of Canada. Any facilities that will be given to Mrs Hamilton will be greatly appreciated.” 13 The decision regarding requests to access the battlefields typically took two days, but in Hamilton’s case took two long weeks. In late April, Hamilton entered the war zone by leaving Paris from the Gare du Nord to Wimereux, near Calais, likely on a train overcrowded with soldiers, nurses, and refugees. At Wimereux Canadian General Headquarters, she was assigned a driver, Private Melville McIntyre, and a conducting officer, Lieutenant Walter Wright. After a few hours’ drive southeast to the Vimy Ridge, by Tuesday, 28 April, the trio had arrived at her assigned destination: Camblain-l’Abbé

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(figure 4.1), the site of the Canadian Corps headquarters during the war. Located fifteen kilometres northwest of the city of Arras, some fifty kilometres from the Belgian border, and in the rear of the former Vimy Ridge front line, the small village was far enough away from the enemy’s line to have survived the war relatively intact. The camp at Camblain-l’Abbé consisted of a two-storey château and several rows of corrugated-steel huts.14 Hamilton later depicted the scene in Camblain l’Abbé (1919), the military Nissen huts cutting diagonally across the small wood panel toward the château. Each hut is semi-cylindrical, looking like a huge artillery shell cut in half, covered in zigzagging yellow-blue camouflage. Her quick gestural brush communicates enormous energy and urgency as she takes viewers into her new world. Leaky and cold, her battlefield studio was very different from the cozy studios in London, Paris, or Montreal where many official war artists created a sense of battlefield verisimilitude in their paintings. For the first time, she slept on a military cot, looking up at the dome of raw metal above her. To her friends, she reported: “I am living in a Hut – the mess room of General Currie + staff – at Camblain l’Abbé.” 15 A cold front moving in meant that Hamilton was heading into unseasonable chill and storms.16 Under turbulent skies, she headed out for a first look at the Vimy Ridge – which was just over a dozen kilometres east of her camp. The modestly sloped hill had already begun to loom ever so large over the Canadian military imagination. Though none of her sketches from this first encounter with the Vimy Ridge survive, Hamilton’s brief accounts do: “It was always my ambition to make a collection of paintings of typical Canadian scenes, and as fate would have it some of the landscapes with which the history of Canada will be bound up for generations are here in France, 6,000 miles away … The first day I went over Vimy, snow and sleet were falling, and I was able to realise what the soldiers suffered.”17 Hamilton’s lack of words – being “too deeply impressed” to be able to provide details, but noting that “it is fortunate that I arrived before it is too late”18 – recall Ana Douglass and Thomas A. Vogler’s concepts of witnessing as “a practice made urgent by the continuous danger of forgetting.”19 They write: “Acts of witness are required to establish an event as worthy of witnessing. The ‘event’ that interpellates its witnesses must be an atrocity.” 20 With the event leaving a physical toll on her own body, Hamilton inserts herself as a witness into this traumatized landscape. According to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the body is the tool through which humans perceive and understand the world through embodied phenomenological impressions. It is by “lending his body to the world that the artist changes the world into paintings,” he writes in his essay “Eye and Mind.”21 Meaning making operates through sensation and feeling, and conflict archaeologist Nicholas J. Saunders provides insight of the impact of a post-battle site: “Trenches, dugouts,

Becoming an Artist-Witness at Camblain-L’Abbé

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4.2 Mary Riter Hamilton, Camblain l’Abbé, 1919, oil on wood panel, 13.6 × 18.0 cm. Library and Archives Canada,

Acc. No. 1988-180-79, Copy negative C-103559.

battlefields, and rear areas alike were strewn with the detritus of industrialized war – spent shells, cooling shrapnel, smashed tanks, lingering gas and unexploded ordnance. Interspersed with these were the equally fragmented remains of soldiers themselves.”22 The moving remains and relics witnessed by Hamilton on the shelled land, including shreds of uniforms, lost water bottles, and single boots, had a startling rawness. Saunders expands: “Battlefield landscapes, memorials, cemeteries, reconstructed buildings and towns, museums and memorabilia are all material representations of memory, spirituality, ethnicity, politics and emotion that link the living with the dead in a complex interplay of past and present.” 23 Since the battlefields also represented a hostile environment confronting Hamilton with collapsing trenches, traumatic sights, and harsh weather, her impressions necessarily mirrored some of the harshness suffered by the soldiers, strengthening

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the sense of authenticity of her documentary art. “I am glad to have seen it under hard conditions, for I want to get the spirit of it,” 24 as she notes in a letter excerpted in the epigraph above, would become a motto of her entire expedition. Indeed, the snowstorm she describes echoed the weather of Easter Monday, 9 April 1917, the first day of the Vimy Ridge battle. On that day, several hours into the clash, the Canadian Corps advanced toward the line of German trenches when the sky darkened and a snowstorm erupted over the barrage. Earth was heaved upward, shells whistled above, heavy artillery rumbled below with the force of an earthquake. The German machine-gunners frantically countered the force from their hidden emplacements. Still, the Canadian barrage of shells inched forward, followed by the soldiers in khaki, their long line thinning as they advanced in the snow and sleet, somehow prevailing through this whirlwind of opposition. For Hamilton, who had come to witness the after-effects of this violent conflict, this physical and emotional toll was further intensified as she did not take rest breaks to offset the emotional impact of her immersive experience, advice that is routine for witnesses of mass fatalities today. As an unofficial war painter of the aftermath, she was armed with her brushes and shielded by her sense of invulnerability and conviction. As she had recently declared: “I fairly ache to get to the scene of [the soldiers’] heroic exploits.” 25 n The Vimy Ridge was located near the destroyed city of Arras, which would become a point of return for Hamilton. Located 200 kilometres north of Paris, Arras was the capital of the Pas-de-Calais region of France and part of the western front. The Hindenburg Line, the well-known German defensive position, stretched from just outside of Arras to Laffaux on the Aisne River. On an old trench map, the city of Arras looked like the hub and spokes of a wheel with roads extending into the battlefields. These roads provided access to Bethune, the Vimy Ridge (and Lens), Cambrai, the Somme, and Camblain-l’Abbé. Having survived an almost four-year siege, the battered town of Arras had defied evacuation until just months before the end of the war, when its panic-stricken residents fled the stampeding war front that brought the enemy to their doorsteps. In their memoirs, soldiers recall the narrow winding streets of this unfortunate epicentre lined with the ruins of Baroque townhouses. The Hôtel de Ville had stood proud for four centuries before becoming one of the war’s countless architectural casualties. Three-quarters of the city’s buildings were similarly assaulted, while the surviving houses – their windows smashed by the shockwaves of artillery – were shuttered with plywood. Abandoned shops retained defunct advertisements for Tabac, Boulanger, and Coiffeur.26

Becoming an Artist-Witness at Camblain-L’Abbé

Although painted weeks later, when the weather was warm, Hamilton’s midsized oil on plywood A Ruined Interior, Arras (1919; figure 4.3) exemplifies the techniques that she innovated in her war art. The interior presented an unforgettable picture of disaster. A wrought-iron cot with Tuscan curlicues has tumbled through the destroyed ceiling and lies upside down in the parlour room. Feathers dot the floor. The painting also reveals unsettling spatial dislocations. The sharply oblique angles of furniture and ceiling beams dominate the painting, precariously leaning on a single vertical steel post to the left. The physical absence of people activates the viewer’s imagination: we picture them heading out the door – quickly! before it’s too late! If the open door in the background functions as an emergency exit, then Hamilton’s work converts its viewers into witnesses of not just destruction but also precarious survival. The space from which she paints gives a sense of immediacy: the viewer is vicariously caught within the collapsing structure – and invited to retrace her steps, to ignore warnings not to enter such decrepit structures, to pass through the open door of a semi-collapsed house. During the war, soldiers were admired for taking on dangerous assignments, and Hamilton’s anxiety-charged painting discloses her own risk-taking: both the physical risks required to achieve her vantage point and the artistic risks in blazing her own path to paint the effects of the war. Overlooked in discussions of war art, these domestic scenes present a subgenre emphasizing a female perspective and experience. Other interior scenes include Ruins at Arras (ca. 1919; figure 4.4),27 where she takes the viewer into the underground cellars and tunnels that provided shelter to the military and the people of Arras during the war. In this painting, too, obstacles block the viewer’s path: the objects strewn in a cellar hit by a shell. Her life at Camblain-l’Abbé followed a military structure, meaning daily departures from the camp at 0900 hours and return to the camp at 1700 hours, travelling as far as the car could go through mud and destruction followed by foot marches into the destroyed villages or battlefields to paint. Today, glimpses of the chronology of Hamilton’s journey can be gleaned from hard-to-locate and largely unprocessed military files or journalistic accounts often capturing first impressions or mishaps. In these early, still very cold days, Hamilton visited Villers-au-Bois, just a couple of kilometres from her camp, where she fell into conversation with the owner of an estaminet, a small war café. The Frenchwoman lamented the behaviour of a group of Canadian soldiers, who came into her kitchen during the war and, to her horror, confiscated her property. “‘Imaginez, madame, they took all the doors off my cupboards.’ Mrs Hamilton, huddling over an ineffectual fire, shook her head sympathetically. She suspected to what use those doors had been put. ‘I told a French officer about those wicked Canadians,’ continued the proprietress, and he observed, ‘So? The Canadians took your doors, eh, madame? Bien, do not forget that they took Vimy Ridge,

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4.3 Mary Riter Hamilton, A Ruined Interior, Arras, 1919, oil on plywood, 46.0 × 32.8 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-22, Copy negative C-132005.

4.4 Mary Riter Hamilton, Ruins at Arras, ca. 1919, oil on panel, 58.0 × 45.0 cm. Collection of the Vancouver Art

Gallery. Gift of the Trustees of the Vancouver City Archives, VAG 52.3. Photograph by MLCRC (Scott Sparrow), September 2019.

4.5 Mary Riter Hamilton, Villiers-au-Bois [sic], 1919, oil on cardboard, 26.4 × 34.5 cm. Library and Archives

Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-94, Copy negative C-132015.

Becoming an Artist-Witness at Camblain-L’Abbé

also!’” 28 Her anecdote relays evidence of the havoc wrought on those living in the hinterland of France. Barns were often confiscated and filled with military cots for soldiers to sleep in. In cases of forced evacuation, civilians lost their homes; families that had lived there for generations were uprooted. As these towns were left to ruminate bitterly on their losses, they met the Allied visitors with distrust. Here in Villers-au-Bois, Hamilton painted a street and cemetery simply titled Villiers-au-Bois [sic] (1919). Her oils are muted and thin, looking almost like watercolours. Her wintery colours contrast with the same scene painted by official war artist Maurice Cullen in Villers au Bois (1918),29 which uses more summery neo-Impressionist colours. At first glance, the viewer may see only the similarities between the two works, but Cullen is concerned with the bluewhite sky and the colour and details of the town’s architecture; in contrast, Hamilton is concerned with the cemetery, paying minute attention to the details of each cross. In her work, the viewer forges a relationship with the dead: three white Allied crosses interspersed with three brown French crosses – the latter adorned with the brightly gleaming cockade of the French flag – proclaim a cross-national relationship against the dreary landscape. In Cullen’s work, only the white crosses are visible; the French crosses but tiny ghosts on the sidelines. Hamilton signed her name at the crossroads, to the right, indicating her role as a traveller and witness on the road into the past conflict. In close proximity to Villers-au-Bois, she explored patriotically named Canadian rest camps spared by the German Luftwaffe. In Vancouver Camp, Chateau de La Hai (1919)30 and in her oil-on-wood panel Camp St Lawrence at Chateau de la Hai, War 1914–1918 (1919; figure 4.6), the Nissen huts are tightly aligned and compressed. In the first, the vista is cut off by an obstruction – a big tree trunk – in the immediate foreground, forcing the viewer to manoeuvre past the hindrance. The second is equally claustrophobic – trees and Nissen huts tightly packed in the frame – with the compressed spatial structure reducing the viewer’s mobility and visibility, and exposing a world that is shrunk. These works contrast with A.Y. Jackson’s Camouflage Huts, Villers-au-Bois (1917),31 where the sky and the tall trees configure the rest camp as a space of respite and freedom, with a group of men sitting in a circle to the right as in a grassy summer camp. Here, using her own body as a phenomenological tool to experience the war through the remaining spaces and objects, Hamilton visually transposes spatial limits often codified as female to the masculine world of the war. It’s precisely because of her embodied female perspective that she is able to render the soldiers’ intense confinement of war in new ways. Military records indicate that after only a week, Hamilton was involved in an accident. That is not entirely surprising, given that vehicles were hardly designed for such off-road navigation in the war zone (despite Michelin’s ads to the

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4.6 Mary Riter Hamilton,

Camp St Lawrence at Chateau de la Hai, War 1914–1918, 1919, oil on panel, 29.21 × 34.93 cm. Uno Langmann Limited Fine Art, Vancouver, BC.

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contrary).32 Just a few days into May, one of the car’s front wheels came off on the way home, breaking the front axle.33 Fortunately, the occupants of the car were unharmed, but there were, nonetheless, serious consequences, prompting an investigation at the Canadian headquarters in Wimereux. Lieutenant-Colonel Wilfrid Bovey summarized the driver’s statement about the accident’s aftermath: “The occupants of the car, Lieut. Wright and Mrs Hamilton, left him with instructions that they would send for him. He remained in his car until 8.30 p.m., when, as he had received no food, he returned to Camblain-l’Abbé, taking with him all the movable parts of his car that he could carry.” 34 However, when Melville McIntyre returned the next morning, the car was a wreck and its wheels and many other parts had been stolen.35 This startling turn of events gives insight into the chaos and desperation of the time and place. A later letter confirms that Hamilton received permission to catch rides in the car shared at Camblain-l’Abbé to transport equipment; this meant that she had to coordinate with others, and didn’t always get to travel where she wanted to. Still, the very availability of a car during her time at Camblain-l’Abbé made her ability to witness and paint here profoundly different from the rest of her expedition. This kind of mobility meant she could paint in many different battlefields, making the most of her first six weeks in the devastated region. By mid-May, spring had finally arrived at the Vimy Ridge, and the soggy trenches were sprouting thistles, buttercups, and poppies. With spring would also begin the enormous task of cleaning and restoring the lands, with Hamilton wanting to paint the severely marked and wounded landscape before everything was erased. Many trenches were still fenced with barbed wire, a sign that the battlefields were as yet untouched by cleanup crews. Barbed wire, elephant iron, and other such inert debris, though, were far from the most unsettling objects left behind. During the war, an estimated one billion shells were fired, and as many as a third of them failed to detonate. These unexploded shells, many filled with mustard gas or other toxic chemicals such as phosgene or white phosphorus, had yet to be collected and defused. Such deadly weapons – the long-term toxic signatures of modern industrial warfare – made any hike across the shell-ploughed land extremely perilous. Hamilton’s undated oil A “Dud” (n.d.) invites the viewer to contemplate such a hazardous intimacy: the dangerous projectile lies almost invisible in the bottom centre, where its sharp pointed line asserts its presence – close enough for the viewer to touch. This painting transports viewers down into the trench, where the shell is camouflaged in layers of brown and maroon earth that reach almost to the top of the painting. Clearly, Hamilton had to clamber halfway down the trench in order to paint the scene, the painting documenting her experimentation with new perspectives in seeing – or re-seeing the war – while also becoming familiar with the dangers of the aftermath.

Becoming an Artist-Witness at Camblain-L’Abbé

4.7 Mary Riter Hamilton, A “Dud,” n.d., oil on cardboard, 22.1 × 27.3 cm. Library and Archives Canada,

Acc. No. 1988-180-132, Copy negative C-104376.

A different encounter of unexploded ordnance is recorded in Battlefields (1919), which puts the viewer in the middle of a road that stretches from left to right on the horizontal canvas, the curving road bisecting the battlefield while offering a vista of the far horizon and the Vimy Ridge. Scarlet poppies grow through wire entanglements in the foreground and in the poppy field at mid-distance. The site seems ready for the military cleanup crews, though the artificial teal of the fields suggests that the safe planting of crops is a long while away. A billowing plume signals the explosion of ordnance, a regular operation on the battlefield – like a distant thunder that takes viewers into the present of Hamilton’s battlefield experience. These works amplify the odd sense of inbetweenness introduced by the armistice. Neither war nor peace, it was a liminal state that left deep impressions as evidenced by her inspired work.

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4.8 Mary Riter Hamilton, Battlefields, 1919, oil on light cardboard with separate wood backing, 27.2 × 34.4 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-24, Copy negative C-103591.

More emotionally “tense,” as Hamilton would call it in later letters, was the horrific impact of witnessing bodies in shallow graves still waiting to be exhumed and given their proper burial. On her daily excursions, Hamilton couldn’t miss the line of military men on the Vimy Ridge, their eyes trained on the ground, searching for isolated graves and for bodies protruding from wretched graves of mud.36 Crows loitered above, natural undertakers awaiting the opportunity to enact their own sort of death rites. The apparently random dispersal of isolated graves was a disturbing sign of modern industrial warfare. During the war, the military had decided not to repatriate the dead but to bury them where they fell as a way of dealing with the unprecedented number of casualties.37 Such burials

Becoming an Artist-Witness at Camblain-L’Abbé

often took place at night, with comrades doing double duty as gravediggers who often officiated at the rushed interment. This practice deprived grieving widows and parents of a body to bury; the normal mourning and consolation processes were disturbed. Adding to the problem, modern war technologies like shelling and mining often pulverized bodies, leaving relatives anguished in largely futile searches for their loved one’s remains on the battlefield. Meanwhile, the war grave workers did their best to search for isolated graves. Once such graves were found, they exhumed the remains, searched for each soldier’s metal disc to identify the body, and reburied them in a military cemetery where relatives could locate their kin and hopefully gain some measure of closure. Determined to paint these isolated gravesites before the workers arrived to remove the remains, Hamilton embraced a truly outsized task. On a bright sunny Tuesday in May, as the artist was exploring the zigzagging trench system of the Vimy Ridge, she painted Isolated Grave and Camouflage, Vimy Ridge (1919). Working with the sun and painting with a loose brush, she rendered the grave off-centre in a riotous, rhythmic trench landscape evocative of Van Gogh’s wild, mountainous ravines. High up in her painting stands the white cross: unadorned, isolated. Dramatically cropped, the camouflage netting works as an arch that frames and fences in the cross. Sagging and neglected, the religious emblem receives Hamilton’s special attention; her play of blue shadows on white clay takes on a life of its own, one shadow eerily climbing into the dark-purple trench that emerges in the foreground where sprout yellow flowers. More than ornaments, these shadows amplify the tension between stillness and action, marking the soldiers’ absence. In a rare gesture, Hamilton signed the work in black oil and fully dated the back of the canvas: “May 20 1919.” In her entire war art collection, she would date only two of her works with such precision, the second one being her oil on wove paper Street in Lens (1919) indicating that these two pieces, finished two days apart, had a special meaning to her, perhaps signalling a new crystallization in her technique. Occupied in 1914, the desolate coal-mining town Lens was located east of the Vimy Ridge, and its 50,000 collier workers and their families were forced to support the German war effort. The Allied army’s relentless four-year effort to reclaim the city was its ultimate demise since many local workers were killed in pursuit of that liberation. It was just outside of Lens that Alex Paton was wounded when a single shell struck his gun crew in the trench in Avion.38 Given their close friendship, it is likely that Paton shared this personal memory with Hamilton during his recovery in Vancouver. During the war, the cellars of Lens had been heavily fortified and connected into an underground village. As such, the city of Lens exposed Hamilton to the architecture of twentieth-century warfare, involving the weaponizing of domestic space, where large groups of enemy

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4.9 (facing page, top) Mary Riter Hamilton, Isolated

4.10 (facing page, bottom) Mary Riter Hamilton, Street

Grave and Camouflage, Vimy Ridge, 20 May 1919, oil

in Lens, 22 May 1919, oil on wove paper, 16.2 × 21.8 cm.

on wove paper, 15.5 × 21.8 cm. Library and Archives

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-174,

Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-223, Copy negative

Copy negative C-104480.

C-141851.

soldiers dwelled underground, making this type of war particularly difficult to visualize. By the time Hamilton arrived in the heart of Lens, visitors rarely lingered there, leaving her free to explore as she dared. Months after the last shot was fired, “the faint smell of human mortality” polluted the spring breeze, as Winnipeg journalist John W. Dafoe observed in March 1919: “For in these huge rubbish heaps, if they are ever cleared away, will be found hundreds of Germans buried by the shells that destroyed them [in the fall of 1918].” 39 While there was no doubt that among the German dead were also the French who lived in Lens, it was easier to think of the source of the odour as the former enemy. Despite the smell, Hamilton’s work indicates that she did step inside to paint. Her oil Street in Lens places the viewers in the middle of the destroyed town. The road cuts upward from right to left, travelling into the past along the brick ruins, with a mountainous mass of walls behind. The concrete walls of fortified cellars, used to store wine or potatoes before becoming militarized, stand at regular intervals to the right. The remains of brick walls towering above these cellars exhibit a flamboyant bend backward like trees that have weathered a storm. The painting’s dominant colour is crimson, which speaks with powerful ferocity: memorializing the bombed-out brick of Lens residences, the flame of the coal-mining industry that fuelled the German war from Lens, the spilled civilian blood. Like the first work of the camouflaged Vimy Ridge trench that she fully dated two days earlier, this fully dated work testifies to her immersion in the war’s aftermath. Together, the pair attest to her concern with the dead, who can be found buried both in the trenches and in the destroyed town. On the back, she inscribed the oil in the manner of a diary, “Lens/May 22/1919.” 40 In her 9 June letter to Rosalind Young, Hamilton explains: “So far I have made many many sketches and – two finished pictures. The end of July I shall send off my work to the ‘Gold Stripe’ and no doubt will be in need of a rest for the work is so ‘intense’ owing to the nature of it. And besides I have had such great distances to go in order to get to it. I wish I could transport you here for one must see it all in order to realize just what this terrible war has done. One of the sadest [sic] (if not the sadest [sic]) are the isolated graves. They look so lonely and some of them I cannot even think of without tears!

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4.11 (facing page) Mary Riter

Hamilton, Ruins of Mt St Eloi 1914–1919, 1919, oil on panel, 34.93 × 26.67 cm. Uno Langmann Limited Fine Art, Vancouver, BC.

The ruins are wonderful and most paintable indeed.” 41 The work is “intense,” a word that connotes passion, but with the first two letters struck through, becomes “tense,” suggesting nervousness, anxiety, and strain. These tense episodes multiplied in May when Hamilton was trying to visit and paint as many scenes as she could, with the awareness that her means of transportation was limited to just a few more weeks. But this letter also signals that moments of stress alternated with moments of decompression as she declares: “The ruins are wonderful and most paintable.” Indeed, Camblain-l’Abbé afforded a view of the old façade of a monastery. Built in white limestone in the French Gothic style, it had survived upheavals from the French Revolution to the First World War. Standing to this day and soaring forty metres high, the towers still look as they did when Hamilton painted them a hundred years ago. And they still enthrall in the manner of an outdoor Notre Dame de Paris. The doubletowered ruin was on the famous Mont-Saint-Éloi and features in several of her oils, including Ruins of Mt St Eloi 1914–1919 (1919), which places the ruins in the upper right quadrant as a symbol of remembrance with the bottom half left empty to represent the emptiness left by those who perished here, her blank space on the canvas inscribing an absent presence. The ruin would also assert its ubiquity on the horizon line of many battlefield paintings painted months later along the Lens-Arras road, helping her to create complex visual narratives (see chapter 6). The two towers seem to prefigure the two towering pylons of the Vimy Ridge memorial by almost two decades – and yet her use of them was different from that of Walter Allward in his design. In painting the ruins, she performed a creative salvaging, capitalizing on the fact that ruins can still function as “remainders and reminders,” as Svetlana Boym describes the ruins’ semiotic plasticity in her study. A few months later, a reviewer of Hamilton’s earliest war works recognized the assertion of survival in her depiction of ruins: “In several paintings, particularly some interiors, of Arras Cathedral … she has realised the grandeur and dignity still remaining, in the massive proportions of shattered walls and broken columns.” 42 Where official war artist James Kerr-Lawson painted a sublime and monumental landscape of destruction in Arras, the Dead City (ca. 1919),43 Hamilton countered by

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staging scenes of survival and rescue. This is evidenced in at least two works centrally depicting the surviving mural of the Virgin in her oil Interior of the Ruined Cathedral, Arras (1919) and Ruins of the Beautiful Cathedral of Arras War 1914 to 1918 (1919), the latter reproduced in two-tone in The Gold Stripe.44 She appropriates for the medium of oil painting the methods of eyewitness reporting on natural disasters as seen in the illustration depicting the effects of the Calabria earthquake in Lectures pour tous in December 1905. As an eyewitness to the effects of war, she collects the shards of destruction and survival simultaneously. Even though the war is often represented as having initiated a dramatic break, hailing the fragmentary language of Modernism, there is equal evidence of the continuity between pre- and postwar expressions, as I discuss in later chapters. Thus, Hamilton’s emerging vision was dual: encompassing destruction and renewal. n Saturday, 24 May 1919, marked the official closing of the Camblain-l’Abbé military camp, a major transition in the state of affairs both for the Canadian military and for Hamilton. The closing of the camp, which had offered some home-like comfort during the war, brought with it the exodus that Hamilton depicts in Closing of Canadian Camp, Camblain l’Abbé (1919).45 In the upper half, a scene of waiting unfolds with some twenty soldiers, nurses, and civilians lining up beneath the towering barracks – a man in a wheelchair at the head. In the lower left, a striking blank field represents all those who will never return. In the lower right is a family group, likely a tribute to the family of the commander at Camblain-l’Abbé – Major Sydney Booth (referenced in her letter to Hart below as “Major Booth”) and his young wife, Frances Booth (“the Lady of the Chateau” 46), who both hailed from Victoria47 – whom Hamilton had befriended. Since they were staying on at the camp for another fortnight, permission had been granted to Hamilton for a two-week extension in her Nissen hut at Camblain-l’Abbé.48 Booth also secured permission for her to hitch rides in the camp’s vehicle during that time. By Sunday, 25 May, Camblain-l’Abbé had devolved into a ghost town and most of the camp château’s windows were shuttered, as Hamilton depicts in her painting (see figure 4.2). The château, being a Canadian headquarters and thus functioning as an Allied war room, was now haunted by the ghosts of famous French, British, and Canadian commanders who had visited secretly throughout the war. Rather than paint the official great hall, Hamilton secured access to the bedroom of Prince Arthur of Connaught, who had visited the château at Camblain-l’Abbé during the war with his father, the Duke of Connaught. The latter

Becoming an Artist-Witness at Camblain-L’Abbé

was the governor general of Canada from 1911 to 1916 and thereby the official stand-in for the commander-in-chief of the Canadian army. Before the war, the Connaughts had agreed to become the lead patrons for Mary Riter Hamilton’s illustrious cross-country exhibition, then the highest public acknowledgement for a Canadian artist. As she threw open the shutters to the Prince’s upstairs bedroom, light poured in, bouncing off the curved footboard of the mahogany bed. In Prince Arthur of Connaught’s Room at Camblain l’Abbée [sic] (1919),49 a medium-sized oil on plywood, Hamilton depicts the scene through a staging of found objects, including the severely cropped bed and white linens, which differ starkly from the uncomfortable wooden cots of regular soldiers – and unofficial war workers like Hamilton. The sharp cropping alerts the viewer to several conspicuous objects: at the foot-end, a bed warmer; in the foreground, a Biedermeier armchair with yellow upholstery; on the dresser, the statue of the Virgin Mary, speaking of the occupant’s privileged protection. Playing with the conventions of war portraiture in constructing the national hero, this subversive work with its focus on provocatively banal objects brings to mind the ironic title Generals Die in Bed, Canadian writer Charles Harrison’s anti-war novella published in 1930. In this way, Hamilton’s art privileges living memory over representational history, presenting an alternative vantage instead of a singular authoritative version. On 4 June, five weeks after her arrival at Camblain-l’Abbé, and less than a week before she had to break camp, Hamilton fell sick with a cold, fretting because she was losing two precious days of painting. As she penned her first letter to Margaret Janet Hart in Victoria, names and ideas flooded the small pages, transcribed here in full: June 4th 1919 Dearest Mrs Hart This is just a line to let you know that I have sent off two parcels (they left yesterday) to you and I hope they will reach you safely as I feel sure you will be interested in them. A little later it will be quiet [sic] impossible to get those special things. Sunday I invited the Lady of the Chateau, Major Booth, and Mr Milan [sic], an artist who is painting for the Canadian records, to my Hut to see the work I have done since my arrival. I only wish you could have been one of the number. By the way you may be interested to know that the Hut I am living in was at one time the mess room for General Currie and staff – a charming place it is too [(only in bad condition), and] the lady of the chateau is very kind indeed. Yesterday and today – especially yesterday I was ill I think I have been trying to do too much knowing my time is short, for the car goes this week, and then I shall have difficulty in getting around as there is no way of transportation

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only by car so you can imagine how I feel losing two days of such precious time! You will remember – my taking that little old blanket of yours the one you gave me when I first went to Victoria. I wondered at the time why I wanted it – but I wonder no longer for it is one of my most precious possessions. At the present I have it pined [sic] around me under my corsets (I have lost so much flesh since I left bc that a small blanket goes quiet [sic] easily under my corsets etc). So now when I am out sketching there will be no more danger of my taking cold as I seem to have done this last while. The club 50 closes this week and I am still undecided as to where I shall live. There is simply no place in the battle area among the French. Poor things they have little or nothing for themselves but I must do my work here now or it will be too late everything is being changed so rapidly[.] My address is as I gave you last Poste Restante Aarras [sic] Pas-de Calais France. I can either call for it or have it forwarded from there. I hope you are all well. I haven’t received a line from anyone in Victoria since I left – now almost three months ago. Lots of love to all Your Mary Hamilton.51

She signed the letter upside down on the second-to-last page, taking care not to waste paper and postage. The letter’s characteristic style – lively images strung together ignoring conventional punctuation – takes readers directly into her world. The haunting image of having lost enough “flesh” that she could put a small blanket underneath her corset to stay warm already gives a glimpse of her self-sacrificing devotion to her work: intense walking, minimal food, stress, and the cold weather had taken their toll. This blanket also explains why in some photos Hamilton looks strangely bulky (see figures 5.11 and 6.6). She describes the Sunday event that brought the few remaining people in Camblain-l’Abbé to her Nissen hut for an informal showing of her work, perhaps curated alongside a few battlefield relics (the “special things” that she was mailing to Hart as a gift, and which were later revealed to be a German helmet, a soldier’s water bottle, and a very large German shell52). Among the guests she mentions are the Booths and, most intriguingly, painter David Milne (misspelled “Mr Milan”). For the first time, this confirms the meeting of official and unofficial war artists, the former having arrived at Camblain-l’Abbé two weeks after Hamilton, equipped with “special shoulder flashes that declared ‘Official Canadian War Artist.’” 53 At this impromptu exhibition, Milne was able to view and study about thirty of Hamilton’s works, then at various stages of completion. A newspaper extract reprinting her letter to The Gold Stripe gives a sense of the scenes Milne and the Booths would have seen in Hamilton’s hut, as she writes: “I have already visited and sketched at the following places: Vimy, Lens, Mount St Eloi (3), Villers au Bois Church, Arras Cathedral, Green Crasse Lens, Chateau de La Haie (St Lawrence Camp and Vancouver Camp). Every day I try to take sketches of whatever impresses me, and feel that it is fortunate that I arrived before too late to get a

Becoming an Artist-Witness at Camblain-L’Abbé

4.12 Mary Riter Hamilton to

Margaret Janet Hart, 4 June 1919. Margaret Janet Hart Collection, MLCRC, Toronto.

real impression. The changes are taking place rapidly and even the short time that I have been here I can see a great change.” 54 Eventually, Milne’s 68 war works would be exceeded by Hamilton’s over 300, but more than this quantitative distinction, Hamilton adds a new critical perspective on commemorative nation-building by providing, as Brian S. Osborne writes, “a focus on the impact of the war and the former homes and communities that had been obliterated.” 55 Her private showing, a dress rehearsal for her upcoming exhibition in Vancouver, underscores her intent to circulate her paintings to a wide audience. Hamilton’s aesthetic was fuelled by affect and urgency. “I must do my work here now,” she insists in response to the rapid transformation of the battlefield, which brought pressure and anxiety from the very start, as well as a heightened awareness to issues of modern temporality. Even her chosen medium – oil – was a most difficult medium for the battlefields because it

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took substantially longer to dry, leaving several wet canvases with paper stuck to them. Milne’s more pragmatic choice was watercolours.56 Also, Milne’s method was formalist, as his biographer writes: “Milne gazed at the chaotic debris dispassionately, with the detachment of one to whom only his art was of ultimate importance.” 57 The tenets of High Modernism privilege pure form erasing the self, as with Eliot’s objective correlative in Modernist poetry, whereas Hamilton’s approach was immersive. It’s uncertain when Hamilton ventured southeast on the Arras-Cambrai road, but the list of completed paintings she compiled in July corroborates that she was in Monchy-le-Preux in the spring of 1919; and she must have been there during those first six weeks, while she still had access to a car. Given that Milne painted and dated his watercolour Entrance to Cellar Shelter in Monchyle-Preux on 26 May 1919,58 and given the scarcity of transport and long drive there, it’s likely that they travelled together. Monchy-le-Preux, a small village of great notoriety in the Vimy Ridge battles, changed hands several times and was decisively taken by Canadians on 26 August 1918. In 2014, when I visited the site, a caribou in bronze, emblem of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, paid tribute to nine soldiers from the 1st Newfoundland Regiment and one from the 1st Essex Regiment, who held the German counterattack at bay for over eleven hours. They did so on 14 April 1917 with a clever smoke-and-mirrors ruse, pretending to be a much larger group by unleashing volleys of gunfire. Sitting on high ground, Monchy was an elevated circular plateau – the town had been razed to its stone cellars, which Hamilton recorded, as confirmed by early newspaper accounts: “As regards [Hamilton’s] interiors, there is a picture of a cave at Monchy, at one time occupied by the Germans.” 59 Today, the whereabouts of this painting is unknown, suggesting that a viewer kept it as a memento. Whereas Milne painted above ground, Hamilton painted below – the underground cellars testifying to her investigative risk-taking and her focus on the inside spaces of the war. Sadly, the interior works from Monchy-le-Preux have not yet been located. Anything but conventional, her sole surviving work from this trip, the oil on wove paper Street in Monchy-le-Preux (1919), depicts a destroyed streetscape with severe purple bruising. Several figures in khaki walk down the street in the far distance – leaving viewers with questions: Is she rendering David Milne and Walter Wright before the group would break up, each heading in his own separate direction? Or are these war grave workers who would eventually become a central part of her journey, something she may not yet be aware of? By June, after the official departure of the Canadian army, the Canadian War Graves Detachment had moved in and set up three camps: at NeuvilleSaint-Vaast in the southern Vimy Ridge district; at Écurie, also in the south; and in Bully Grenay,60 close to the remote northern mining town of Loos,

Becoming an Artist-Witness at Camblain-L’Abbé

4.13 Mary Riter Hamilton, Street in Monchy-le-Preux, 1919, oil on wove paper, 21.7 × 26.5 cm. Library and

Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-127, Copy negative C-141862.

which Hamilton would visit more than a year later in 1920 (see chapter 9). Using maps, they searched the Vimy Ridge for the dead to exhume and bury. Meanwhile, with the closing of Camblain-l’Abbé, Milne was invited to the neighbouring Saint-Éloi camp. “This wasn’t a camp made of junk but one of elephant iron huts with neat drives and flower gardens,” his notes explain; he would have “a fine hut and Chinese batman, tea on waking in the morning, baths, all that sort of thing.” 61 Hamilton would not have been familiar with such amenities and comforts: she would have no personal servant, or “batman,” to schlep her painting gear and supplies. Decades later, when Milne wrote up his recollections as a war painter, he did not communicate any of the struggle that Hamilton expresses in her letters. With his generous allowance

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for painting supplies, sizable salary, and military rank, in addition to a Cadillac and a driver, he was exempt from the material hardships she experienced. This stark contrast highlights the power that came with being a governmentcommissioned war artist,62 and the precarious existence Hamilton would have to embrace in order to carry out her work. Meanwhile, Lieutenant-Colonel Wilfrid Bovey, the military commander at Wimereux headquarters, had advised Hamilton to go to Ablain-Saint-Nazaire at the northern foot of the Vimy Ridge, where she would be within walking distance of the battlefields but in much harsher living conditions. Although the Canadians had just left Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, on Bovey’s recommendation, the British grave workers stationed there invited Hamilton to set up camp. In her 5 June letter to Bovey, she made a plea to keep the car for four more weeks, in which time she hoped to finish her work at sites that were impossible to reach without transportation. Dear Sir, Would it be possible for you to allow the car to remain with me for four weeks more? By that time I should have finished the work that it is so impossible for me to get to without transportation. My plans [have been] all upset since I saw you owing to the Imperial Graves records missing from Ablain St [Nazaire] so it is not possible for me to take advantage of their offer ... and I know of no other place where I can get near enough within walking distance to Vimy district. I keenly appreciate being allowed the car at all and sincerely hope you will not think I am imposing too much on your kindness by this request. If I could see any other way out of this difficulty I should not trouble you. Believe me. Yours faithfully, Mary Riter Hamilton 63

Hamilton hesitated, reluctant to settle in such a remote wilderness, set apart at the northern end of the Vimy Ridge: it was a massive hill-cradled graveyard with a prisoner-of-war camp at its centre. Her ambivalence and stress are evident in her sudden flurry of letters exploring various contingencies for her future. On Saturday, 7 June, still living in her hut at Camblain-l’Abbé, Hamilton made plans for the next phase of her expedition by writing to Rowland Taylor. The wealthy fifty-four-year-old politician, businessman, and philanthropist was an important contact for Hamilton because he had power of attorney over her assets at the Colonial Trust Company in Victoria. More concretely, the letter illuminates how Hamilton hoped to finance this next stage of her expedition in Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, as she saw herself headed toward rougher terrain without army rations.

Becoming an Artist-Witness at Camblain-L’Abbé

Dear Mr Taylor, Will you be so kind as to let me have some money as soon as you receive this? I fear I shall be left without any as now I have only four hundred francs left. Of course, it is possible that Mrs Hart may have sent me some but so far I have not heard from her or indeed anyone else in Victoria since I left which will soon be three months. If the money has been paid in for the portraits it might be as well to send it to France now as the exchange would be greatly in my favor, the franc being very low at present but going up. Have it sent to the Banque National, 14 Rue Auber. I am not very well pleased with this Bank and would be glad to make a change to Cox’s Bank however, as they, the Bank National, have my account, I suppose there is nothing else to do but to send it through them. I hope you received my last letter and that Mrs Rogers has written you regarding the Deed for the St James property. She promised to do so and took your address, but I mentioned this in my last letter. Tomorrow I am going to Ablin St Nazain [sic] which is at the foot of Vimy Ridge and in the Valley, and this move will mean that I shall be near to my work. The work is most interesting. I hope to get my pictures off to the “Gold Strip[e]” the end of July. I am having my mail sent to Arras Poste Resta[n]te, Pas de Calais, but I think possibly you had better address Bank National, 14 Rue Auber; they are very prompt about forwarding. It is almost five weeks since I left Paris and I have covered much of the ground that I have come to do and already have a number of sketches, and two finished pictures ready to send to the Amputatins [sic] Club. The great difficulty I am up against here is a place to live and transportation. So far it has been alright as I have been staying at this Club and I have been allowed a car from Head Quarters. This was owing to letters from Canada to H.Q. However, now it is possible I may not have this help and it is exceedingly difficult as there is no place to live and no way of getting about. With kindest regards, Yours faithfully, Mary R. Hamilton 64

Just weeks into her journey, Hamilton’s finances were rapidly diminishing and the harsh reality of her role as an unofficial war painter was becoming painfully clear. Possessing only 400 francs (ca$750 in 2020), she urgently needed a means of supporting herself if her expedition was to continue. Her postscript clarifies: “It costs me now one hundred $100 per month here. Here of course I have been using much more than that up to date.” 65 Her greatest hope was that Taylor would secure the outstanding payment for the series of portraits that she had done of the lieutenant governors of British Columbia. Harbouring no illusions as to the certainty of that stream of income, though, she pursued all possibilities. She awaited word from her friend Aurelia Rogers concerning her St James property in Winnipeg, relying on Rogers to procure the

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deed and sell it on her behalf to generate some funds for the trip.66 In Vancouver, earlier in May, Alex Paton had run a full-page advertisement in The Gold Stripe to solicit support for the artist in the form of commissioned paintings: “Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton, who is in France painting scenes of the battlefields where the Canadians fought, will execute a limited number of special commissions. Address Communication to J.A. Paton Care of Gold Stripe.” 67 And finally, there was Hart, who had offered to send support, but from whom Hamilton had not received any mail since arriving overseas. Hamilton would not know until much later that two of Hart’s letters had simply gone missing due to poor postwar postal conditions. The resulting silence added to her sense of exile, which had taken root almost from the beginning. Of the four possible sources of income, Hamilton’s own savings, though finite, and Hart’s patronage, though extremely sporadic and not enough to live on, would prove the most reliable. The first week of June brought a quick succession of farewells. Her guide, Lieutenant Wright, was set to leave on 9 June to return to Winnipeg via England. The Booth family, whose military life was coming to an end, was leaving Camblain-l’Abbé with plans to return to Victoria.68 Hamilton also had to bid goodbye to Milne, who had accepted the offer to stay with the captain of the Chinese labour detachment near Mont-Saint-Éloi. These individuals had all provided a sense of human community to Hamilton in some way, which she was about to lose. During this time of transition, as the first week of June turned into the second, she organized her move to Ablain-Saint-Nazaire where she would soon set up her new camp.69 A singular and remarkable photograph sums up this early period of mobility during Hamilton’s stay at Camblain-l’Abbé. It shows her seated in a massive sedan – a Cadillac, no less: a modern woman on the front line of the war’s aftermath, a territory dominated by men, machines, and destruction. The towering white ruins of the church of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire behind her do not dwarf her, but instead proclaim her professional identity as a war artist since these same ruins would soon figure in many of her paintings. She wears a white blouse and a large hat with military-style dazzle camouflage. “This photo was taken in June this year,” the caption noted when it was published in Canada a few months later. “The driver is Sergeant Moore” – that is, Milne’s driver.70 It shows her in the car at the very moment she had to relinquish mobility, about to become stationary in one singular location at the northern foot of the Vimy Ridge. This difficult material context was a condition of her civilian status and would characterize the rest of her expedition. However, taking full advantage of the first six weeks, she had already collected vivid impressions not only of Camblain-l’Abbé, Mont-Saint-Éloi, Villers-au-Bois, and Château-de-la-Haie, which were all reachable by foot, but also of the Vimy Ridge, the destroyed cities Arras and Lens,

Becoming an Artist-Witness at Camblain-L’Abbé

4.14 Mary Riter Hamilton in a car

at Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, June 1919, photograph. Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, BC.

and Monchy-le-Preux. Her letter home, cited in the newspaper, reiterates her purpose: “The changes are taking place rapidly and even the short time that I have been here I can see a great change; in another few months there will be very little trace of war. In many parts the ploughing and seeding is ‘going on,’ and the prisoners of war are occupied with clearing ruins, mending roads and ‘salvaging.’ I hope to have an opportunity of painting some of them at work.” 71 Despite the setbacks at the beginning, Hamilton quickly developed her own visual language of commemoration, authoring herself as a war painter and witness who hoped to mobilize the viewer and restore the country. After her first six weeks, her life was about to change, providing an even deeper immersion into the netherworld of the dead.

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In the Valley of A bl ain-S aint-Nazaire

O what shall I hang on the chamber walls? And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls, To adorn the burial-house of him I love? WA LT W HI T M A N, “ W HEN L IL AC S L A S T IN T HE DOOR YA RD BLOOM’D,” 18 65 –66 1

I cannot talk, I can only paint. M A R Y RI T ER H A MILTON, 1922 2

By 1918, there were over 8,000,000 dead who were not repatriated but were buried in cemeteries near the battlefields. The result was a type of commemorative engagement still evident today in what Jay Winter calls the “memory boom,” 3 which continues to bring descendants searching for family members to what was once the western front. The physical distance between the dead and their mourners had disrupted traditional mourning practices, creating diverse memorial modes, from official memorials offering sublime consolation to unofficial ones opting for subversive articulations of pain and loss, often speaking from a counter-historical perspective of loss. As José Medina explains: “While an official history keeps entire groups of people and their lives and experiences ‘in darkness and silence,’ a counter-history teaches us precisely how to listen to those silent and dark moments.” 4 By living at the foot of the Vimy Ridge, Hamilton learned to listen to the fertile silence of the dead, and by transmuting this silence in art, she countered what scholars have called the “‘great silence’ in language after the war.” 5 Since some of the living, notably the prisoners of war and the uprooted citizens, were also segregated by silence and isolation, they

In the Valley of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire

5.1 German aerial view of Lorette Ridge (left) and Vimy Ridge (right) with the Souchez Valley in the middle;

Ablain-Saint-Nazaire is on the far left, postcard (Feldpost), 1917. World War I Collection, MLCRC, Toronto.

too became a focal point for her painting. As suggested by her own motto in the epigraph above, her war art starts at moments when words fail. From 10 June to 31 July 1919, Mary Riter Hamilton was assigned to a camp at the northwestern foot of the Vimy Ridge just outside of the flattened village of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire. While an old 1917 German aerial postcard surveys the region when it was still intact, it fails to give a sense of the battlefield wilderness that the artist and trickles of returning refugees encountered there in 1919. To the east of the devastated village of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire stood the Vimy Ridge, its crest dusty and bald, stripped of trees, with seams of chalk churned up. To the north rose the taller Lorette Ridge, its steep slopes destroyed in the fierce Franco-German battles in 1915. In the valley, where the villages were pulverized, a sprawling prisoner-of-war camp was located, and since prisoners were typically sent to the most desolate camps of the battlefields, often with substandard accessibility to clean water and road networks, Hamilton’s quiet assessment at the end of her stay comes as no surprise. “Since I wrote you last, I have been having quite an interesting but strenuous experience,” she would write to Taylor on 29 July, continuing: “After the closing of the Canadian Club

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5.2 Mary Riter Hamilton, Souchez Corner, 1919, drawing on paper, current location unknown;

reproduced in The Gold Stripe 3, December 1919, 92. Mary Riter Hamilton Collection, MLCRC, Toronto.

at Camblain l’Abbe, I moved further up the line and have been living in the destroyed village of Ablain, which has been quite shut off from all Canadians as there is no means of transport in this part and I have been without a car. The village is just at the foot of Vimy Ridge and I live and eat in huts built by the Canadians; in fact, everything is interesting to Canadians in and around that part of the battle area. While it is splendid to be there, it is quite impossible to live for long in this area – owing to food and other facilities.” 6 In Camblain-l’Abbé, the discomfort of her leaky hut had been a point of pride, but Ablain-Saint-Nazaire brought concerns with safety and the sanitary facilities. Her understated admission – that it was “quite impossible to live for long in this area” – anticipates her descriptions of the desolation of the Somme, where only day trips were possible. This also seems to support photographic evidence I discovered in Belgium that suggests that Hamilton may have sought respite in Ypres on at least two separate days overlapping with her stay in Ablain-SaintNazaire (discussed further in chapter 8). Although isolated, Hamilton was not, in fact, entirely alone while living here. A few French civilians, homeless and hungry, moved into the vacated military huts, and her caricature drawing of Souchez Corner (1919) shows what looks like a donkey- or goat-drawn cart on the

In the Valley of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire

street. However, this slow return of refugees was not enough to dispel a sense of desertion in an area ravaged by war. Only the bravest or most hardened could withstand such squalid conditions. At the same time, Ablain-Saint-Nazaire was offering diverse and stunning scenes to paint. Close to the front line of the Vimy Ridge, huts and crosses, observation posts, and duckboards became the patriotic relics that allowed Hamilton to break new ground in the visual art of grieving and memorializing. In the absence of bodies, she eulogized the dead Canadians through their huts: Interior Military Stone Huts built by Canadians 1914–1918 (1919),7 Nissen Hut (In Peace Time) (1919),8 and Military Armstrong Hut Built by Canadians in Ablain St Nazaire now Occupied by French Civilians (1919; figure 5.3). The last painting startles with its almost Fauvist rendering of blue and red dazzle pattern camouflage, contrasting with the military-style geometrical order at the bottom of the canvas, where the large duckboard rectangle is dressed in purple-blue mourning shadows. Whereas Arthur Lismer’s oil Convoy and Tugs (1918) blends the dazzle pattern of war ships in Halifax Harbour into the maritime sky, Hamilton foregrounds hers through affect. Hoisted above the door, the Union Jack is hidden in plain sight by dazzle camouflage conveying also a sense of liminal and transitional living of the returning civilians. As each work mediates between the living and the dead, the church ruin of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire rises in the background as a stable geographical marker, inviting viewers to track Hamilton’s movements – and through hers, the soldiers’ – within a radius of this landmark, and locating her within the here-and-now of the region’s aftermath. This tension between the perceptible and the camouflaged, the visible and invisible, is a theme of several paintings and drawings she chose to collect and bring home. During the war, observation posts – camouflaged as trees, windmills, and mausoleums to name but a few disguises that she painted – allowed the occupants to scout and explore enemy territory while hidden. That she painted and drew at least seven such observation posts in various locations in France and Flanders – from her first drawing in the Ablain-Saint-Nazaire neighbourhood, Tree Converted into an O.P., Arras-Bethune Road (1919),9 to the baroquely sprawling structure near Ypres drawn in Observation Post on the Menin Road (n.d.)10 – testifies to her central interest in questions of observation and documentation, and their analogous function with aspects of her own role as an artist-witness trekking the land and collecting impressions without official Canadian recognition, and thus largely invisible herself. Among the works that she would soon ship to The Gold Stripe, she listed Entrance to Canadian Observation Post on Lorette Ridge (1919; see figure I.1) as Number 1. Like the signaller and runner who manned these observation posts during the war, typically at high risk to themselves and isolated from their peers, so Hamilton anchored

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5.3 Mary Riter Hamilton, Military Armstrong Hut Built by Canadians in Ablain St Nazaire now Occupied by French

Civilians, 1919, oil on board, 44.5 × 57.5 cm. The War Amps of Canada; on permanent loan to the Museum of the Royal Westminster Regiment, New Westminster, BC, 51-1-8. Photograph by MLCRC (Scott Sparrow), October 2019.

In the Valley of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire

her role and documentary method in direct observation, collecting snatches of the ordinary and extraordinary to bring home. But what was at stake in her own role and duty to bear witness, collecting impressions at the northern foot of the Vimy Ridge? n In 2014, I visited the Vimy Ridge and stopped at its highest point, Hill 145, also known as the Pimple, where the official Canadian National Vimy Memorial is located today: two thirty-metre-tall pylons providing a platform for the national commemoration of the battle on an international stage,11 with tourists arriving regularly in large buses. Sublime, monumental, and timeless, this version of seeing the war and the nation represents the complementary opposite to Hamilton’s painting, as she hunkered down in the war desert at the foot of the Vimy Ridge, collecting impressions whose very contingent ephemerality instantiates their urgency. When I explored nearby Ablain-Saint-Nazaire to find the place where Hamilton had lived, the church ruin that inspired several paintings appeared suddenly after a bend in the street, still “beautiful, white in death,” as veteran James H. Pedley described it a century earlier,12 but today surrounded by a twenty-first-century village. Walking up the steep slope to the Lorette Ridge, the same path Hamilton travelled on foot in 1919, I quickly gained elevation, eventually locating the vantage point that allowed her to frame her paintings with the Vimy Ridge in the background and that in turn allowed me to actualize remembrance through the paintings that brought me to this site. She made a series of at least eight works from the same or similar perspective titled Vimy Ridge Taken by Canadians (1919),13 underscoring the patriotic and memorializing impetus of her journey.14 In the painting, a serpentine road invites viewers to insert themselves as memorial travellers to the Vimy Ridge. The Gold Stripe reproduced this work (1919; figure 5.4) on a full-page colour plate, along with a lengthy caption: “This picture is an exceptionally fine portrayal of the famous Vimy Ridge. It shows in the foreground the ruined Cathedral of Ablaine [sic] St Nazaire. To the left is the Lorette Ridge. The stubs of trees mark the banks of the Souchez River and road. Souchez Village, at the junction, was razed to the ground. The white markings on the ridge portray the location of trenches and dugouts occupied by the Canadians prior to the eventful battle for the Ridge in which the Canadians gained for themselves undying glory by its capture, April 9th, 1917.” 15 Although she made many variant paintings of this scene, the original reproduced in 1919 in The Gold Stripe is lost today, and so it is unclear what concrete textual information Hamilton’s painting offers about these battle markers. The paragraph-long caption in The Gold Stripe suggests a reinsertion of

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5.4 Mary Riter Hamilton, Vimy Ridge Taken by Canadians April 1917 in War 1914–1918, 1919, oil on paper, current

location unknown; reproduced in The Gold Stripe 3, December 1919, colour plate facing, 1. Mary Riter Hamilton Collection, MLCRC, Toronto.

the soldiers’ own witnessing and interpretation, thereby blurring the boundaries between Hamilton’s authorship and the publication’s editorializing for purposes of circulation. The Vimy Ridge veteran, presumably managing editor Alex Paton himself, knows what these mysterious white markings are and decodes them for readers unfamiliar with the site. It’s also likely that he provided descriptive information to the newspaper where the titles and descriptions were first printed. He believes that more than winning a piece of land, the Canadians won “undying glory,” which was one of the ways veterans justified what the war cost them. For many Canadians, these past events had symbolically brought their nation together, even as the war quite literally tore them apart – and the remembrance of those events solidified the bond.16 In Hamilton’s series, the ruin of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire symbolizes the gateway for a nation of mourners who would be united by retracing past events.

In the Valley of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire

However, many canvases also emphasize a transnational perspective. Her oil on plywood entitled Ruined Cathedral of Saint Nazaire (1919),17 which she donated to the War Amps and which is permanently housed at the association’s national headquarters in Ottawa, relegates the Vimy Ridge to the sideline, while foregrounding the ruin of the Lorette Ridge, the site of pilgrimages and cemeteries. Specifically, the cross in the right foreground is a French cross, with its distinctive cockade, shifting the focus to memorializing lost lives across national boundaries, similar to her point in the painting at Villers-au-Bois (see figure 4.5). This cross is highly politicized: during the restoration of this painting in 1965, the year Canada adopted the Maple Leaf as its national flag, the small French cross was actually removed, and reinstated only in 2019.18 This use of the war as nation-building narrative has been contested in Canada. The military men who had endorsed Hamilton, including Lieutenant-Colonel Cyrus Peck, were keen to have Vimy centrally remembered for the national triumph it connoted and had a high stake in its representation.19 For others, the transmutation of the bloodshed of the war into a myth of the nation’s maturation is fraught with humanitarian and ideological concerns. Hamilton’s approach bridged this chasm: fiercely patriotic as she eulogized the dead Canadian soldiers, she was also relentless in exposing the human cost of war. She desired her work to circulate widely for the benefit of the disabled soldiers, even as most works belie a discourse of glory. Thus, at the foot of the Vimy Ridge, she evolved a visual idiom that ultimately bridges the paradox of her project through a democratic spirit of mourning. Painted on the crest in the immediate neighbourhood of the Pimple, Looking Over Vimy Ridge From La Folie Farm (1919) was a tour de force in re-seeing the war in the post-Armistice context. At La Folie Farm, where fighting had been intense, she has the viewer contemplate the water-filled craters and creeks at their feet, never letting them forget what an uncleaned battlefield looks like. From this position, she has her viewer scan the west: the Zouave Valley, the Souchez Valley, and Ablain-Saint-Nazaire Church, where Canadians had lived and where she now had her hut. Yet the effect is very different from a normal panorama (contrasting with figure 5.1).20 Stylistically, the painting provides telescoping effects, or a so-called reverse perspective that was popular in the Renaissance and in Christian iconography: objects close by look unrealistically small, while far-away objects like the Souchez sugar refinery canisters to the right or the tall church ruin of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire appear overly large. In other words, Hamilton brings herself and the viewer closer to the landscape, using observation and documentation as a post-conflict viewing tool that allows a re-seeing of the war. In contrast to the timelessness of Allward’s monument, Hamilton’s urgency and immediacy, as concretized in her loose gestural paintings of the shell holes at her feet, insists on making the viewer see the desolation

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5.5 Mary Riter Hamilton, Looking Over Vimy Ridge From La Folie Farm, 1919, oil on canvas. Theresa Thomas

Collection, Logan Lake, BC.

and the price of war. This tension between the epochal and quotidian, the banal and the metaphysical, fuels Hamilton’s visual narratives. Travelling the damaged, cobblestoned Ablain-Souchez road that the Canadian soldiers had travelled before her in 1917 on their way into battle, she now performed her eulogy for the soldiers of Canada. She painted landscape cenotaphs, surrogate tombs for the unknown fallen soldiers of the Vimy Ridge, as exemplified in her large oil on plywood Ruined Cathedral of Ablaine [sic] St Nazaire (1919),21 depicting the shimmering church floating with a dreamy Surrealist effect, and in the large oil on wooden board Untitled Painting of Church Ruins (Ablain St Nazaire) (n.d.; figure 5.6). The latter, water damaged and

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5.6 Mary Riter Hamilton, Untitled Painting of Church Ruins (Ablain St Nazaire), n.d. [1919], oil on board, 45.7 × 58.4 cm.

Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, BC. Photograph by MLCRC (Jean-Paul Boudreau), September 2012.

unfinished, she kept for herself, later willing it to her family. The goal she achieved in these works was “not to transcend grief, but to transcend the physical distance from the remains of the fallen,” a goal articulated by historian Claudia Siebrecht in her study “Imagining the Absent Dead.” 22 While Siebrecht explored the work of German women artists during the war who used Expressionist techniques to invoke and mourn lost bodies at the home front, Hamilton turned to the battlefield in search of novel solutions to the ontological problem of mourning without a body. In Ruined Cathedral of Ablaine [sic] St Nazaire, the long spindly shadow of a dead tree travelling down the highway curates the absence of live movement in the still landscape, and

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the sprawling ruin and unpeopled huts evoke the missing and the dead in visual testimonials that gain strength in the manner of Whitman’s “When Lilac Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” his famous elegy on the violent death of Abraham Lincoln. Her lyrical focus on the sunlit huts around the church and curation of shadows down the road is equivalent to Whitman’s “coffin that passes through lanes and streets.” 23 Thus she performs a burial and eulogy, decorating the burial chamber with her paintings. These memorializing paintings are able to communicate where words cannot, helping overcome the verbal silence surrounding death. She also accompanied the burials to the cemetery, as seen in Cemetery, Zouave Valley, Vimy Ridge (n.d.; ca. 1919),24 located at the northwestern flank of the Vimy Ridge, which held the graves from the British army’s foiled plan to capture the ridge in May 1916 and those from the Canadians’ successful battle on 9 April 1917,25 and Cabaret Rouge Cemetery (1919; figure 5.7),26 depicting a large cemetery at the Arras-Souchez road, which ran south along the Vimy Ridge’s western flank, both cemeteries still in place today. Selecting a finer brush for the graves themselves, she carefully marked each cross in the foreground of the first painting, close-cropping the cemetery to the right to zoom in on a front line of six crosses, thereby individualizing the human cost of war. Here, the poppies sprouting among the crosses of the war cemetery parallel Whitman’s sprig of lilac.27 However, Cabaret Rouge Cemetery is different in that it is one of the rare works in which Hamilton painted groups of gravediggers at work. Arranged counter-clockwise in the painting, the work begins on the left with the search, continues with the exhumation of remains in the left foreground, and culminates with the reburial in the cemetery in the centre. Highlighting affective synchronicity, the workers’ blue uniform pants mirror the sky and the Vimy Ridge. Their undershirts echo the white of the crosses and the ruins of the Ablain-Saint-Nazaire Church in the distance. This haunting rendering invites comparison with official war artist Frederick Varley’s stark gravedigging scene, the title of which demands, manifesto-like, For What? (1917–19).28 By presenting the gravediggers as central figures, both works counter the war’s cold industrialism and the war art tradition that makes them a taboo subject. However, where Varley accuses, driven by a counter-memorial impulse to deny that the sacrifice had any deeper meaning, Hamilton insists on the need for ritual, curating the care for the dead body, however difficult that might be, into the landscape. While Varley’s anger is forceful, Hamilton’s Bartleby-like refusal to forget the dead, hoping to retrieve and mourn each life, develops a subversive power of its own. “For the testimonial process to take place,” as Dori Laub writes about such processes of witnessing, “there needs to be a bonding, the intimate and total presence of an other – in the position of one who hears.” 29 By

5.7 Mary Riter Hamilton, Cabaret Rouge Cemetery, 1919, oil on canvas, 50.80 × 53.34 cm. Mae Riter Pankiw

Collection, Miami, Manitoba.

5.8 Mary Riter Hamilton, Shell Hole, 1919, oil, 43.7 × 56.5 cm. The War Amps of Canada; on permanent loan to the

Museum of the Royal Westminster Regiment, New Westminster, BC. Photograph by MLCRC (Nick Vani), 2014.

In the Valley of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire

providing that “total presence” to those silenced by the war, Hamilton’s grieving immersion breaks new ground in shaping the visual elegy in an effort to help others cope with the sheer enormity of loss. During the time Hamilton stayed at Ablain-Saint-Nazaire and trekked the surrounding fields, the conditions at the Vimy Ridge were exceedingly horrific as far as war work and the retrieval of bodies were concerned. LieutenantColonel Bovey had written to the Ministry of Overseas Military Forces of Canada advocating that they allow “extra rates of pay for the personnel of the Canadian War Graves Detachment [for] the unpleasant work.”30 The prolonged and unseasonably cool temperatures had slowed the process of decomposition. Whereas the Canadian cleanup crews at the Somme had found clean bones, they were now shocked to discover remnants of flesh and bone – humanity literally disintegrating before their eyes. Difficult to suppress, these memories could flood body and mind decades later, in episodes of what psychologists call “forward telescoping,” which is when traumatic events appear to witnesses as if they happened yesterday.31 They can come flashing back intrusively, sometimes prompted by a particular smell or sight. Thus, even the postwar battlefield had a way of eroding normalcy and putting intense psychological pressure on its witnesses. Among only a few shell-hole scenes in her collection (such as her small-sized Shell Hole [n.d.], and A Shell Hole – Misty Morning [n.d.], which appear to have been painted in Flanders), Hamilton’s mid-sized oil on board Shell Hole (1919; figure 5.8) shows a hole about four feet deep, like a grave, and, above it, a French cross adorned with a tricolour rosette called a cockade and a faded wreath. The title and the artificially pale yellows and seafoam green of the earth surrounding the grave alert us to the grisly shock that she later relayed to journalist Frederick Falla, who in 1922 reported it in a feature, “Dauntless Canadian Woman”: “There were incidents, too, not calculated to soothe a woman’s nerves, such as finding that one had been working for hours in a shellhole with a body in it.” 32 This gruesome end-of-day discovery just inches from where she had been engrossed in her work created a memory-image that Hamilton would continue to replay months and years later. Had she discovered a skeletonized body or was she painting near a body deposited there by the war grave workers? Doused with strong and poisonous disinfectant to keep vermin away, such body bags were regularly stored in shell holes before burial could take place. Hamilton’s horrific experience is akin to accounts of soldiers taking shelter from attacks in shell holes and finding themselves lying beside a dead comrade in a closed space.33 This dreaded situation could drive a soldier over the edge. Likewise for Hamilton, especially in her isolation, this was the trauma of the battlefield, the inevitable sightings of the abject body – experiences whose details she muted when talking with interviewers.

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Perhaps not coincidentally, the same day that Lieutenant-Colonel Bovey pleaded for appropriate remuneration for the stressed war grave workers at the Vimy Ridge, he finally responded to Hamilton’s letter – with unfortunate news: she would continue to be without transportation since there was none available. Referring her to the closest military support in the Vimy Ridge district, Bovey wrote: “Major Piper is now in charge of Canadian War Graves Detachment at Neuville St Vaast and if you want to communicate with me you do so through him.” 34 Regardless of Bovey’s disappointing news, Hamilton chose to stay on at Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, where the opportunities for painting untouched war scenes were plentiful – a trade-off compensating for her self-imposed isolation and cumulative stress. When the pressure became too tense, she reminded herself of her goal, as she did in a letter to Rosalind Young. “The end of July I shall send off my work to the ‘Gold Stripe’ and no doubt will be in need of a rest for the work is so ‘intense’ owing to the nature of it.” 35 Her experience in Ablain-Saint-Nazaire raises questions about the short- and long-term effects of not only her living in the squalor of the battlefields but also her witnessing of exhumation and burial. n Halfway between the razed town of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire and the Vimy Ridge was a prisoner-of-war camp, a large compound surrounded by barbed wire and secured by armed guards. In her book Violence Against Prisoners of War in the First World War, Heather Jones states that in the spring of 1919, France held nearly 400,000 German prisoners, while an additional 320,000 were in British hands.36 Prisoners were often seen as part of reparation and were relegated to isolated areas, often with poor facilities. Latrines were pits that were supposed to be disinfected each day, but often were not. Showers were supposed to be taken once a week, and rivers were often used as a natural water source; however, with bodies still buried in the rivers of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, it is unclear how this could occur. Military law forbade contact between civilians and prisoners, and the prisoners were strictly segregated, as Hamilton depicted in her tension-filled oil on board, Front Line in France (Prisoner of War Camp) (1919; figure 5.9). In this powerful work, the bottom three-quarters represents a tumultuous front line of war in strident purple, blue, and yellow, while the top quarter shows the prisoners’ camp with row upon row of white bell tents and Armstrong huts. The second work renders the same scene from closer by. It captures large camouflaged tents in a nearPointillist technique from a vantage point that has the viewer hidden behind large pieces of iron and other structures, as if sneaking up on the POW site from

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5.9 Mary Riter Hamilton, Front Line in France (Prisoner of War Camp), 1919, oil, 43.8 × 56.5 cm. The War Amps of

Canada; on permanent loan to the Museum of the Royal Westminster Regiment, New Westminster, BC, 51-1-5. Photograph by MLCRC (Scott Sparrow), October 2019.

behind – peering at the rows upon rows of bell tents whose entrances are open. Seeking knowledge and access, Hamilton also painted the guards (see figure 5.12) and evidently earned their trust because, even though a civilian, she gained access to the compound. The paintings and drawings she later delivered to The Gold Stripe tell the story of other remarkable observations: Prisoner of War Camp, Prisoners of War Salvaging on Oppy Front, Prisoners of War at Work, Prisoners of War Camp, and Guard Room, P.O.W. Camp.37 Sadly, except for the last painting, a crayon drawing that she turned into an etching (see figure 5.12), all four artworks listed in The Gold Stripe have disappeared. However, the titles suggest that she observed

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5.10 Mary Riter Hamilton,

Polish Prisoner of War Taken by French 1914–18, pastel, 35 × 28 cm (with frame 43 × 35 cm). Fred Johnson Collection, Thunder Bay, Ontario.

the prisoners repairing roads, salvaging materials, or searching battlefields for corpses to exhume – all the while supervised by armed guards. Their tasks also included locating shells and defusing them, jobs with high rates of accidental death. One pastel drawing, Polish Prisoner of War Taken by French 1914–18 (n.d.; figure 5.10), not listed above, recently surfaced in an online sale and found a new home in Thunder Bay, Ontario. It depicts a young soldier wearing a regimental cap and an ill-fitting greatcoat, with a collar badge in white and red – the colours of the Polish flag. His wide-eyed expression seems slightly shell-shocked and distanced; smoke rises on the left, and perhaps Hamilton gave him a packet of cigarettes as a gift for posing. Despite the propagandistic title that presents him as a French trophy,38 Hamilton sought to make a connection with her subjects by documenting their human need for interaction with the outside world.

In the Valley of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire

5.11 Mary Riter Hamilton painting on the outskirts of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, 1919, photograph.

Reproduced in Frederick G. Falla, “Dauntless Canadian Woman Tells of Grim Experience while Painting the Nightmare Land of the Somme,” The Charlotte Observer, 22 October 1922, 14. Library and Archives Canada.

Indeed, a remarkable photograph shows Hamilton painting the prisoners of war. Cutting into the photograph from right to left are the rails of the narrow-gauge railway built by the Canadian Railway Troops, which transported supplies and soldiers during the war. Dressed in simple dark-grey uniforms, the German prisoners look mostly curious and friendly, as do the guards. As these former enemy soldiers engage with the artist, they become humanized by the same burning need for outside interaction as Hamilton herself feels in her frequent yearning for letters from her friends in Canada.39 Frederick Falla’s caption in his 1922 article reads: “A group of German prisoners – one on the right disguised in a gas mask – sitting for their portrait to Mrs Hamilton on the outskirts of Ablain-St Nazaire.” 40 Meanwhile, Military Kitchen, Guarding the German Prison Camp (1919),41 an etching made by engraving metal with a needle (see discussion in chapter 7), shows a sparse room with a dirt floor and open fire where the guards cooked their lunch. Some seven months after the Armistice, the long-awaited peace would soon return these soldiers home. As Hamilton later told a journalist, while the three weary guards were waiting for the expected demobilization, they contemplated the fate of their old collie dog. Rather than leave their faithful pal

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5.12 Mary Riter Hamilton, Military Kitchen, Guarding the German Prison Camp, 1919, etching with drypoint,

24.1 × 30.8 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-216, Copy negative C-008479.

uncared for, they planned to shoot him and give him a soldier’s burial.42 In her etching, the dog lies on the ground, a triangular beam of light highlighting the dog’s face, recalling Rembrandt’s dramatic triangular beam of light that envelops Jesus Christ on the cross in his famous etching The Three Crosses (1653).43 Wartime brutality was indiscriminate and all lives equally disposable, whereas the transition period asserts new rights for humans and non-humans, as does this print. While on the battlefield she made no mention of adopting a dog, a photograph taken just weeks later in her new hut at Écurie Wood Camp shows a grown Border Collie lounging in front of the door.

In the Valley of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire

n Seven months after the Armistice, on 28 June, as the world looked toward Paris and the signing of the peace treaty in the Palace of Versailles, Hamilton memorialized the event by painting at the Lorette Ridge, today the site of France’s largest war cemetery. She tells the story through her titles: Awaiting the signing of Peace on Lorrette [sic] Ridge (1919), an oil painting, and Awaiting the signing of Peace (1919), a crayon drawing, both featured in her list of submissions to The Gold Stripe, though their location is unknown today.44 On the night of peace, Sunday, 29 June, rain blasted through the valley,45 filling the shell holes with water. In her oil on plywood Notre Dame de Lorette, Lorette Ridge (1919), the stormy weather acts as a correlative for the new era. Made of corrugated metal, the soldier-made shrine of the Virgin Mary stands off-centre at mid-distance. It looks structurally vulnerable, and one of the three man-made wooden crosses doubles as a support structure. She signed the work in the bottom left corner, underneath the barbed-wire fencing, revealing the barriers and obstacles standing between her and the shrine on her journey through this sea of mud. So important was this haunted work that she made two almost-identical paintings, one donated to Library and Archives Canada in 1926 (figure 5.13a), the other to Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Arras in 1929 (figure 5.13b). Hamilton’s hard-earned isolation was also broken by a first pilgrimage that brought people to Ablain-Saint-Nazaire for one day. Her oil on plywood The First Pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Lorette after the War of 1914–1918 (1920; figure 5.14) was painted a year later, presumably from a sketch drawn in 1919 when the event took place and Hamilton was in the area. The painting depicts a throng of dark-dressed women with children advancing under dark umbrellas on an overcast day toward the white ruins of the Ablain-Saint-Nazaire Church. In looking at this work, it is easy to imagine that their witnessing of destruction and mortality would be handed down through generations for decades to come: retold at weddings, christenings, firesides, and all manner of family gatherings. This was the first of several processions in France and Flanders that she would record during her expedition. Set in the war wilderness, First Pilgrimage has the ethos of an outdoor Methodist revival camp, the church ruins of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire serving as an open-air temple of sorts, the outdoor space becoming a place of renewal in the wilderness. This same pattern marks Hamilton’s paintings in Flanders, as seen in her oils Dedication of a War Monument at Hooghe (1919)46 and the finely honed First Celebration at Zillebeke after the War (1920).47 While the Marian focus of many of her works recalls the Catholic faith of the Zimmermans, her focus on experiential faith and community action in the wilderness recalls the Methodism of her childhood, which placed

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5.13a (facing page, top) Mary Riter Hamilton, Notre

5.13b (facing page, bottom) Mary Riter Hamilton,

Dame de Lorette, Lorette Ridge, 1919, oil on plywood,

Le Plateau de Notre Dame de Lorette, 1919, oil on wood,

45.9 × 59.3 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc.

46.1 × 59.2 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Arras, France.

No. 1988-180-16, Copy negative C-008475.

value on witnessing, meaning that the members of the congregation identify community needs and follow the call to action publicly. Literally meaning “wandering,” a “pilgrimage” typically involves some physical hardship, which makes it a fitting metaphor for Hamilton’s entire expedition, as she mostly travelled on foot, with the mud and dust covering her shoes and skin, and occasionally even her canvas. With the old monarchies, religious hierarchies, and colonial empires beginning to unravel worldwide, the signing of the Treaty of Versailles inaugurated a cautionary postwar realism in art. The conservative artistic return to order – the rappel à l’ordre – would reject the pre-war avant-garde art movements, such as Futurism, that had hailed the coming of war in paintings and poems and manifestos. Even Picasso tempered his Cubism with a new classicism in the post-armistice years. When confronted with the wreckage of war, the loss and displacement of people, Hamilton countered postwar nihilism with interfaith symbols – the sun, the earth, the cross, and the Virgin – revivifying pre-war values. n On 15 July, the British War Graves Camp near Ablain-Saint-Nazaire relocated to Écurie in the southern section of the Vimy Ridge.48 With her deadline imminent, Hamilton stayed behind in her hut to finish her paintings, now more isolated than ever. When she was running out of money and unable to purchase food, she recorded a first blip of darkness in her journey. In fact, of all the challenges she experienced that year, this was the only one she emphatically called out in later letters while downplaying or entirely ignoring other emergencies. Her letter to Taylor, written on 29 July, provides clues: Dear Mr Taylor, I wrote you last from Camblain l’Abbe, and it was, as usual, a request for money. On the 15th, I received a notice that 620 francs had been placed to my credit – I presume this is from you, but I have had no word so far from you since I saw you in Victoria. This money will not last long, in fact, it is almost gone already, and part “tied up” in the mail owing to

5.14 Mary Riter Hamilton,

The First Pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Lorette after the War of 1914–1918, 1920, oil on plywood, 45.7 × 58.6 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-77, Copy negative C-133633.

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a registered letter going astray. It is quite terrible to be without money in the devastated area, as one is absolutely without any help. When I got down to ten American dollars (that no one wanted) I had to walk ten miles to get to a station in order to take the train to Headquarters … While it is splendid to be [at Ablain-Saint-Nazaire], it is quite impossible to live for long in this area – owing to food and other facilities. Col. Bovey, who is in charge of Canadians in France, advised me to move back where there were still a few Canadians left, so when I return in a few days, it will only be for a short time, until I get my things together. 49

Caught between her determination to continue her journey and her lack of material support, she had reached a first crisis. When she had no more money for food, she walked from Ablain-Saint-Nazaire to the train station of Arras, a distance of fifteen kilometres (just under ten miles); however, once in Arras, her despondency deepened when she discovered that there was no mail from Canada waiting for her.50 In the four and a half months since her departure from Victoria, she had not received any communication from Hart. Chronically short of money, she subsisted among the poorest of the refugees of northern France. Later, in 1921, she would reveal to Hart: “I have a perfect horror of being without money as I was in 1919.” 51 And so, in Arras, revealing the emergency she felt herself to be in, she took an extraordinary measure: she took the train to “Headquarters” – that is, to the Canadian Section HQ in Wimereux, 120 kilometres northwest of Arras, where she told Lieutenant-Colonel Bovey about her hermit existence, seeking advice and help. One assumes that in talking with Bovey, she was able to organize the transport of her paintings to the Arras railway station, since from there she travelled to Paris with her artwork in tow. It is remarkable that despite the stress and chaos of living at Ablain-SaintNazaire, Hamilton delivered twenty-seven finished artworks to The Gold Stripe by their late-July deadline, which testifies to the fierce priority of her art to which she consistently sacrificed other, more primary, needs, such as food, clothing, comfort, and companionship. Despite her poverty, and the squalor in which the paintings were made, Hamilton spared no expense in shipping her paintings via the American Railway Express Company. Relieved and elated to have safely delivered her first shipment of paintings to Paris, she enjoyed a few days’ reprieve from her hardships and stress, and the bundle of letters handed to her by the bank clerk added to her ebullience. She was also able to replenish her funds at the Banque Nationale, where she found two long-awaited letters from Hart. While Hart’s letters are lost, Hamilton’s effusive letter of thanks, written on the stationery of Canada’s commissioner general at 17 and 19 Boulevard des Capucines, gives free rein to her joy:

In the Valley of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire

July 29 [1919] My dearest Mrs Hart Thank you so much for your two letters. I realy [sic] had concluded that I must “fight” this thing out alone for I have not had a line from anyone in Victoria since I left until I got your letters. You see it takes a whole month for a letter to reach you and a month for it to come to me. I am enclosing the cards as you request. Thank you a Thousand. Yes ten thousand times. It will make me feel better though if I do not use the money as I will know I am not stranded as I have been I have much to tell you but I suppose got to feel that no one cared so haven’t written to anyone since I moved from the Canadian Club at Camblain l’Abbé. I have been having a very very interesting but an almost impossible sort of a life off by my self among a few french pesants [sic] living just at the foot of Vimy in the destroyed Village (that once was) of Ablain. I will not write about it today but shall write you again. I simply had to come in here as my money got lost in the mail and I am sending off some or all of my work to Canada am afraid of loosing [sic] it as they steal everything. No one has any regard for anothers [sic] property. Am returning in a few days. Lots of love to you all always your Mary Hamilton. P.S. I wonder if you received the two parcels I sent you from Camblain l’Abbé[.] One was a German helmet and water bottle the other was a very large German shell. Let me know if you received them I sent them about the same time as my last letter. I hope your Soldier has returned.52

In her scrawling cursive, she overflows with words of gratitude and compassion for Hart, her relief evident. Suddenly feeling the companionship that she had missed for weeks, Hamilton empathizes with Hart’s longing for the return of her husband, a military doctor still overseas.53 Despite her unshakable sense of purpose, there is also insecurity and wounded pride; because she had not received letters, she had concluded that Hart had not written, excluding other possibilities. There is an underside to her spontaneity and quick decisionmaking that prevented methodical planning and communication. Yet the exuberance of hearing from her friend is a heart-stirring confession of her need for friendship, beyond the monetary support it entailed. In this universal hunger for companionship, she reveals her vulnerability and the pain of her isolation. The correspondence also expresses a rhythm of high exuberance, energy, and excitability alternating with anxiety, financial instability, and turmoil resulting from the pressures of her expedition. Meanwhile in Victoria, Margaret Hart had transferred $225 ($3,250 in 2020) in late June and another $150 in July ($2,165 in 2020),54 while the newspapers in Vancouver and Victoria kept their readers abreast of Hamilton’s whereabouts with brief updates. But like the reports on the soldiers’ successes and losses

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during the war, newspapers at home captured Hamilton’s expedition at a delay with sometimes cruelly ironic effects. When on 5 July The Daily Colonist reported that “a motorcar and orderly have been placed at her disposal,” 55 they inadvertently made Hamilton’s expedition sound like the leisurely trip of a lady painter through an exotic countryside, when in fact by this time, she had been struggling for over three weeks with mobility, and being isolated and often hungry in the war desert of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire. By the time the newspapers reported her travels to Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, she was already elsewhere – set upon landscapes unreported until several weeks later or not reported at all. By the time the people of Victoria could marvel at Hamilton’s work in northern France, her attention was focused on the southern district of the Vimy Ridge. By early August, following the advice of Bovey, Hamilton decided to move to Écurie at the southern boundary of the Ridge (an area known as the Labyrinth) where Canadian soldiers were stationed, continuing the serpentine course that would also take her through the Somme (see chapter 9). Although this would not happen for another decade, it is noteworthy that her work and harsh life in Ablain-Saint-Nazaire did not go unnoticed. In December 1930, LieutenantColonel Bovey gave Mary Riter Hamilton high praise in an address to the Women’s Club of Victoria: “‘I don’t think anyone ever did a more patriotic job. Her work is worthy to go down into history,’ he commented after describing her hermit existence in the deserted war area and the very great hardships which she had to endure while making her pictorial record of the scenes of devastation amidst which the Canadians had spent the hard years between 1914 and 1918.” 56

A mong the Gr avedigger s in Écur ie [Mary Riter Hamilton’s] paintings not only offer the evidence of war, but also unabashedly affirm emotional responses to the spectacle of destruction. M A RGUERI T E HEL MER S, 20 09 1

In early August, after three months in the field (six weeks at Camblain-l’Abbé and six weeks at Ablain-Saint-Nazaire), Hamilton relocated from the northern to the southern district of the Vimy Ridge. As the military car groaned through ruts and shell holes, small handwritten wooden sign posts shot up by the side of the road. écurie, said one. écurie wood, read another, the sign pointing to a hamlet reduced to gashes and scars, as she depicts this dismal scene in her oil Ecurie Wood (1919).2 But after the bitter isolation in Ablain, the sight of a few electricity poles and companions from Canada must have been a welcome familiarity. There was room enough at the camp for Hamilton, her paintings, and the dog that would become her constant companion in Écurie. The Canadian War Graves Detachment confirmed her new home in their nominal roll on the first day of August: “Attached. Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton. Artist.” In turn, Hamilton included the gravediggers of Écurie Wood Camp in her collection, painting their eye-catching huts in her oil Canadian War Graves Detachment – A 2 Group H[ead]quarter (1919; figure 6.2), and their staff leader, Sergeant F.W. Webley, an engineer from Toronto whose name is listed with Hamilton’s on the nominal roll, in her pastel drawing Portrait Sketch of a Canadian Sergeant Still in Ecurie, France (n.d.; figure 6.3). Hailing from Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg, the occupants of these painted huts can be seen in a grainy archival photograph (figure 6.4) looking stoic, their legs splayed and hands

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6.1 Mary Riter Hamilton

attachment record. Nominal Roll of Canadian War Graves Detachment (Technical Branch), 1 August 1919, 1. Library and Archives Canada, Demobilization Canadian Section GHQ 1st Echelon.

interlocked in soldierly poses. In the centre sits Lieutenant Albert Louis Jarché, a war graves photographer (and brother of renowned James Jarché, a pioneer of modern press photography).3 Also sitting in the front row is the gravediggers’ mascot: a small Collie dog with a blaze of white fur and distinct racoon-like eyes, who would soon make friends with Hamilton and her dog. Judging by the snapshots Hamilton willed to her family (figures 6.5 and 6.6), these dogs were her close companions; one photo is inscribed on the back: “Mary Hamilton on her daily tour passing the famous ecurie Wood accompanied by her faithful protector.” 4 Another photograph (figure 6.7) depicts her corrugated movable hut with a uniformed man and her dog, but also reveals the shadow of her distinctive hat in the bottom right-hand corner, suggesting that she was the photographer recording her new home – likely with a camera borrowed from the war graves photographer.5 Beyond the companionship, one also senses the need for a guard dog in contemplating the depictions of her new hut, looking dark and fearsome, with the towering remnants of the sugar refinery behind – a spooky site.6 Hamilton was now living in a notorious area known as the “Labyrinth,” an underground city of German caves and tunnels that had spawned Canadian counter-tunnels all the way south to Arras and east to the front line. Here the war had been fought in electrically lit subways that lay eight metres deep,

6.2 Mary Riter Hamilton,

Canadian War Graves Detachment – A 2 Group H[ead]quarter, 1919, oil, 43.7 × 56.5 cm. The War Amps of Canada; on permanent loan to the Museum of the Royal Westminster Regiment, New Westminster, BC, 51-1-11. Photograph by MLCRC (Scott Sparrow), October 2019.

6.4 “Canadian War Graves Detachment – The Arras Group,”

[1919], photograph reproduced in “Heroes’ Graves in the War Zone,” The Veteran 3, no. 4, March 1920, 17. 6.3 Mary Riter Hamilton, Portrait Sketch of a

Canadian Sergeant Still in Ecurie, France, n.d. [ca. 1919], pastel, 55.88 × 40.64 cm. Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, BC. Photograph by MLCRC (Jean-Paul Boudreau), September 2012.

6.5 Mary Riter Hamilton painting in Écurie with

6.6 Mary Riter Hamilton with her dog on the way to work

her hut in the background, n.d. [late 1919–early

in the Écurie Woods, photograph detail. H.R. Gunning’s

1920], photograph. Ronald T. Riter Collection,

inscription on verso dated January 1920. Ronald T. Riter

Vancouver, BC.

Collection, Vancouver, BC.

6.7 “The corrugated

movable hut, in which Mrs Hamilton lived while in France – exceedingly cold in winter and very warm in summer,” 1919, photograph reproduced in “A Generous Gift to Canada,” Echoes, March 1928, 11. Library and Archives Canada/OCLC 3339442.

Among the Gravediggers in Écurie

equipped with telephone cables, water mains, beds, and washrooms. This marvel of technological advancement became the graveyard of tens of thousands of Allied soldiers and over 40,000 Germans, many of them blown up in mining explosions. This gruesome history was visible in mass graves and monstrous craters, where massive cleanups kept the gravediggers busy. Écurie Wood Camp was surrounded by at least seven other camps in a one-kilometre radius, all attempting to deal with the dead and missing. Since June, the Canadian War Graves Headquarters was located in nearby Neuville-Saint-Vaast, where forty labourers managed the exhumation and burial of the great many soldiers who had perished in their efforts to reclaim the infamous German subterranean village. From the middle of July to early October, these teams would retrieve, exhume, and rebury 1,560 bodies in the area, bringing their grand total in the Vimy Ridge District to 10,996.7 At Écurie, Hamilton built new relationships with places and people to piece together the fragments of war with ever more powerful rhetorical tools. Revealing herself to be a modern artist-reporter, or modern-day Goya, she recorded and warned of the consequences of war with an evolving perspective and style. It is worth recalling that many of the gravediggers were of the same generation as Hamilton’s stillborn son, who would have been in his mid- to late twenties during the war. Had he lived, his mother would have fretted for his well-being during the conflict; she might have lost him, or suffered through the pain of seeing him maimed. Had her husband Charles lived, he might well have defied the age limit and insisted on going to war, encountering the same fate. Her widowed and motherless status gave her enormous freedom to undertake her expedition without family restrictions. Later, she would explain the motivation for her expedition in terms that are surprisingly disarming and all-encompassing, writing: “It is hardly necessary to say – certainly it is unnecessary to say it to those who knew this area at that time – that the work was done for love; for the love of those who had fought and fallen ‘in Flanders’ fields’; for love – and, if it might be, to help perpetuate the memory of the sacrifice, and to comfort, if possible, some who were bereft.” 8 The deep affect that inspired these words reminds of Susan Stewart’s observation that in elegies there is often another, more concealed, death behind the primary figure or figures being mourned.9 This is certainly the case for Hamilton, whose many losses – husband and son, but also sisters, brother, father, and mother, as well as her niece Matilda Green, a nurse in Étables – help to explain her remarkably unsparing dedication to bearing witness to death on a mass scale. At Écurie, living close to the Lens-Arras road that bisected this southern sector, Hamilton used pigment to capture loss, her method recalling the Blaue Reiter Group in Munich who championed the spiritual connotations of colours.

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6.8 Mary Riter

Hamilton, Cemetery of the 7th Battalion, British Columbia, Canada, 1919, oil on canvas, 50.0 × 65.0 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-70, Copy negative C-132006.

She later told reporters that she ground her own colours in the field, perhaps out of necessity, not being able to afford commercial colours,10 but even so this practice emphasizes pigment as an embodied medium that was channelled through the artist’s hands. Using oil to transcend what Susan Sontag critiqued as the limits of “camera-mediated knowledge of war,” 11 Hamilton’s work nonetheless also reflects her engagement with photography as a prime documentary medium. Grappling with the unspeakable magnitude of death, Hamilton made some inspired war paintings from her Écurie base, as seen in works such as Cemetery of the 7th Battalion, British Columbia, Canada (1919; figure 6.8), dedicated to seventy-one soldiers from British Columbia who had died together at the Vimy Ridge assault;12 Battlefields from Vimy Ridge, Lens-Arras Road (1919; figure 6.9), where the crosses stand row on row at the border of two contrasting visual fields; and Memorial for the Second Canadian Division in a Mine Crater Near Neuville St Vaast (ca. 1920; figure 6.10), visualizing the shocking decimation of an entire regiment. Each of these works, painted in proximity to the Lens-Arras road, conveys the tension of these losses. The first work depicts a storm blowing out and the sun giving the rows of crosses a halo-like aureole, creating a moment of Symbolist transfiguration; the blaze is also slightly reminiscent of Jacob Riis’s photographic flash in lighting up the darkest slums to encourage social reform. In the second work, the top half is blanketed in calming spiritual blue with the

6.9 Mary Riter

Hamilton, Battlefields from Vimy Ridge, LensArras Road, 1919, oil on plywood, 45.8 × 58.2 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988180-75, Copy negative C-104794.

6.10 Mary Riter

Hamilton, Memorial for the Second Canadian Division in a Mine Crater near Neuville St Vaast, ca. 1920, oil on canvas, 54.0 × 64.7 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-69, Copy negative C-105221.

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Mont-Saint-Éloi on the horizon, while the bottom field writhes in turmoil, with yellow, orange, and salmon breaking through the cracks of brown trench with a yearning for life and vivid emotions. The third work, painted on the Thelus-Neuville-St-Vaast road, depicts an alarmingly deep hole whose cutaway view gives viewers a startling open perspective whereas normally graves are closed. The walls are trowelled on the canvas with Hamilton’s palette knife, scaling the entire range of purple, from lightest lavender to deep purple, as the giant cavity speaks of absence and mourning of a large group. All three works recall Lisa Gitelman’s argument that documenting is “an epistemic practice: the kind of knowing that is all wrapped up with showing, and showing wrapped with knowing.” 13 Aware of its aesthetic construction, her practice insists on the blurring of boundaries between documentary and aesthetic, as well as insisting on an affective semiotic that compels the viewer. In these richly aesthetic works, Hamilton refutes the anti-aesthetic discourse in discussions of war and atrocity, while also countering the formalist abstraction of traditional Modernism associated with pure form. Many of her works vibrate with emotion, her visual rhetoric geared toward mobilizing viewer engagement, using a variety of strategies. For example, she effectively uses evidentiary materials as found objects, importing them into the aesthetic work with minimal modifications. In Memorial for the Second Canadian Division, Hamilton stages the official memorializing script – “rip second division canada, 1917” – as a found object arousing empathy, in contrast to David Milne’s watercolour Montreal Crater, Vimy Ridge, which he painted on 27 May 1919 as “a visual vacuum, where once there had been land,” as Sarah Milroy aptly describes.14 A second example of visual rhetoric is seen in her falling cross, as when gravity pulls one of the crosses into the collapsing trench in Battlefields from Vimy Ridge, making viewers witnesses to an act of disappearance as another’s identity and memory are drawn into the darkness of the trench – in other words, into the realm of forgetting. Seen earlier in Front Line in France (see figure 5.9), painted at Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, this leaning cross unnerves – indeed, startles – the viewer into remembrance by individualizing loss even in painting mass death. A key semiotic unit in her visual grammar of witnessing, this singular leaning cross is seen also in The Lens-Arras Road (1919), Gun Emplacements, Farbus Wood, Vimy Ridge (1919; see figure 6.13), and Evening on the Belgian Front (n.d.; see E.3). A third rhetorical device emphatically appeals to the viewer by inscribing witnesses in the painting, including observers, documenting their responses. Some are intent on seeing the scene for themselves, as witnessed in Memorial for the Second Canadian Division where a family of shadowed mourners stands on the left rim, leaning in. In contrast, others turn their backs on the scene, as depicted in Loose [sic] Mine Crater, Hill 70, France (1920; see figure 9.11).

Among the Gravediggers in Écurie

Such diverse inscriptions of observers’ responses to a disaster draw attention to what Chute calls “the triangulated ethics of vision,” as she writes: “it makes us aware of ourselves as viewers, looking and looking at others looking upon [death].” 15 This point of looking at destruction and pain without turning away takes on a gendered dimension in Remains of the Church at Neuville St Vaast (n.d.; ca. 1919), an undated oil on wove paper. In the painting, stone debris separates the cross-generational family of mourners, suggesting an absent son who would complete the line. Standing still and composed, the mother faces the ruin while her husband turns away from the scene, lost amid the mountain of rubble behind him. Faced with the demise of the old familiar man-made world, the man balks at the ruin and the destroyed town that he is perhaps too old to begin reconstructing. The customary masculine world of the pre-war era is in shambles, with traditional heroism denied in an industrial war and women pushing forward into long-established masculine roles. The painting also has a biographical touch, Hamilton emphasizing female steadfastness in ways that reflect her personal experience of her father’s deflated flamboyancy and her mother’s quiet strength in the face of tragedy. One day, when a new grave appeared in her own backyard, as depicted in her oil Sugar Refinery at Écurie (1919; figure 6.11). Hamilton configured into the painting her own role as a self-conscious observer of these sightings. Applying the photographic effect from the earlier snapshot of her hut, her own silhouette ghosts the edge of the canvas, the shadow of an arm dispensing thick paint colours with a palette knife. Shocking custard-yellow earth covers the grave, the colour resonating with emotion, while the cross rising tall on the right insistently demands engagement from the viewer. As the proximity of the cross threatens to overwhelm the viewer, this painting makes visible the uncanny nature of Hamilton’s experience in mediating between the living and the dead, recalling her poignant retrospective words regarding her expedition: “Yes, it was like living in a graveyard.” 16 These same sentiments resonate through her oil French Trenches, Ecurie, Graveyard of Many Heroes (1920),17 which depicts her own footprints in thick mud intermingling with those of the war grave workers. n With her episodic and necessarily fragmented images of gravesites, destruction, and war structures along the Lens-Arras road, Hamilton was painting the war in its discursive fragmentation, in a journey of starts and stops, each site a startling and shocking sighting. Hillary Chute discusses the double role of the artist-journalist, who both accumulates observed moments, what Hamilton calls impressions, and pictures multiple perspectives, as Hamilton

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6.11 Mary Riter Hamilton, Sugar

Refinery at Ecurie, 1919, oil on board, 43.7 × 56.5 cm. The War Amps of Canada; on permanent loan to the Museum of the Royal Westminster Regiment, New Westminster, BC, 51-1-7. Photograph by MLCRC (Scott Sparrow), November 2019.

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does by painting variants of the same site. Following the Lens-Arras road – today officially known as the Rue des Artilleurs Canadiens, like a picaresque novel, her episodic work is strung together by the road but with constant patterns of interruptions, a halting of narrative progress that ultimately denies a sense of historical linearity. Paul Gough discusses the avenue of war as an important motif in war art, which during the early years of the war was typically depicted in a coherent, linear line to evoke the war’s forward momentum before the war became entrenched and static.18 In her aquatint The Lens-Arras Road (1919; see figure 7.1), the road’s linearity, bisecting the dead landscape diagonally, returns as commemorative momentum, and yet the observer stands to the side. Again and again, the traveller’s progress is being halted by haunting scenes of destruction as seen in The Cross Roads, Vimy Ridge (1919; figure 6.12),19 on the western side of the Vimy Ridge; Gun Emplacements, Farbus Wood, Vimy Ridge (1919; figure 6.13); and Petit Vimy and Vimy Village from the Lens-Arras Road (1919; figure 6.14), on the eastern side, overlooking the valley where houses stand intact, symbolizing the return of civic life in the distance, from which viewers remain ultimately separated. Each composition encourages a dwelling rather than a propelling movement,20 using techniques that are as modern as they are affective. In the first painting, The Cross Roads, Vimy Ridge, tight cropping has transformed the road into the shape of a Greek cross, each arm of almost equal length, lying flat on the ground. Visual details like the concrete bunker and the cross are replicated multiple times, like a Steinian repetition refusing a linear progression. Her memorable oil Farbus Wood, depicting a location occupied by German gunners in 1917, makes the viewer a retrospective witness to the clash. In the foreground, the slicing of the earth by a large shell – though it’s unclear which side lobbed this shell – is emphasized by the short, upright strokes of the teal grass in the foreground blunted by the long and deep horizontal brush strokes in tan and purple conveying the shell’s ripping into the earth, a movement so aggressive that it pushes the land and destabilizes the white cross behind. In the third work, the striking blankness of the cream-ivory road recalls the missing soldiers. Their haunting absence is presented in tension with the simultaneous but spatially separate attempt to return to a normal postwar civic life. Ultimately, these perspectives from the Lens-Arras road present a metaphor for Hamilton’s own journey and development as a war painter, of travelling and halting, the road both asserted for its forward propulsion but also deeply fragmented into sites and sightings of destruction. Each work presents an impression, a singular moment in the accretion of moments of artistic witnessing of death and destruction on the road traversing the Vimy Ridge.

6.12 Mary Riter Hamilton, The Cross Roads, Vimy Ridge, 1919, oil on canvas, 46.1 × 55.0 cm. Library and Archives

Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-163, Copy negative C-105606.

6.13 Mary Riter Hamilton, Gun Emplacements, Farbus Wood, Vimy Ridge, 1919, oil on wove paper, 3.4 × 43.5 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-147, Copy negative C-101321.

6.14 Mary Riter Hamilton, Petit Vimy and Vimy Village from the Lens-Arras Road, 1919, oil on canvas, 46.1 × 55.3 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-91, Copy negative C-105607.

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n As the tragedy of war unfolds in mass graves along the LensArras road, Hamilton made the most disturbing and controversial work of her entire collection.21 Her oil painting Tragedy of War in Dear Old Battered France (ca. 1919) is based on a destroyed Calvary located within walking distance from Écurie Wood Camp, halfway south toward Arras on the Lens-Arras road in the Sainte-Catherine graveyard, where thirty-one Canadians lay buried. The painting depicts an enormous wooden cross rising tall, from which hang the remains of a crucified body: a human head and partial torso, with its single arm pinned to the cross by a nail through the palm, a severed leg tinged with redbrown. Coincidentally, on 31 August 1919, while Hamilton was busy painting in France, Victoria’s The Daily Colonist – a newspaper keenly following Hamilton’s story – revived the apocryphal legend of a Canadian soldier having been crucified during the war. This inflammatory tale, which first sprang up during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, was pervasive. It mattered little that German army officials and Canadian military leaders alike investigated and confirmed the falsity of the claims. The legend thrived and provided fodder for pernicious war propaganda,22 even inspiring The Prussian Cur (1918), a silent war-propaganda film made in Hollywood and rife with virulent anti-German sentiments. After the war, the story was given new life in the media through the testimonies of traumatized returning soldiers, such as Lieutenant T. Edward Jones of Victoria: “I saw the first Canadian they crucified,” said he. “… The bosche captured this poor fellow and pinned him to a barn door. They ran one of their saw-like bayonets through his stomach and they pinned his wrists and legs with Ross rifle Canadian bayonets.” “Do you suppose he was alive when they crucified him” he was asked. “I certainly do, because when we got him he was still bleeding.”23

Hamilton’s Tragedy of War provokes precisely by setting a trap for gullible viewers. When Hamilton’s crucifixion scene was exhibited in Ottawa during the 1990s, the work prompted almost immediate associations with this infamous tale, along with more skeptical queries from a journalist as to what exactly Mary Riter Hamilton may have seen.24 Notwithstanding the skepticism, more recently, Young and McKinnon reproduced Tragedy of War in their book to reassert the atrocious tale of a soldier’s crucifixion; as they write: “Hamilton’s treatment of the cross and the soldier’s remains ‘portrays horror in its full reality.’” 25 Except that Hamilton did not depict “soldier’s remains” but a Calvary with the crucified Christ figure grotesquely dismembered by shells. This becomes evident by comparing Tragedy of War with period photographs, specifically,

6.15 Mary Riter Hamilton,

Tragedy of War in Dear Old Battered France, [ca. 1919], oil on plywood, 46.1 × 25.9 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-104, Copy negative C-104241.

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6.16 Le Christ du

Cimetière, Ste Catherine, [ca. 1914–18], postcard, 14.9 × 8.6 cm. Éditions Ismael, Paris.

a war postcard inscribed “Sainte-Catherine/Le Christ du Cimetière,” showing the exact same scene. Indeed, in her painting, the earth is golden and red – the colours of divinity in religious art. The title’s reference to Goya’s The Disasters of War,26 which depicts torture and murder committed by the French against the Spanish during the Napoleonic wars (1803–15), is apt since Goya intentionally confronts the viewer with atrocity, just as Hamilton does in this work. Just as Goya’s work enacts the “horrified witness,” 27 Hamilton’s includes a shadow of a human head at the bottom, standing in as an observer of the grotesque scene. This encoding of vision as a theme should alert viewers to their subjective position when viewing disturbing images. Joey Brooke Jakob

Among the Gravediggers in Écurie

6.17 Francisco

de Goya, Plate 15 from Los desastres de la Guerra [The Disasters of War], “And there is no help,” 1810, etching, drypoint, 14 × 16.7 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

terms “commemorative violence” images, such as professional war photography albums that show bones, skulls, rib cages, and bodies decomposing in muck, too inflammatory to circulate publicly.28 Hamilton did not include Tragedy of War in her September shipment of paintings; perhaps it was not yet finished, but more likely she did not want to risk re-traumatizing the wounded soldiers. It is worth noting that even in 1926, when the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (iode) made plans to exhibit Hamilton’s work, Lady Drummond suggested that “it would be well to guard against anything in the announcement … that might … revive … war feelings.” 29 It’s not clear if Tragedy of War was ever exhibited during Hamilton’s lifetime. Given its similarity to an existing postcard, Tragedy of War also raises questions regarding Hamilton’s composition method. Maria Tippett first revealed that Frederick Varley used a photograph to depict a group of bodies in one of his haunting canvases, The Sunken Road (1919),30 as opposed to directly witnessing the actual scene. Laura Brandon has further argued that “his war paintings function as composites of a sort. They are amalgams of scenes the artist personally witnessed and of available photographs documenting events that he might not have seen, but that complemented what he observed.” 31 Brandon

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documents the prevalence of this practice among war artists; Group of Seven members Frank Johnston and Arthur Lismer followed the same method.32 The question is: how, if at all, did Mary Riter Hamilton use photographs in her painting practice? In the sparse battlefield materials she left behind, there is only one uncaptioned photograph showing two graves that she painted in Among the Ruins, Arras (1919).33 The painting shows the bombed-out brick wall of a house in Arras, behind which stands a temporary shelter made of corrugated metal. In the centre are two white crosses. Whereas the photograph (taken in portrait configuration) shows both white crosses against the bombed-out wall, Hamilton’s painting (in landscape configuration) includes an additional small French cross to the left, consistent with her wish to honour all dead but also placing her at the scene, as opposed to painting from a postcard. Her method here appears to be less suggestive of a composite mode of painting than an awareness of oil painting as a documentary medium and artistic form in its own right. In her letters home, she consistently highlights the importance of her “tramp” across the battlefields to the most meaningful locations and the difficulties in getting there; being there as a witness constituted a central element of her practice. Witnessing the events in space and time, she records her own impressions in order, as Hillary Chute writes about Goya, “to make one aware of oneself as a seeing subject, to make ‘witnessing’ not transparent, but rather a process of encountering presence, however difficult.” 34 n In this process of witnessing, Hamilton’s compassionate and humanitarian eye extended to the living as well: to the wider community of everyone doing their part to exhume the dead and clean up and restore the destroyed countryside. While many soldiers had already returned home, thousands of Australian, Canadian, and American soldiers remained on the battlefields along with Chinese, Muslim, Indian, and North-African (“Zouave”) servicemen. On the battlefields of France and Belgium, Hamilton rendered the diversity that would later define Canada, as seen in titles that include A French Soldier (Zouave) (1919), Kasen Havildat [sic] (1919; figure 6.18), and French Colonial Officer (French Soldier) (1919).35 The Zouave soldier, who came from French North Africa, exhibits a braided cord – a fourragère – that he wears at the shoulder, a French award bestowed upon the entire 4th Regiment to which he belonged. A Havildar (or havaldar), which is the rank of sergeant in the Indian and Pakistani military, carries the whip of the cavalry. Hamilton paid tribute to these soldiers and to other postwar workers by giving them a central place in her portrait collection. Tippett reports on portraiture as being an important genre among the

Among the Gravediggers in Écurie

6.18 Mary Riter Hamilton, Kasen

Havildat [sic], Troop in France (The Havildat [sic]), 1919, pastel on brown paper, 50.8 × 30.48 cm. Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, BC.

official war commissions; it enshrined national war heroes, who were typically Caucasian men in uniform directing a firm gaze at the viewer, such as Canadian commander General Arthur Currie and war prime minister Robert Borden. Beaverbrook also commissioned portraits of the families of commanders. Hamilton, however, put this genre to a different use, aiming to identify new unsung heroes. News of Hamilton’s portraiture must have travelled fast since she quickly found herself with an abundance of sitters – many of them with brown skin,

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proud posture, and handsome faces wanting a place in the war’s visual chronicle alongside their fair-skinned comrades. Among her portraits is an Indian non-commissioned officer with impressive military decorations. Two chevrons on his arm and a red sash across his torso identify this soldier as a lance corporal. While most Allied troops had been sent home, this soldier was among those who facilitated the restoration of the battlefields. Aware of the virulent racism in the army, Hamilton titled this portrait A British Soldier.36 The title protested the systemic colonialism and racism that operated in the military, often denying the Indian soldiers equal status, which her title emphasizes. While ordinary soldiers are typically depersonalized and represented in relation to their function in the war, Hamilton by contrast represents these men’s personalities. These portraits – which have never been formally exhibited but should be – express Hamilton’s engaged concern with diversity by painting sitters from different racial backgrounds, from North Africa and South Asia, in the same heroic style as North-American subjects. At the same time, however, these works collectively expose her glaring neglect to include the Chinese war workers, her most immediate neighbours (as discussed further below). More generally, the portraits she painted and drew at Écurie reveal something about her relationship with these soldiers and the melancholic romance that she cultivated with the gravediggers. Certainly not a family in the traditional sense, were Hamilton and the gravediggers dwelling in past nostalgia and future possibility? Were they perhaps remembering together what family used to be, and what it could eventually become? Little did the subjects know that they were helping to shape what would become, a century later, a large and enduring Canadian collection. n In September, Mary Riter Hamilton arrived in Paris with the colours of the fall and thirty-nine completed paintings ready to ship to the veterans in Vancouver. In Paris, over the spring and summer, the hunt for war traitors had fuelled the spread of paranoia, xenophobia, and hatred, with the print media stoking the fire. The entire world seemed to be gripped by a state of unrest, with a civil war in Russia, uprisings in the Baltic countries, racial riots in North America, and the Amritsar massacre in Punjab. The postwar air was thick with emotions and fears. On 7 September, Hamilton turned fifty-two, an age at which to take stock of the transformation she had undergone. Her body no longer filled out her garments, and she had abandoned her characteristic whimsy in adjusting to the trenches. It was a lean Hamilton who carefully packed the Vimy Ridge paintings into her shipment, including two oils from her friend and former

Among the Gravediggers in Écurie

teacher Claudio Castelucho – perhaps given as a birthday gift – and soon to be exhibited in Vancouver alongside her work.37 Parisian cafés and shops were open, but the price of food was still as exorbitant as the price of pigment. Indeed, many of Hamilton’s uncertainties were material in nature. So tight were her circumstances that even a small mishap, such as a $150 cheque going missing, would wreak havoc for months.38 By August, official war artist David Milne had returned to London and been paid a full salary for his paintings, whereas Hamilton donated her time and talent, consuming her sparse resources to subsidize her expedition. As Falla reports: “Sometimes even the raw materials of a painter’s trade were lacking – in the circumstances, perhaps, a worse catastrophe than the temporary lack of food.” 39 The cost of art supplies had increased by 97 per cent from 1909 to 1919,40 prompting Hamilton to cut back expenses except for the most urgent necessities, struggling to survive on a budget of $100 per month, equal to roughly $1,400 in 2020. Milne had stayed on the battlefields for three and a half months, interspersed with several short visits to London. William Beatty, Maurice Cullen, Frederick Varley, and Charles Simpson (the men sent from Canada by Walker and Brown) served as official war artists for six to eighteen months, yet in fact spent only a fraction of that time in the battlefields. Though exhausted, Hamilton refused to linger in the capital. Under the immense – and admittedly self-imposed – pressure of having to record the traces of war before they disappeared, she hurried back to the battlefields of northern France. n At the same time, in northern France, another shift was underway. In October, the Canadian soldiers at Écurie Wood Camp moved further west to St Pol. But since October was cold, dry, and sunny – ideal for painting41 – Hamilton was determined to stay near the battlefields. She reported to friends in Canada: “You would have enjoyed seeing my hut being moved from the Canadian camp to the Nine Elms camp; 20 Chinamen picked it up just as it stood and carried it over. The Canadians have moved to near St Pol, too far back for me, so as I had permission to move my hut where I liked, I just moved to this camp.” 42 Despite the impressive service they provided for her in carrying her hut, the Chinese labourers remain sadly marginalized not only in Hamilton’s story but also, to this day, in the entire canon of western war history. During the immediate postwar era, these Chinese labourers combed the land for the dead, and later letters make clear Hamilton’s intense awareness and fear of them. Recruited from rural China in 1917 to become war workers in France and Belgium, their number had grown to 140,000 by the end of the war. Jianguo Zhang and Junyong Zhang’s

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Over There: The Pictorial Chronicles of the Chinese Labor Corps (2009) reports that they were branded like animals, with an identification brass ring riveted around their wrist, which required a machine to remove it at contract’s end.43 During the war, they worked on railways and in munitions factories, chopped wood and built plank houses, carried bombs and grenades, but they were not allowed to fight as soldiers, which earned them the Allied soldiers’ contempt. By 1919, many of these workers had already returned to China, while others lived in camps in northern France and Belgium helping with the cleanup, which left many traumatized. Zhang and his collaborator note that the British military was more racist than the French, categorically forbidding local residents from fraternizing with the Chinese.44 Routinely represented as preying on lonely (husbandless) white women, these Chinese labourers were treated like the untouchable Other almost as much as the dead whom they were busy exhuming on behalf of the Allied army. Sadly, the artists painting here, including Milne and Hamilton, appear to have shared the stereotypes, Milne calling them “very vain, big children,” 45 while one of Hamilton’s friends would later relay that she was forced to be alone with “over two hundred Chinese coolies, who were not to be trusted, the man in charge told her.” 46 Absorbed in her work, and presumably not allowed to paint the Chinese labourers and get to know them, she was afraid of them. Research on this group of war workers has only just begun, revealing their marginalization to this day. Dominiek Dendooven, whose comprehensive study includes the much-needed primary personal accounts of Chinese war workers themselves, confirms that locals often linked Chinese workers with a propensity for crime, especially in 1919 when the problem of lawlessness in the former battlefields was heightened.47 Since the battlefields were strewn with grenades and rifles, even people who had never used weapons before had access to them and could learn how to use them, increasing the level of aggression. Moreover, the battlefield’s deathly landscape of decomposing bodies further fuelled “an enhanced tendency toward crime.” 48 Careful not to hold just one racial group responsible, Dendooven’s account does corroborate very real problems with violent crime and lawlessness, especially in 1919, with resulting effects of fear and paranoia. Although Dendooven’s study is focused on the Chinese in Flanders, his conclusions are applicable to the Arras battlefields as well, where crime was particularly high in 1919, with consequential results for Hamilton. As Frederick Falla reports Hamilton’s experience: “Long after the war the country around Arras was infested by bands of prowling hooligans, who have an appalling record of unpunished crime to their credit. Sometimes there were shots in the dark at any chance human mark, and always there was the risk of the painter’s lonely hut being rushed in the night by one of the freebooting gangs bent on deviltry.”49 This passage perfectly describes Hamilton’s life in Écurie, especially

Among the Gravediggers in Écurie

after her move to Nine Elms: available snapshots all show her hut in isolation – a perfect scenario for ruffians, especially after the military had left. Such “close calls,” as she would later call these events, had a lasting effect on Hamilton. One incident, in particular, shook the artist, Falla providing some pertinent details: “a series of explosions on a deserted road just after she had gone by. Knowing that she passed that way at a certain hour, some of the spawn generated in this immense quagmire, saturated with the stagnant horrors of war, had planned, it is probable, if not to blow up at any rate to frighten out of her wits the solitary artist making her way back to her forlorn lodging under the stars.” 50 Even though the culprits who terrorized Hamilton were never identified, Falla, reflecting the era’s racist climate, concluded that war workers from China and Peru must have been involved. Life in Écurie ultimately put her on edge, as revealed in several emotionally charged paintings. In Bleeding France, War: 1914–1918 (1919),51 mist suffocates the destroyed street with chilly indifference. In the sky, an ineffective sun fails to lift the fog, its weak luminosity offering little hope of regeneration. In The First Crop After the War (1919),52 the fall road signals imminent danger. Occupying almost half the painting, the vortex of a dark storm funnels down the shell-shocked street. The new life gestured to by the bright-yellow growth of crops is countered by the atmospheric turbulence and the looming threat of destruction of the first crop. These paintings of the road she travelled reveal enormous stress; the viewer is pulled back into the stark and foreboding imagery. How long would she be able to continue to defy these pressures? The snowfall on 3 November marked the circular nature of Hamilton’s journey at the Vimy Ridge, from her arrival during the spring storms to the winter storms in November. During the assault in 1917, Nine Elms had been taken in the middle of a snowstorm, which was, in the words of soldier Clifford Wells, “a wonderful picture, and I wish I could paint or describe it adequately.” 53 Wells did not survive the war and that task fell to Hamilton, who trekked to the scene of the battle and painted, in oil, Nine Elms, France (1919),54 along with her oil on paper Nine Elms British Camp, France (1919)55 and her oil on board Kitchen at Nine Elms Camp, Ecurie (n.d.; figure 6.19). Unlike the more dynamic diagonal lines in many of her other paintings, the horizontal line of crosses in the first work indicates a standstill, marking also her own halting. It is repeated in the second work, the rendering of her Nine Elms camp, where a purple path leads to her hut, a frozen stream that bisects the picture – once again creating a horizontal line. The outdoor scenes are complemented by the kitchen scene in the third work, which depicts a few remaining war grave workers waiting for demobilization, which was impending. When the local Headquarter “B” Group of war grave workers did receive orders to demobilize, they invited Hamilton for a farewell dinner at Christmas. With roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and

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Brussels sprouts, followed by a dessert of plum pudding and rum sauce, the spread was exceptional compared with usual daily rations. There were also luxuries like wine, beer, and cigarettes. As she sat down at the full table with a ravenous look, one wonders if she joked with the men – as she would in a letter shortly thereafter – that her appetite was not very artistic. It’s easy to imagine the air full of smoke, Hamilton inhaling the masculine scent of the evening that would linger on her clothes for days to come. While the men were returning home, she stayed on in the field. She kept the dinner menu as a memento of the evening.56 At the same time, in British Columbia, Hamilton’s work had begun to circulate through the December issue of The Gold Stripe, coinciding with the postwar commemorative phase of coming to terms with the trauma of 60,000 war dead and war exhaustion. While “Canada in 1919 was tired of war,” as Jonathan Vance documents, veterans also showed a continued fascination with the front.57 They were keenly interested in Hamilton’s paintings, which The Gold Stripe had beautifully reproduced in colour: Vimy Ridge Taken by Canadians April 1917 in War 1914–1918 (see figure 5.4) soliciting patriotism, the poppies in Trench on Vimy Ridge proclaiming regeneration, and Sugar Refinery at Ecurie (see figure 6.11) startling viewers with its vivid depiction of a fresh grave.58 Also, at the Industrial Building in New Westminster,59 veterans arrived on crutches, or with a jacket sleeve pinned up, while others tried to control or camouflage twitches as they viewed Hamilton’s battlefield paintings, a selection of which were exhibited here. The review in The Daily Colonist, which listed all the paintings shipped in late July, was impressively detailed: “All the [twenty-seven] paintings make the same appeal by their convincing evidence of direct contact with the actual terrain delineated. They show us what is the aspect of the trenches and ‘No Man’s Land,’ what shellholes are like, what nature is like after years of regular volcanic treatment, and the actual appearance of the slagheaps and blasted ruins that are all that is left of churches and other buildings of architectural and historical interest, and of dwellings, shops and industrial plants.”60 The Gold Stripe article, to its credit, acknowledged the immersive quality of Hamilton’s art, noting that her pieces were not studio pictures made from sketches but were painted directly on site in the battlefields. A photograph shows Mary Riter Hamilton painting in the war wilderness of Souchez Valley. “Mrs Hamilton has had real hardships and privations to undergo, and difficulties to overcome, not unlike those met by the soldiers in traversing the same ground. Frequently, in order to reach points to which no transport was available, the artist was compelled to walk many miles, and to go without proper food and shelter. But it is to the fact that they were painted directly from nature that these pictures owe their peculiar value.”61 The editorial continues: “No camera could tell the story told by these oil paintings, which are

Among the Gravediggers in Écurie

6.19 Mary Riter Hamilton, Kitchen at Nine Elms Camp, Ecurie, n.d., oil on board, 49.53 ×

62.87 cm (with frame 58.42 × 72.39 cm). Uno Langmann Limited Fine Art, Vancouver, BC.

transcripts of both the color and form of places like Vimy Ridge.” 62 At the same time, Hamilton’s own interest in and engagement of photographic technologies is on display in a drawing featured in The Gold Stripe: a bell tent’s interior filled with photographic tools and a long tube that looks like a telescope – the tools of the technical branch of the gravediggers.63 One can imagine Hamilton’s thrill in holding the December 1919 issue of The Gold Stripe in her hand, an issue she would later proudly share with interviewers, and which no doubt helped her through the winter. Her life in the trenches conflicted with the gender norms of the era and, even more so, with the new conservative push toward returning women to traditional domestic roles in efforts to consolidate pre-war gender relations and a “return to order.” Since she was an unofficial war artist, Hamilton had largely escaped control, and the official Canadian war art establishment had no power to call her back. As she had written Paton: “It is mighty cold and uncomfortable, but I intend [on] remaining until I finish the work I came here to do.” 64

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A War Studio in A r r as

Strange to say I also [live] in an attic alas mine was so full of shell holes the people in the house said it was not fit for a dog to live in but after doing a little reconstruction on my own, I have made it a place where I can do my work in. M A R Y RI T ER H A MILTON, 1920 1

Both war memorials and the restored landscape were visual prompts to post-war attitudes. War monuments focused the commemoration of wartime martial heroism and sacrifice on precise points in the landscape. The restored countryside became a diffused panoramic statement of the reassertion of civil order and normality by the replacement of warscapes by the vernacular artefacts of domesticity and community – and the obliteration of the memory of war. BRI A N S. O SBORNE, “IN T HE SH A DO W S OF MONUMEN T S,” 20 01 2

In his essay, “In the Shadows of Monuments: The British League for the Reconstruction of the Devastated Areas of France,” Brian S. Osborne elaborates on postwar reconstructive activities in the régions dévastées, noting that the primary goal of reconstruction projects was to “transform the ‘shadowed ground’ into a place of human congress and community.” 3 Osborne cites Mary Riter Hamilton’s expedition with its stated “ambition to make a collection of paintings of … the landscapes [in France] with which the history of Canada will be bound up for generations” 4 to argue for a novel approach to constructing the nation in art, explaining that “in Canada, these warscapes indirectly influenced the production of a category of iconic national landscapes.” 5 Specifically, he suggests that Hamilton’s dual focus on the parallel themes of destruction and

A War Studio in Arras

reconstruction was key. As curator Angela Davis writes of Hamilton’s paintings in her exhibition catalogue essay: “In her depictions of cemeteries the dead have been buried and the flowers are beginning to grow. The only figures in her pictures are soldiers waiting to return home, women making homes in disused army huts and workers clearing the battlefields.” 6 Yet despite the novelty and importance of Hamilton’s reconstruction themes, these concerns have remained largely unrepresented in the scholarship of war art,7 in part because, as Catherine Speck writes, these works depict “the aftermath, including the unglamorous process of cleaning up and repairing the natural and built environment. These are aspects of war that do not figure in images of ‘national’ moments.”8 Given Hamilton’s transgressive battlefield presence, her focus on reconstruction, while evident from the beginning of her expedition, becomes a more dominant theme in her second year in the destroyed regions, especially with her focus on Arras and Ypres (see chapter 8). As she continues on with no respite, to what extent do these works of reconstruction become a way of warding off trauma – her own and the entire era’s? The transition from Écurie to Arras – a walkable distance – was gradual, with frequent daytrips to Arras before Hamilton would eventually move to the destroyed city itself. By 1919, a new tourist bureau had sprung up here to organize battlefield trips, and by late 1919, the Canadian war grave workers had opened an information bureau for Canadian family members searching for loved ones on the battlefields (the same mourners Hamilton had painted at Neuville-SaintVaast and other sites). In Arras, postcards were being marketed to tourists and pilgrims, and while Hamilton avoided a tourist-centred focus, she took note of the new commercial opportunities that might benefit the Amputation Club; a few months earlier, in September 1919, she had submitted a poster proposal to The Gold Stripe – evidence of how important the wide circulation of her work was to her artistic visioning. Sometime in late 1919, and within astoundingly primitive circumstances, Hamilton experimented artistically by turning to print-making and engraving, which she had first practised in Winnipeg before her first trip to Europe in 1901. Etching, which involved engraving detailed scenes into metal plates before inking and printing, continued a tradition made famous by Rembrandt and Goya. It had potential as a lucrative art since it allowed the artist to make multiple original prints from a single metal plate and could thus contribute to Hamilton’s goal of providing the veterans with a source of income. With plates in hand, they could reproduce and sell original prints and posters, thus also advancing a second goal of making Hamilton’s memorial both aesthetically and pragmatically valuable. Etching was also a time-consuming process requiring special tools, metal plates, and chemicals, and one wonders if she leaned on

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7.1 (facing page, top) Mary Riter Hamilton, The

7.2 (facing page, bottom) Mary Riter Hamilton, Interior

Lens-Arras Road, 1919, coloured aquatint on paper

German Pill Box Blanchy [sic], n.d., coloured etching

or cardboard, 16.8 × 23.3 cm. Library and Archives

on cardboard, 12.6 × 17.8 cm. Library and Archives

Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-221, Copy negative

Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-219, Copy negative

C-104400.

C-104401.

the technical branch of the war grave workers in Arras to secure some of the tools and chemicals. At her workbench, either in her own primitive shack, or in Arras, she turned oils into etchings, using contrast to relive and amplify various moods. In Military Kitchen, Guarding the German Prison Camp (1919; see figure 5.12), an etching and drypoint, a sense of weariness dominates in her dark and haunting lines. In The Lens-Arras Road (1919; figure 7.1), a coloured aquatint, the cross appears even more ghostly than in her oil. Claustrophobia is amplified in Interior German Pill Box Blanchy [sic] (n.d.; figure 7.2), of which she made different prints: a black and white (today in the Canadian War Museum) and a coloured (held by Library and Archives Canada).9 This handful of surviving prints is evidence not only of her flexibility with mediums but also her serious commitment to translate her paintings into a profitable source of income for the veterans by producing prints and reproductions. These plans would change unexpectedly, and today these etching plates are lost. The destroyed town of Arras itself would feature in at least twenty-one artworks, including several evocative oil panoramas made from the high vantage point of the citadel southwest of Arras, as seen in Panorama of Arras (n.d.; figure 7.3) and Arras 1919 (1919),10 which became the basis for the undated handcoloured aquatint etching, Panorama of Arras (n.d., ca. 1919).11 With huts clustering low in the foreground in each work and the silhouette of the Hôtel de Ville on the horizon, the city centre looks like an ash cloud of rubble. For today’s viewer, that may recall images of New York’s Ground Zero after the fall of the twin towers; for Hamilton’s viewers, it commemorated the Canadian soldiers who had been stationed here in 1917 and again in 1918, for the Hundred Days Offensive, as well as the French civilians. The second work shows extensive barbed wire in the foreground, a sure sign that she painted it soon after the war’s end. The hand-tinted aquatint etching intensifies the tension between white rubble in the centre and the dark army shacks and trees around the perimeter in the foreground. Far from evoking existential hopelessness, however, the many huts and tents and the partial screen of tall trees with and without leafage speaks of new life emerging on the periphery of the city. During the war, the destruction of the churches of Arras had provided no end of war propaganda images of Arras as the dead city – the cadaver city. Yet

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7.3 Mary Riter Hamilton, Panorama of Arras, n.d., oil on commercial canvas board, 26.9 × 33.8 cm. Library and

Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-6, Copy negative C-101319.

Hamilton’s focus was different, as seen in her masterful Interior of a Destroyed Church, Arras (1919), which I have been able to identify as Église Saint Géry d’Arras, a small nineteenth-century Neo-Gothic church on the Rue Vivier in the former residential district. Despite the destruction wrought by shells in October 1914 and January 1916, in the painting, the Gothic architecture strives heavenward, and the foliage outside the glassless windows imaginatively supplies a magnificent artifice of stained glass. Arras means “rainy city,” and Hamilton painted the church interior with a silent drizzle falling through the shell-torn steeple, and with light streaming down from the leaky ceiling and reflecting off the puddles below, blurring inside and outside. Even though the church is flooded, the light and the rain provide a silvery lustre that transcends the

7.4 Mary Riter Hamilton, Interior of a Destroyed Church, Arras, 1919, oil on plywood, 58.4 × 45.7 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-67, Copy negative C-132007.

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destruction with an aura of serenity. This is less a gaze coloured by nostalgia, what Svetlana Boym critiques as “ruinophilia,” 12 than an artistic configuring of the church as a site for the creative production of meaning. Two empty prayer chairs invite contemplation. Using colour and architectural structure, Hamilton infuses the shelled church with hope and transcendence. Indeed, it was a site of hope for her personally. It was at 1 Rue Vivier, overlooking this church, that Hamilton claimed her first war studio in a shelled-out attic sometime in March or April 1920. In early May 1920, she provided updates in one of her longest letters, prompted by a surprise care package she had picked up on a recent trip to Paris. The package was from Ellen Hart, daughter of her dear friend and patron in Victoria. Hamilton effusively thanks Ellen in a whir of rejuvenated euphoria, reporting on the recent changes a full year into her expedition. Arras. May 7 1920 Dearest Ellen Please excuse pencil my ink is finished and unless I get this off today, it may be days before I can write again. I was in Paris the other day and received that box with the Fruit Cake. Thank you so much. You cannot imagine how good it tasted coming from you and your mother home made it. Added to that the fact of it being the first I have had since leaving Canada. You perhaps may begin to realize how much it was appreciated. I am ashamed to tell you just the exact size of the piece I ate when I first opened the box, but it should have been impossible had I been in Canada for I think I would have been ashamed but I eat it without shame for I knew I was truly hungry for Cake, fruit cake, and this cake. I hope you will not think any the less of me for being hungry for real cake. It really doesn’t sound very artistic does it? But you see I know you can keep a secret so I’m not afraid to make confessions! I think the clerk in the Bank was rather disappointed to see me “turn up” for the parcel for I fancy he liked the cake too and had already sampled it before I arrived[.] I really couldn’t blame him you see it was marked fruite [sic] cake and he is Canadian, and I am sure once he tasted it it must have been awfully hard to leave off it and I’m surprised he did. This is all to tell you how much [your fruit cake] was appreciated. Ten thousand thanks dear. How are you getting on in your attic? Strange to say I also [live] in an attic alas mine was so full of shell holes the people in the house said it was not fit for a dog to live in but after doing a little reconstruction on my own, I have made it a place where I can do my work in. My window looks over on a mud bespattered church [St Géri] and a courtyard with a building partly demolished where before the war was a home for old people during the war it was used by the troops and now it is housing familys [sic] many of them if one is to judge from the number of stove pipes one sees sticking out of the windows for the fire law is evidently not in vogue here chimneys are not required. The window serves the

A War Studio in Arras

purpose. There are a lot of little children in the building and several of them know me quiet [sic] well. We hold conversations from our windows. The conversations take the form of waving and throwing kisses. There are many “look outs” from my attic through the roof. The floor is stone tiles and I have a little German trench stove. I’ve only had it up since the weather has turned warm, however, I have learned to be grateful for smal [sic] things. I have also learned to eat what is set before me another trait that is necessary in this part of the world otherwise you are liable not to have anything to eat at all. Sometimes it is not an efford [sic] then there are others where it is an efford [sic], for instance when a dish such as the following comes along: meat, onions, potatoes + prunes all boiled together. It not only tastes a bit funny but it looks “its part” and after getting rid of it one has a feeling of not being quiet [sic] oneself. The family I am with are Refugees from Roclincourt. It consists of father mother two daughters and a son the latter whose name is Leon – lost a leg in the war. He had the military medal and the Croix de guerre. He is working in the Civil service. The father is a plaster [sic] and works all day and every day. One daughter sews, the other washes + the mother helps with the washing and does the house work. The house is a very old one and – whoever planned it did not seem to care how he made out. First he has a door so small [sic] that if you want to go out or in you have to put down everything you are carrying, or else pass by the window all boxes or furniture pass by way of the window. The kitchen is the one room where everything is done and where we eat. In fact it is the only room in the House with exception of two bedrooms and my attic so you can see what a God send this attic is. The street itself is almost as tiny as the door of the House. It is usually filled with garbage and it is wise to hurry along otherwise you are run[ning] the chance of having dirty or clean water empty from the windows thrown over you. You see they live up stairs and it is a lot of trouble to carry their slops down the stairs so they throw them out of the window. A miss is as good as a mile and everyone takes their chance. It is an interesting street just the same and I could admire it immensely if I lived elsewhere – but it takes a strong minded person to live in it and keep up one’s admiration. The drain is very interesting you throw the slops in one end and it runs out into the street. Just what happens after it arrives there I’ve not been able to make out – sometimes it gets stopped, and then there is trouble and the odor is a trifle worse then [sic] usual – I forgot to mention that there are rabbits about ten just under my window! Have you had any more night in such as you wrote of in Jan last? The weather is very fine now and spring seems to be here to stay. Please give my love to your Aunt and tell her that she is often in my thoughts. And now I must close. Thank you again dear Ellen. With much love hoping you are well and happy – Always your friend, Mary Hamilton, PS. I know your eyes are good but you may find the first page or too [sic] a bit dim.13

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7.5 (facing page) Mary Riter Hamilton, Street in Arras,

1923, oil on plywood, 21.6 × 14.0 cm (with frame 29.8 × 22.9 cm), signed “Mary Riter Hamilton, 1923.” Uno Langmann Limited Fine Art, Vancouver, BC. Inscription on verso: “Street in Arras where I lived.”

This colourful letter to Ellen, who was less than half her age, puts the spotlight on Mary Riter Hamilton’s personal side, showing her close up one year into her expedition: famished for a decent meal and familial companionship, but also full of character and humour, displaying her irreverence. While her yearning for food from home is reminiscent of the soldiers’ letters during the war, eating is also linked to embarrassment and displeasure. Her aversion to the meat stew echoes her disgust of food “cooked in some vile fat” in Ablain-Saint-Nazaire,14 drawing attention to the food shortage for both people and cattle in postwar France and Europe. While her description of herself as an artist who binges on cake evidences her earthy, even coarse, humour as a way of coping, one is reminded that food also speaks to themes of gender and self-restriction.15 Another theme of the letter is her connection with children, who also feature in her paintings. But the most colourful thread of her discussion is the elaborate story of her construction of a makeshift studio in a shelled-out attic in Arras. One imagines her – hair held back with a band, dog at her side – busy with a hammer in one hand and a board of wood in the other as she covered the worst shell holes in the attic with salvaged materials, including “the little German trench stove” that she must have discovered in some dugout. Being resourceful, perhaps she enlisted the plasterer in the house for a few touch-ups. Anticipating the German rubble woman, Trümmerfrau, often depicted wielding a shovel or pick to clear the wreckage of Germany after the Second World War, Hamilton’s letter shows the slow blurring of boundaries between herself as an observer (who stands apart from the action) and a participant (whose position came to resemble the impoverished and homeless refugees living in military huts). Although the interior scene of her Arras studio is lost today,16 she did paint the street and house at least twice: in Old Street in Arras (1919)17 and again in oil four years later in Street in Arras (1923; figure 7.5). Both depict a claustrophobically narrow street with potholes, the mud-bespattered church of her letter rising at the top of the canvas, its steeple shattered during the war, and, in the first, blank house walls, as if she had to rush off without finishing it. In her second painting, her vantage point includes an attic dormer – where previously were many shell holes in the roof, or what she drolly called “look outs” in her letter. She inscribed on the back of this painting: “Street in Arras where I lived.”

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Transition is the theme of many of the works Hamilton painted among the ruins of Arras, as seen in her oil on canvas board The Grand Place Arras (n.d.; figure 7.6), her oil on wood panel Old Spanish Architecture in Ruins, Arras (1920), her oil on wove paper Ruins of Arras (n.d.), and her oil on wood panel Grande Place, Arras (1919; figure 7.7). In these works, the old Flemish and Spanish architecture of houses and churches stand in a transitional state between destruction and repair, often juxtaposed with temporary military huts that serve as shelters. The first work is painted from beneath the arcades, capturing the damaged facades of the Flemish round-roofed architecture, dramatizing also her vantage point in painting from underneath the danger zone. In the second work, a bombed-out centre facade flanked by colourful colonnades overlooks refugee shacks, while in the third, Ruins of Arras, her thick impasto layers of paint, applied with a palette knife, pull together the ruins of the Hôtel de Ville, the shacks built in front of them, and a lone refugee to the right.18 This treatment creates a semiotic unit, revealing the ongoing interplay of past and present, destruction and renewal. In this way, Hamilton documents a creative relationship with the ruins, as Boym evokes their potential: “New buildings and installations neither destroy the past nor rebuild it; rather, the architect or the artist co-creates with the remainders of history, collaborates with modern ruins, redefines their functions, both utilitarian and poetic.” 19 Just so, Hamilton’s work focuses the viewer’s attention on the dynamic lives of civilians alongside the dilapidated spaces they occupy. Perhaps the most complex is the fourth painting, Grande Place, Arras, which shows the returning refugees, and which she inscribed on the back in a bilingual scrawl: “The ‘Grand’ Place No. 8, Arrass [sic]/first feté after the armistric [sic] – 1914–1918.” A patchwork of huts in burnt-orange, tan, and bright-ultramarine enlivens shades of grey ruins at mid-distance. To the left, a group of returning refugees are headed to the Grandes Arcades, where the old Flemish houses and the church stand in a transitional state between destruction and repair. As new civic rituals emerge from the postwar chaos, Hamilton offers an aesthetic echo to these changes wherein from among the dispersal of mostly women there emerges a young girl aged five or six. The girl in the painting is walking toward the right, heading from the damaged arcade to the shack, from the past into the future. Typically ignored in official war representations and histories, this refugee daughter is the heroine of Hamilton’s canvas, placed strategically in the painting’s centre, with the scaffolded ruins towering behind her. Born into refugee life, the only existence she has ever known is that of precarity; the empty space that surrounds her suggests social disruption – one that echoes Hamilton’s own experience growing up within a family trying to work their way out of the disaster that befell them when she was just an infant, preoccupying her mother and leaving the youngest to dream up her alternate world in pencil and watercolours.

7.6 Mary Riter Hamilton, The Grand Place Arras, n.d., oil on canvas board, 21.6 × 26.7 cm (with frame 29.2 × 34.0 cm).

Uno Langmann Limited Fine Art, Vancouver, BC.

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7.7 Mary Riter Hamilton, Grande Place, Arras, 1919, oil on wood panel, 13.8 × 22.0 cm. Library and Archives

Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-138, Copy negative C-132018.

Transition is also the theme of scenes of reconstruction and repair as seen in the sequencing of La Petite Place – Arras (1919)20 and of Petite Place, Arras – Market Day (1920),21 which depicts the amazing swelling of the marketplace in the square known today as the Place des Héros. Whereas in 1919 only a couple of stands rose under simple umbrellas offering a few vegetables in an otherwise deserted square, by 1920, tightly stacked awnings fill the right side of the painting. Customers crowd in the centre where the orange, green, and yellow of merchandise flashes on the front table. Hamilton also announced the return of civilian transportation on the Scarpe River in First Boat to Arrive at Arras after the Armistice (1920),22 a scene in which only the distinctively narrow tracks of the light railway to the extreme left testify to the military operations of the town’s recent past. The tattered boat sits off-centre to the left, while in the foreground, the extremely wide body of water curving to the right reflects the white sky, creating a blank slate that invites the viewer to imagine the future. As

A War Studio in Arras

Hamilton’s title implies, this boat is only the first. In painting after painting, she makes viewers look at the lives of refugees and contemplate the changes imposed on them by war. n Most remarkably, while working on the battlefields, Hamilton simultaneously managed to exhibit and circulate her work not once but as an ongoing effort, with showings in both Canada and France, and impressively, she did so with the scantest of resources. In Vancouver, 9 April 1920, Vimy Day, inaugurated a series of packed exhibitions of Hamilton’s work that she could not attend herself. Opening at the Navy League Hall, with the national anthem booming over her canvases, her work was praised by Brigadier-General Victor Odlum, whose unit’s crosses she had painted in Cemetery of the 7th Battalion, British Columbia, Canada (see figure 6.8) and who confirmed that “these scenes were faithfully reproduced.” 23 His men needed no catalogue to recognize the scenes depicted, he said, though the resulting catalogue, produced by the iode, a women’s organization with their own periodical, Echoes, is an immensely helpful record today. At the request of the British Columbia government, Paton then transported sixty paintings to Victoria for a special viewing by Premier John Oliver, his ministers, and members of parliament in the Provincial Library on 20 April.24 A month later, on 10 May, the Island Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria opened an exhibition of some sixty war paintings by Hamilton in its Union Bank headquarters. The lieutenant-governor of British Columbia opened the exhibit, which The Daily Colonist headlined as “Pictures of Vimy” and subtitled: “The Remarkable Collection of Paintings by Mary Riter Hamilton of Now Historic Territory Being Shown Here.” 25 The crooked trenches and sprouting flowers transported soldiers and civilians alike. In these sixty canvases, reviewers saw evidence not only of the painter’s energy and prescience – “they are also unique, as this aspect of the country has gone forever” 26 – but also of innovation in rendering war in art. At least one perceptive reviewer recognized the modernity of her style, noting that previous wars were manifestly painted in studios, with paintings that were imaginative and sensational – “but they were to a great extent unreal.” In contrast, Hamilton’s scenes “convey to us the impressions that those scenes made upon [her].” 27 Ultimately, these paintings afforded viewers with the realization that “the war seems to have developed a style of painting different in many respects from anything with which the world was previously acquainted.” 28 While official war artists made trips to the battlefield typically making sketches that became the basis for larger studio paintings, Hamilton

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truly epitomized this phenomenological approach as a traveller and painter in the aftermath. Her “impressions” were delivered from the battlefield to the exhibition hall. To this day, some have paper stuck on them: needing to transport her work and pressed for time, Hamilton covered still-tacky oil paintings with paper, evidence of the material conditions in which they were made. But despite the critical praise, there was no monetary support offered to the artist nor any willingness to settle the government’s debt for the portraits she had painted. And there was an unexpected change and setback that further elevated the stress and pressure. The sudden end of Hamilton’s relationship with The Gold Stripe, around the time she settled in Arras, must have come as a shocking blow. Just a few months earlier, in its December issue, The Gold Stripe had publicly discussed their plans to commission Hamilton to paint Flanders and the Somme, but then their plans changed. Just how weighty and stressful this episode was for Hamilton can be gleaned from the fact that she did not talk about it until years later. She shared this momentous shift retrospectively with the Canadian Women’s Press Club in Winnipeg in 1926 and with her close and trusted friend W.G.M. Fortune, who repeated it in a letter: “Mrs Hamilton was sent to France by the Amputation Club of Vancouver, but after a little more than a year, she was advised that the Club was in financial difficulties and would not be able to keep her there.” 29 After three successful issues, The Gold Stripe ceased publication, which is not as unusual as it sounds, since high production costs and lack of public funding caused the early demise of many “little magazines” in that era. Also, one assumes that Paton wanted to return to normal life as the publisher of the Point Grey Gazette (now the Vancouver Courier). Later correspondences reveal that Hamilton still considered Paton a friend, and somewhat quixotically never departed from her stated mission to make her collection a selfless gift to the disabled soldiers. Stranded overseas, with her commission and guaranteed circulation of her work suddenly gone, she displayed her usual fortitude and determination and stared down these setbacks with stoicism. As Fortune writes: “Mrs Hamilton kept on at her work at her own expense, and at times had not the bare necessities of life.” 30 Yet with no ties to the veterans group anymore, where would her new freedom take her? As so often in Hamilton’s life and career, when one door closed, another opened: she looked toward new audiences, including those in wartorn France. During that same year, 1920, she would exhibit her work at the Touring Club of Arras – evidence of her tremendous energy not just in painting, which was already all-consuming, but also in organizing her work for public display, which was an enormous and exhausting task. It was at this touring club that French artist Gilbert-Louis Bellan (1868–1951), a French government-commissioned

A War Studio in Arras

artist who had painted La signature du traité de paix de Versailles (1919), saw her work; “he paid to her what she considers a very great compliment – that her work was ‘French.’” 31 Bellan worked on a series of sketches entitled France Devastated and Reborn, and it was he who would later facilitate Hamilton’s connections with the Conseil général de la Somme, which would eventually lead to Hamilton’s prestigious exhibitions in Paris. Moreover, after losing the support of The Gold Stripe, the artist reconnected with Margaret Hart and her sister, Dr Lavinia Green. Hamilton and Hart had lost contact for months (mostly because of mail issues), but the recent flurry of exhibitions of Hamilton’s work in Victoria had prompted Hart to contact Hamilton in the spring of 1920. After the long hiatus, Hamilton received her friend’s letter and responded: Dearest Mrs Hart I hope you will excuse the pencil my ink has disappeared and I have nothing but this to write with and as I want to get this off today if possible I am hoping you will not mind. Thank you so much for your dear letters. I cannot tell you how glad I was to hear from you. I realy [sic] do not know what has happened to your letters that I have not received any since July [1919]. I am deeply troubled to know that you and Mrs Green have been so good as to send me all that money. I cannot think of allowing you to accept my old pictures and never intended otherwise then [sic] that you should choose from the pictures already sent over or await my sending over special ones to you and I am at present doing special ones, but in any case you and Mrs Green must have your choice for you have made it possible with your help for me to do the work: I do not know that I have accomplished anything worthwhile but whatever I have done your help has made it possible. Of course it is unfortunate that the money went astray however that is the past: and now the question is where has it gone to! That is the 150.00 sent in July [1919]. I have just returned from Paris 32 and found your letters with its enclosure from Bank Montreal. I showed it to the Manager of the Banque National 14 Rue Auber and he looked up the records while I was there and said this money had never been received by them. He says if it was addressed just Banque National Paris that there are about six banks by that name and unless it was addressed to 14 Rue Auber it was likely to go to any one of the six. I am writing the manager and will ask him to write me his reply as no doubt that will be more convincing to the Bank Montreal. The unexpected sum I refered [sic] to having received in one of my letters while awaiting the money was five hundred frs and was sent from the G.S[.] [Gold Stripe] it was some money paid in on pictures and certainly was not the 150.00 you sent. I would suggest that as the bank did not get the money to me that you withdraw the $150.00 and send it to me direct in either dollars or English money – in this way I will receive the benefit of exchange which is more then [sic] three times what

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it was in July and will make considerable difference and as no doubt the Bank is at fault, they must be willing to stand by their mistake! … I do hope you are feeling better and I hate you to be in any way worried for my affairs. I think it was dear of you to forward the money, and I am truly grateful. It will come in good now and enable me to go on a bit longer. Though I fear I must give up for a time my heart has given out of air. You see the past year has been a terrible strain and it is telling on me now but it is not to be wondered at for I have been working under hard conditions now for over a year and I realy [sic] cannot go on without a little rest and change in fact I have kept going much too long as it is. Where I shall go for this much needed rest I do not know in any case I will try to stick it a bit longer. With much love to you all and my grateful thanks. Yours as always Mary Hamilton May 14th / Arras 1920 33

This letter provides key insight that departs from Young and McKinnon’s assertion that there was a quasi-formal funding agreement in place between the two women – that Hart was to receive pre-war paintings for her subventions to Hamilton’s journey.34 Hamilton’s letter, in fact, states otherwise. First, Hamilton reaffirms her patronage understanding with Margaret Hart; Hart (and her sister) were to receive battlefield paintings (“never intended otherwise then [sic] that you should choose from the pictures already sent over [i.e., battlefield paintings] or await my sending over special ones to you”) in exchange for the occasional financial support already provided by the two women. Years later, Hamilton would reiterate: “I had no other idea than that you … (and Mrs Green) were to recieve [sic] Battlefield pictures for money sent to France.” 35 Later letters also suggest that there was confusion and miscommunication between Hart and Hamilton. Second, Hamilton confirms receiving a payment of five hundred francs from The Gold Stripe (“money paid in on pictures”) for commissions, a rare and explicit corroboration that the periodical had provided some support, however small. Third, her financial situation was desperate, and she was chasing a lost cheque for $150 that was caught in bureaucratic channels of the postwar banking system. Last, and perhaps most important, for the first time, Hamilton confides to Hart the mental and physical overexertion and heart troubles resulting from the “terrible strain due to hard conditions.” Her statement “my heart has given out of air” carries additional gravitas: the Riter family has a history of dying young due to heart failure. This letter dates her troubles to at least May 1920, coinciding with the break from The Gold Stripe. Nineteenth-century American physician J.M. Da Costa first observed a cardiac arrhythmia, or heart palpitation, among many of the American Civil War

A War Studio in Arras

veterans. He called the condition “Soldier’s Heart,” which today is viewed as a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (shell shock). Although first classified as a medical term in 1915, military doctors often dismissed shell shock and sufferers were treated harshly by the military. More recently, psychologists Cheryl Regehr and her colleagues have investigated how paramedics developing an emotional connection with the individuals they treat can develop symptoms of traumatic stress and post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) over time. These traumatic results, they write, are not the consequence of “multiple deaths in a dramatic incident but rather the death or injury of someone whom the worker contextualized in relationship to others; that is, an individual who died alone, without the support of others; a child who did not benefit from a loving, caring environment; a family devastated by loss; or an individual so alienated that he took his own life.” 36 Thus workers can experience secondary trauma symptoms such as “intrusive imagery, generalized fears, sleep disturbances, a changed worldview, and affective arousal” as a consequence of empathic witnessing of the details of clients’ experiences.37 Hamilton’s earlier letters had noted the tears she shed when viewing the isolated graves; an expatriate herself, she recognized the pain of those dying alone overseas. Neither Hamilton nor doctors at the time fully understood the etiology of stress or trauma, whose pernicious effects are cumulative, accruing in the body invisibly and manifesting over time, not unlike cancer. Later documents emphasize that for Hamilton the “nervous strain [was] even greater [than the physical],” 38 suggesting that the risk of secondary trauma was high for the artist. Yet she wished “to go on a bit longer” despite her health troubles, as she reveals in the same letter to Hart quoted above, making plans to travel to Ypres to paint “special pictures.” Like a post-conflict reporter on assignment, undeterred by health issues and insufficient funds, she carried on. She did not take the time to report how she would get to Flanders or how she would find a bed for the night, but the surviving chronicle of her landscapes in oil and her drawings confirms her presence there. In fact, this was not her first visit. Located some eighty kilometres north of Arras, Ypres required significant travel, but because of its close connection with the fate of Canadians during the war, she had always planned to spend some time there. By the spring of 1920, Mary Riter Hamilton was familiar with Ypres: the city had already become a point of return for her.

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Mar ket among the Ruins of Ypres

Thus for months I may almost be said to have had Ypres from dusk to dawn wholly to myself – not only its ruins, but a new form of life which was beginning to spring out of the tortured soil. HENR Y BECK L E S W IL L S ON, 1919 1

For centuries Ypres, in Flemish Flanders in Belgium, had been worldrenowned for its cloth: far-flung nations clamoured for its fine laces, linens, and wools. All of this changed in 1914 when German soldiers marched through the city on their way to occupy parts of France and Belgium. To prevent them from developing a stronghold so close to the Channel, the British occupied Ypres, with the German army then directing their heavy guns on the city and its surrounding villages. Soon, headlines around the world announced that its iconic Cloth Hall had burned following German bombardment. The war would maintain its violent grip on Ypres for four excruciating years. The city and its neighbouring villages – such as Boezinge, Dikkebus, Hollebeke, Sint-Jan, Voormezele, and Zillebeke, all of which Hamilton would paint, along with the outlying part of the Ypres Salient, as it was called – became the epicentre of resistance, both physical and symbolic. Here, in the northern part of the western front, Allies and Germans attacked and counterattacked ad infinitum. With neither opponent clearly dominating, territory gained was often lost again weeks or just days later. As in France, here in Ypres, the war became stationary and entrenched. Canadians were involved in a number of costly battles for the Salient, including the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915 and the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917 (better known as the Battle of Passchendaele). In the process, Ypres became an iconic war town, much like French Verdun to the southeast along the same western

8.1 Map of the Ypres Salient before and after the Second Battle of Ypres, April 22–May 13, reproduced

in Frank Arthur Mumby (ed.), The Great World War: A History, vol. 3 (London: The Gresham Publishing Company, 1917), 211. The red boxes indicate locations where Hamilton resided, and broken lines where she likely resided, while the blue boxes indicate various painting locations in the region.

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8.2 Artist working in

Boterstraat in Ypres, in the background St Martin’s church and Cloth Hall, 12 June 1919, photograph by Antony d’Ypres. Oostende/ In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres.

front. With an unforgettable photograph of the burning Cloth Hall distributed by mass media around the world, Ypres was forever branded a Great War city in the global imagination. The iconic photograph of the Cloth Hall in flames was taken by brothers Maurice and Robert Antony; Robert was an official army photographer for Belgium, and the Antony family ran a photography studio on Rue du Beurre (Boterstraat) in Ypres. By 1919, the brothers had been commissioned to photograph the war graves and the reconstruction. During this process, on 12 June, they photographed a woman painting the Cloth Hall (figure 8.2). Like a wide-angle panning frame from a movie, the image shows an artist in a trench coat and brimmed hat making a drawing with a long street of ruins and debris curving behind her on the Rue du Beurre. She stands in profile, precisely aligned with the hall, which rises above the destroyed town. As the tall grasses swallow her feet, she takes a step closer to her easel. Her coat crinkles as her arm angles toward the canvas. Mouth set in a thin concentrated line, her hand becomes her active entry point for the war scene, the tool through which the scene becomes knowable to both artist and viewer. The In Flanders Fields Museum’s researchers have identified the painter as likely Mary Riter Hamilton. This would make her among the earliest visitors to Ypres, in early June 1919, after the mayor had first unlatched the city gates to civilians in an effort to return militarized Ypres to postwar normalcy. A similar woman, photographed painting in July, was likewise identified as Hamilton (figure 8.3). This time, she is standing in the marketplace, painting

Market among the Ruins of Ypres

8.3 Southeastern view on

the ruins of the belfry tower in Ypres; on the left in the foreground, Canadian painter Mary Riter Hamilton at work on one of her paintings, 1 July 1919, photograph by Antony d’Ypres. Oostende/In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres.

the Cloth Hall, which almost exactly matches the scene in Hamilton’s oil on plywood Ypres, Belgium, 1920, Early Morning (1920; figure 8.4). Although this painting is dated 1920 and is smaller, it has the same proportion, and of course, it’s entirely possible that she made a copy of her 1919 work. Why did Ypres assume such a central role in Hamilton’s work? Given the presence of Canadians here, Hamilton had first expressed her interest in the city in her letter to Walker in 1917. Once overseas, Hamilton was able to immerse herself in the destroyed city in order to explore the postwar social tensions surrounding commemoration. Moreover, she witnessed the rapid emergence of a commemorative and cultural industry of war and peace, the beginnings of what Jay Winter calls “the memory boom,” which continues to this day with over 400,000 visitors each year, and double that number in 2014 during the centenary. When I visited the Ypres city archive, I talked to a young woman who identified herself as the descendant of a British serviceman and who repeatedly referred to Ypres as “Wipers,” the name assigned to it by British soldiers during the Great War. This transformation into a British outpost and world centre of commemoration began

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8.4 Mary Riter Hamilton, Ypres, Belgium, 1920, Early Morning, 1920, oil on plywood, 25.4 × 26.0 cm

(with frame 47.0 × 46.4 cm). Uno Langmann Limited Fine Art, Vancouver, BC.

Market among the Ruins of Ypres

in the immediate aftermath of the war, with Ypres becoming a popular destination for former servicemen and international civilians and mourners alike. As architectural historian David W. Lloyd notes in “‘Murder on Show’? Travel to the Battlefields of the Great War”: “It was not the sites themselves which attracted travellers, but their associations. They were the places where loved ones or fellow countrymen had fought. In fact many of the places had little intrinsic appeal … Thus tourism was not simply about the sights one could see, but about recapturing the meaning of the war.” 2 In Ypres, the tourist industry would become highly contested, and Hamilton would immerse herself in these tensions, which soon fuelled her artwork. For Hamilton, Ypres’s landmark sites – the Cloth Hall, the ramparts, and the Menin Gate, as well as the many battlefields of the Ypres Salient – would communicate this duality of destruction and reconstruction, of safeguarding memory sites while also rebuilding imaginatively and materially. n In Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, Jay Winters traces a number of stages in the evolution of commemorative space: the first is marked by monument building, the second entails annual rituals and commemorative events, and the third involves the evolution of both monuments and rituals, which may even disappear with subsequent generations.3 These different phases are certainly evident throughout Hamilton’s oeuvre, and a discerning eye will notice signs of the debates and conflicts surrounding this process on many canvases. In Ypres, the production of a war archive and war memory was fraught with tension, revealing conflicting interests. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Hamilton’s depiction of the ramparts of Ypres in a unique series of nineteen paintings and drawings. Depicted three times in 1919, four times in 1920, four times in 1921, and eight times in undated works, this original series has never before been discussed or even identified in scholarship. Most war artists used the ramparts as an elevated vantage point from which to paint panoramas of Ypres; Hamilton, in contrast, made the towering wall itself a primary subject for her art, reproducing the wall’s entire perimeter in this series. The ramparts were a continual point of return for Hamilton, collectively revealing the multifold meanings – patriotic, psychological, and imaginative. Almost one hundred years later, I examined Hamilton’s rampart scenes that lay spread out under bright lights on an archival tabletop in the vault of the Library and Archives Canada Preservation Centre in Gatineau, contemplating the underlying social tensions that made her draw and paint these scenes. In the undated drawing Evening – Ypres [ca. 1919],4 a slim and uniformed man peers down from on high atop the ramparts. He stands next to a bungalow furnished with an

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8.5 Mary Riter Hamilton, Ramparts of Ypres, 1919, oil on wove paper with a separate cardboard backing,

22.4 × 27.0 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-30, Copy negative C-103990.

overhang, a dormer, and clay roof shingles. In Ramparts of Ypres (1919; figure 8.5), a Belgian peasant woman stands at a distance staring up at the same bungalow from below. The woman’s figure is frozen in a pose of defiance. In Hamilton’s rampart scenes, viewers meet one of Canada’s most controversial conservators, Montreal-born Major Henry Beckles Willson, a veteran in the Second Battle of Ypres who worked for Beaverbook during the war. Serving as the last town mayor of Ypres in 1919, Willson worked to protect the town’s ruins and relics, protesting against turning Ypres into a “cheap holiday resort” run by “innkeepers and dramsellers.” Instead, as he argued, “Ypres should be the one great and sacred repository of all the scattered dead in the Salient.”5 The people of Ypres, however, rejected his

Market among the Ruins of Ypres

vision. Tired of the war and the military occupation, the citizens and new arrivals, which included many British ex-servicemen, claimed the war barracks and opened taverns and estaminets in them catering to the mourners and war tourists – even though Willson strongly opposed the use of lands where soldiers had fought and died for something as common as eating and drinking establishments. He made these arguments in his book Ypres: The Holy Ground of British Arms, for which he wrote the foreword from his residence near the Menin Gate in November 1919.6 The conflict escalated until suddenly, by 1920, Willson was gone, likely reassigned. Of course, Willson’s stance was not entirely without merit, and Hamilton was no doubt conflicted herself about striking the right balance between memorializing the dead and moving on with life, wrestling with these issues using brush, charcoal, and pencil. In multiple paintings and drawings, she reveals her keen interest in the man’s bungalow (which would become the Canadian Information Bureau and later the War Graves Commission – both institutions related to war records). In British Cemetery, Ramparts Ypres (figure 8.6),7 she highlights the ramparts as a burial ground. In 1916, the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and two other Canadian brigades housed their headquarters in the dugouts built here.8 In this place, the war has reversed the normal spatial order: instead of six feet under, the dead were buried six feet above the living, on top of the rampart (where the cemetery can still be found today). In the painting, a trick of light above the crosses manifests the silhouette of an airborne dove in the dark sky. The dugouts that were the homes of Canadians are memorialized in the foreground. The episode with Willson exposes the deeply political dimensions of the archive, posing questions about who selects and controls this architectural repository and in the name of what values. As Jacques Derrida reminds readers, “the technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of the archivable content even in its very coming into existence and in its relationship to the future. The archivization produces as much as it records the event.” 9 This archival process is the theme of Hamilton’s charcoal The Ramparts and Menin gate, Ypres, with the Cloth-hall in the background (1920; figure 8.7), where a large group of men and women in the foreground closely inspect the rubble, as if looking through the past, reclaiming their town in the remains. She would feature this charcoal on the cover of her 1923 London exhibition brochure, and it highlights the vibrant interaction among people and people’s interaction with relics – a presence often missing in her oil paintings. By 1920, the citizens of Ypres had negotiated a compromise with the military occupants, having reclaimed the houses and the market square, while the military cordoned off and maintained specific landmark ruins. Menin Gate was a landmark “site of memory” that Hamilton painted in oil in Menin Gate, Ypres (1920) and in charcoal in The Menin Gate (1920).10 Since the

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8.6 Mary Riter Hamilton, British Cemetery, Ramparts Ypres, n.d., oil on wove paper, 26.9 × 22.2 cm. Library and

Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-109, Copy negative C-104380.

8.7 Mary Riter Hamilton, The Ramparts and Menin gate, Ypres, with the Cloth-hall in the background, 1920, charcoal,

23.4 × 31.1 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-183, Copy negative C-143572.

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8.8 (facing page, top) Mary Riter Hamilton, Irish

8.9 (facing page, bottom) Mary Riter Hamilton, The Irish

Nunnery at Ypres, 1919, charcoal, 30.6 × 47.2 cm.

Nunnery at Ypres, 1919, oil on canvas, 30.7 × 40.7 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-209,

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-194,

Copy negative B-2000810770.

Copy negative C-142135.

gates of the ramparts marked the soldiers’ final exits, Hamilton dwelled on these threshold sites as spatial memory prompts for her audience. The charcoal depicts a medley of townspeople and expatriates, including war workers and ex-military men, helping in the rebuilding of Ypres. As Dominiek Dendooven writes: “The Menin Gate is known far and wide as the single most important contribution made by the British people to the reconstruction of Ypres after the Great War. Equally, the Gate is regarded by many as the most important British war memorial in the world. Yet for all its fame, few people realise that the present-day monument was the result of conflicting visions and a complex – and often difficult – creative process.” 11 Illustrating in its evolution Jay Winter’s two phases of monument building and development of daily and annual commemorative rituals, today this is the site of the Menin Gate Memorial, first unveiled in 1927. Beneath the pillars of the memorial, the bugle-horn players assume their roles each night at 8 p.m. to sound the last post in honour of the dead as visitors gather around. Indeed, Hamilton’s entire expedition seems an answer to Siegfried Sassoon’s rhetorical question in his later 1927 poem “On Passing the New Menin Gate”: “Who will remember, passing through this Gate, / the unheroic Dead who fed the guns?” 12 Clearly, she did! In The Shattered Ramparts of Ypres (1920),13 the wall curves from the centre midfield to the right foreground, exhibiting skin-like hues of pink, yellow, and tan, while the marbleized wall in the foreground to the right rises to reveal deep-purple wounds where artillery had found its target. Hamilton rendered the ramparts to reflect, like T.S. Eliot’s “heap of broken images,” 14 the fragmentation of modern postwar life and the resulting psychological and social tensions of postwar society. These landmarks become symbolically splintered, as Hamilton’s aesthetic choices illuminate this shattering for viewers while also working to synthesize and harmonize the scene; the very fragments became the creative building blocks for art, as well as for rebuilding the city. The duality through which Hamilton approached Ypres is reflected in her use of two prominent mediums for communicating complementary messages: she uses charcoal drawing for rendering realistic details, and oil to communicate more abstract concepts, as evidenced in pairing her charcoal drawing Irish Nunnery at Ypres (1919; figure 8.8) with her oil The Irish Nunnery at Ypres (1919; figure 8.9). The former work depicts clutter and chaos of destruction realisti-

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cally, the tracks of a light railway running into the drawing from the left come to a sudden stop with a huge beam tumbling on it. The bombproof casemates at midfield beckon the viewer with a promise of protection and safety. Thus, the drawing takes viewers into the here and now of Hamilton’s present: a few dots – pilgrims – are seen walking at midfield. In several drawings, she identified these pilgrims as women looking for family members, and they often overnighted in these cellars or casemates underneath the town. In contrast, her oil renders the same scene through abstraction, removing the details and people. On the left, the ruin of the convent reaches high into the sky, the heaven-bound rebar doubling as a window opening to the sky – a memorial tribute to the nuns who would never return to live in this convent. To the right, the openings of the casemates, or underground barracks, beckon the viewer. The horizon line tilts upward, the steep incline signalling hope but also the hard path of mourning and rebuilding that lies ahead. Duality is visually thematized in her expressive oil painting Ypres Cathedral (1919), which she painted from a unique perspective: with her back to the burntout warehouses of the Cloth Hall, and with the sun throwing heavy shadows from behind. Standing amid and above a dust-up of fallen debris, the cathedral’s structure shimmers in hues of blue and grey, mirroring the sky. The four tallest peaks of the cathedral are sun-drenched with speckles of gold and copper. Despite the destruction, the Gothic architecture with peaked arches prevails. The ruin reaches boldly to the sky, communicating the duality, as seen in the two portals, the two windows, the two peaks, and even the two rose windows. War, peace. Conflict, aftermath. Past, future. Life, death. As viewers look through the building – a seeming hologram painted against the heavens – the church becomes a liminal structure as a powerful icon for spiritual renewal. This ecclesiastical work is not about history’s temporal continuities but about the dynamic discontinuities – the reimagining of the city for the future, which ultimately epitomizes Hamilton’s dual and creative approach to Ypres in particular and war painting more generally. Since painting was Hamilton’s way of talking, pigments provided the lyrics for her emotional elegies, helping to stave off the oppressive paralysis of the war’s destruction through expression of strong emotions. The difficult medium allowed her to create lasting landscapes of mourning and transformation, as seen in Ruins of the Cloth Hall, Stormy Day, where the Cloth Hall melts against a sky of grey and cobalt-blue; buttressed by scaffolding on both sides, the structure stands like a war veteran on crutches. The foreground is a scene of violence: blood-red railway tracks torn up and mangled to the left, mourning a world of pain and violence. By contrast, in Ruins at Ypres, Cloth Hall (n.d.; figure 8.11) the visual poetics of her pigments grieve by offering

8.10 Mary Riter Hamilton, Ypres Cathedral, 1919, oil on cardboard, 35.7 × 44.1 cm. Library and Archives Canada,

Acc. No. 1988-180-13, Copy negative C-101327.

8.11 Mary Riter Hamilton, Ruins

at Ypres, Cloth Hall, n.d. [ca. 1919], oil on plywood, 45.6 × 58.2 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-42, Copy negative C-104639.

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consolation. Here, the arched windows of the burnt-out warehouse become flamboyant architectural and creative features; the foreground is fieldstone ruins whose earthy khaki colours and sunlit warmth eulogize the many dead as much as they convey new life. The Cloth Hall is featured centrally in at least eleven of her works between 1919 and 1920,15 and appears prominently on the horizon line in many others.16 n On Thursday, 19 May 1920, Hamilton was part of the crowd on the overcast afternoon when Ypres was decked out in Belgian flags that underscored the celebratory mood. Many international visitors and journalists had come to witness what the London Illustrated Times called “the scene of an unprecedented event.” 17 With King Albert of Belgium present, Field-Marshal Lord John Denton Pinkstone French, Earl of Ypres, awarded the city the Military Cross, acknowledging its suffering and resilience during the war. Ypres’s beloved mayor accepted this honour on behalf of his city, as Hamilton’s title describes: Ypres Honours the Acting Mayor of 1914 (1920). The colourful flags and her inscription on the painting’s verso, “Ypres En Fete…,” recall Monet’s La rue Montorgueil à Paris, Fête du 30 Juin 1878 (1878),18 which shows the streets filled with people and flags as a tribute to the city’s recovery after a lost war, igniting a democratic élan in the still fragile republic. Like Monet, Hamilton is an observer of the scene, with the colours of a multitude of Belgian flags igniting the grey of the Cloth Hall, where military and civilians have gathered in a key ritual of communityaffirmation after the war. Standing at the edges to the left are parents with children, including a particularly striking parent-and-child pair dressed in the tartan-inspired garments of the Highlanders. The collective ritual shows the way forward in shaping a new postwar society. Even as she paints a scene of official commemoration, Hamilton chooses to foreground those who stand on the sidelines. While she does not give her figures faces, this emphasis signals the interplay between individual and collective in a postwar, democratic spirit. Her visual assembling of dispersed groups in celebration bolsters the theme of reconstruction and new civic life. Her collection as a whole prominently includes women and children, referencing, on one hand, the absence of men and the death of soldiers, and on the other, a new postwar vision of Canada as a nation concerned with themes of peace and reconstruction. Perhaps the most fitting form of memorialization came from Hamilton’s immersion within the spaces reclaimed by the city’s resilient population. Each week, as she made her way past the Cloth Hall, she witnessed and recorded women and men arriving with modest produce, including sugar beets that

8.12 Mary Riter Hamilton, Ypres Honours the Acting Mayor of 1914 (Alternative Title: Ypres En Fete to Honor the

Acting Mayor of 1914), 1920, oil on paper, 20.1 × 22.2 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-48, Copy negative C-101326.

Market among the Ruins of Ypres

8.13 (facing page, top) Mary Riter Hamilton, Cloth Hall,

8.14 (facing page, bottom) Mary Riter Hamilton, The

Ypres – Market Day, 1920, oil on wove paper, 27.0 ×

Market among the Ruins of Ypres, n.d., oil on board,

34.7 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No.

45.7 × 59.7 cm. Image courtesy of Heffel Fine Art

1988-180-162, Copy negative C-104371.

Auction House. Exhibition label of Salon, Société des Beaux-Arts, 1922 on verso.

were sold or bartered for onions and potatoes. Here, her oil on cardboard Ypres (1920)19 depicts a thin trickle of civilians moving through the Grande Place, its broken structures surrounding them. In the middle, an androgynous figure in an oversized coat walks toward the viewer: this figure is dressed in grey taupe from head to toe, just a shade darker than the Cloth Hall, which rises in the background, and the lighter taupe of the destroyed ground. Hamilton conveys sympathy between humanity and architecture, an affinity between postwar object and subject, while the simple title, Ypres, denotes the war town’s tenacious assertion of its material existence. In Cloth Hall, Ypres – Market Day (1920; figure 8.13), a woman in a colourful dress offers a burst of returning pleasure. The pale blue and cerulean of shoppers’ attire demanded to be recorded in speckles of colour leaping off the canvas, along with the greens and reds of the vegetables that somehow managed to grow in the surrounding wasteland. Three women in mourning-black huddle against the Cloth Hall, yet their upbeat body language defies the anticipated melancholy. Like Hamilton herself, these widows had lives to live, and she pictured them in an animated conversation, no doubt sharing the latest local news and gossip. The new influx of life speaks of postwar resilience, even as the grey of ruins refuses to loosen its grip. This theme was so important to her that she painted it several times, as in her oil on board The Market among the Ruins of Ypres (n.d.; figure 8.14), which was exhibited at the Salon in Paris in April 192220 and sold at auction in 2018 for an impressive ca$22,500; an almost identical version of that painting, entitled The Cloth Hall at Ypres, sold at auction in 2017 for ca$21,700.21 Finally, a fourth variant of the market scene, entitled Market among the Ruins of Ypres (1920),22 this time with a turbulent sky and the Cloth Hall to the right, was exhibited at Versailles in 1924 and is held today by Library and Archives Canada. In this version, a sense of turmoil dominates the top half of the painting, dark grey and blue clouds racing across a blanched sky that overlooks menhir-like ruins. Minuscule yet electrifying colour splashes mark the shoppers bravely pushing against the frosty barrenness of the warscape. In this fluctuating cycle, Hamilton’s language of colour proclaims humanity’s ceaseless drive toward regeneration, which was also the drive that propelled her. At the

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same time, the sombre grey reveals the postwar city’s depression, which still needed to be confronted physically and mentally. A brilliant illustration of the mood of the reconstruction era, the tension of this scene haunts the viewer to this day, anticipating our own era’s tensions of upheaval and recovery in the wake of covid-19. n On 28 May 1920, a week after Hamilton’s arrival in Ypres, watercolour artist Olive Mudie-Cooke (1890–1925) arrived at the 10th Stationary Hospital in Poperinghe, some fifteen kilometres west of Ypres. She had a commission from the British Imperial War Museum to make sketches and drawings of Ypres for five guineas apiece.23 With an active interest in documenting women’s involvement in the war, the museum had established a subcommittee to commission a dozen female war artists, including Mudie-Cooke, to paint the postwar battlefields.24 This contrasted with the Canadian war art program, in the hands of Edmund Walker and Eric Brown, who relegated women war artists to home-front art. The trauma of the war left many artists, war workers, and civilians with incorrigible despair and depression, unable to assimilate into postwar life. In 1925, at just thirty-five years of age, Mudie-Cooke would die by suicide in Paris. She had witnessed the destruction of the war, documenting the work of the vad and ambulance drivers on the front lines. Looking at the sombre and shattered landscapes she painted in Flanders in 1920, one cannot help but notice the vast distance between her perspective and that of Hamilton: Mudie-Cooke was painting darker versions of the scenes Hamilton had painted the year before. Both artists painted Ypres, including the ramparts, the Cloth Hall, the Ypres Salient, and the razed villages of Passchendaele and Hooge. Mudie-Cooke’s dark watercolours flood the viewer with a chilling existential emptiness, as seen in her Hooge Crater Cemetery (n.d.),25 where a dusty-purple sky looms over a flat landscape with the crater in the foreground. Compared to Hamilton’s paintings of regeneration from the same period, these watercolours remind us that Hamilton was withholding traumatic scenes from her viewers; she was protective of her audience and, given her precarious condition, of herself. Given her mental and financial state, Hamilton could have easily succumbed to despair as Mudie-Cooke did. Hamilton would later relate the story of “an En[gl]ish woman artist who came over to paint the devastated are[a] say[ing] that it could not be done – that the atmosphere of the catastrophe could not be caught. After seeing Mrs Hamilton’s pictures she changed her mind.” 26 One wonders if this English woman artist was Mudie-Cooke.

Market among the Ruins of Ypres

As Hamilton trekked the neighbouring villages and battlefields of the Salient during the spring of 1920, much of her painting performs acts of creative salvaging on the thoroughfare of war. Just east of Ypres, she painted Menin Road, British Cemetery (ca. 1920),27 depicting a bright and manicured landscape, evidence of the busy work of the gardeners, many of them ex-servicemen. The cemetery’s pearly-white gates open on a vista of crosses enveloped in daffodils, forgetme-nots, and roses, the lush foliage offering solace to the families of the men buried here. Military huts, the memory prompts of martial culture, retreat into the background. Located outside of town, this large military cemetery allows the town to navigate remembrance by localizing the “commemoration of wartime marital heroism and sacrifice on precise points in the landscape,” as Osborne notes; Hamilton’s cemetery becomes that specific point for mourners who have lost loved ones, while also serving as a place for officials to pay their respects to the dead.28 Here, the viewer witnesses the ritualizing and compartmentalizing of death and war as it becomes incorporated into social practices. This creative salvaging work continued just a short walk further east on the Menin road, where she painted the deep, water-filled craters of Hooge, the result of underground mines. Where Mudie-Cooke saw a landscape devoid of people, Hamilton rendered civic gatherings.29 Mudie-Cooke saw a wasteland, while Hamilton depicted pillboxes submerged in water, drawn to signs of regeneration sprouting from the flooded craters. She spotted the shoots of bulrushes, pale and sparse and perhaps doomed, and crouched close to them. Painted on a large piece of plywood, the water-filled crater in her undated Mine Crater – Hooghe (n.d.)30 is reminiscent of the Art Nouveau grotto scenes of sirens and nymphs that were extremely popular at the Paris salon where Hamilton exhibited, rendering a specific space of commemoration that has remained intact to this day. In one of her exhibition catalogues, there is a handwritten note by Hamilton indicating that Mine Crater – Hooghe was painted “in the grounds of Baron de Vincke [sic],” 31 referring to the mayor of Zillebeke, Baron Gaston de Vinck (1855–1927), with whose family she seemed close (see chapter 11). Hamilton spent the spring of 1920 in pursuit of signs of rebirth as a means of healing not only the mind but also a cross-national humanity that had suffered through the war and would eventually become the recipient of these paintings. Her painting on paper Filling the Shell Holes in No Man’s Land (1920; figure 8.15) reflects this recuperative shift. Working in a soggy landscape that could be Passchendaele, with the same cadaverous trees as in Shrapnel Corner, Flanders (1920),32 two nameless men proclaim the era of reconstruction. The workers are faceless, and their non-matching uniforms – one wearing a white cap and brown trousers; the other, a blue cap and blue trousers – suggest that they might be Chinese labourers, who were known for such motley uniforms. These labourers

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8.15 Mary Riter Hamilton, Filling the Shell Holes in No Man’s Land, 1920, oil on paper, 27.0 × 34.8 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-27, Copy negative C-101328.

worked alongside Hamilton, and while typically marginalized in her collection, they seem to be represented here – albeit without being named in her title. Wielding shovels on the battlefields, they work in tandem to repair the war’s damage. A third spade is resting in a hole to the right, a rhetorical call to the viewer to join in and help rebuild a habitable landscape. As these two men confront the landscape, viewers are left to contemplate the restoration work that continues a hundred years on. Like the seedlings of Mine Crater – Hooghe, the smallest objects can bear significant symbolic weight. Hamilton recognized this. The rare verb of her title – Filling the Shell Holes – is key, as filling the holes is like bandaging wounds, initiating the healing of the earth and of society through repair and restoration before rebuilding can begin. This is a process that requires community action. “No man is an island, entire of itself,” as John Donne writes,33 and this first truly global conflict had made that truth palpable – down to every individual shell hole.

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8.16 Mary Riter Hamilton, Sanctuary Wood, Flanders, 1920, oil on plywood, 45.7 × 59.1 cm. Library and Archives

Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-21, Copy negative C-104742.

Hamilton may have used the painting of these sites of consolation as a way of holding her own stress and trauma at bay. She applied these salvaging techniques to two key sites where Canadians had fought, creating iconic paintings. She performed a special kind of salvaging at Sanctuary Wood (Hill 62), a distinctly Canadian site in the Battle of Mount Sorrel, fought and lost by Canadians in 1916. A.Y. Jackson, who was wounded in this battle in June 1916, refused to paint it, while Hamilton painted it as an uncanny space that denies full entrance. Sanctuary Wood (1920), at 45.7 × 59.1 cm, is one of her mid- to large-sized paintings, with exquisitely honed details. Here, Hamilton’s composition puts the underbrush in the foreground. With a felled tree immediately obstructing the viewer’s entrance, this is not a trail for the living to tread; she marks it off as

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a sanctuary to salvage.34 The midfield depicts a line of tree trunks – all splintered with limbs blown off. Intricate purple shadows of mourning seem to resuscitate these splinters, inviting viewers to contemplate from a distance this otherworldly space imbued with the spirit of the dead. In painting this scene, she did not claim to paint her own affect but rather, as she told a journalist, that of the soldiers, expressing in these words the motivation for her entire expedition: “If as you and others tell me, there is something of the suffering and heroism of the war in my pictures[,] it is because at that moment the spirit of those who fought and died seemed to linger in the air. Every splintered tree and scarred clod spoke of their sacrifice.” 35 In the painting, the splintered tree trunks stand like the ecstatic figures in El Greco’s Fifth Seal of the Apocalypse (1608–14),36 the largest tree to the left mirroring the position of John the Baptist’s witnessing of the Apocalypse. By engaging the art of El Greco to articulate both the chaos of the battlefield and the inchoate emotions of mourning in the wake of violent death, her painting seems to suggest that the community cannot be reintegrated through the evocation of the bodies of the dead. Instead, the artist calls upon art to hold off the despair of death. Likewise, at Passchendaele, the site of heavy fighting and extraordinary losses for both sides, Hamilton focussed on consolidating emotions. The result was Canadian Monument, Passchendaele Ridge (ca. 1920), one of her most iconic paintings, showing the cone-shaped memorial adorned with a dark-gold plaque framed in fine burgundy. Set in the battlefield, it rises against a bright sky, ethereal and luminous. The memorial had been built by the Nova Scotia Highlanders, known colloquially as the Neverfails men, whose battalion had been decimated here in October 1917. The surviving soldiers paid tribute to their comrades on the site of their former headquarters. In the painting, mudcovered rifles lean on the base, emphasizing the structure’s verticality. A helmet hangs on the fence post. This spontaneous work of commemorative art evinces the soldiers’ empathy, their “soldiers’ heart” on display, with the curated pieces functioning like trench art, as “objectifications of loss … and as materializations of the relationships between object and maker … and the living and the dead.” 37 These artefacts remind the viewer of the deeply personal experience of each individuated loss – a profound sentiment that is rarely captured by official national monuments. Hamilton signed her improvised canvas in the same redbrown colour in which she rendered the mementos that decorate the scene, drawing a provocative parallel between herself – a trained artist without government accreditation – and the soldiers sent to the battlefields by their country but nonetheless sovereign in their commemorative practice. Scribbling on the back and mixing two languages, she dedicated the painting, “To 85th Batt to 148/Officiers & Men.”

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8.16 Mary Riter Hamilton, Canadian Monument, Passchendaele Ridge, ca. 1920, oil on cardboard, 25.9 × 34.7 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-114, Copy negative C-104640. Artist’s inscription on verso: “To 85th Batt to 148 Officiers & Men.”

n By the summer, Hamilton’s health was worrisome enough to demand rest. In July, she stopped in Paris for the first two-week break of her expedition. It was time to recharge and reset after more than a year of intensive and uninterrupted work. The simple remedies available in Paris made it a welcome resting place: warm and overdue reconnection with the friends she had been neglecting; sleep and warm baths, allowing her body to feel the vitality of the season. If Hamilton saw a doctor, her letters don’t mention it. Despite its brevity, the break from painting seemed well timed. It gave Hamilton a chance to catch her breath and

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take stock. Prices were still extremely high, but with a favourable exchange rate, Americans and Canadians in Paris were able to afford double what French people could. Skirts were getting shorter and sleeves too, and women wore embroidered dresses on the boulevards,38 but Hamilton did not buy any new clothes; she needed every dollar for painting and travelling. With her total output by this time totalling some 200 paintings, sketches, drawings, and etchings, Hamilton could be extremely pleased since she had been enormously productive. These works truly encompassed multitudes – scenes of destruction and reconstruction, represented with emotion while eschewing the old national and incendiary binaries. But her output had been enabled by an exhausting travel schedule and supported by long-distance alliances and friendships, which were ever more shifting and uncertain. Her own talent had grown with her experience, but her resilient body, an invaluable asset in this project, was beginning to show the strain of her expedition. With her body sounding a warning, what would her next step be? Hamilton, it seems, was undaunted and adamant in wanting to complete her project, no matter what the obstacles. During her break, she seems to have planned her itinerary, wishing to achieve thematic closure in her collection and her journey. Specifically, following her break, Hamilton refocused on her commission to paint “the scenes made famous by the heroism of Canadian regiments,” 39 reaffirming her vision for a memorial that gave a voice to the dead while filling important gaps in her collection. As a newspaper would later summarize her account: “Mrs Hamilton has been engaged by the Amputation Club of Vancouver to paint scenes in the battle zone. This led to her extending her work till it covered a large area of the segment of the line held by the Canadians.” 40 As becomes ever more apparent in the summer of 1920, her goal was to represent not just the soldiers of British Columbia, who had been her focus in the beginning (though never just exclusively) but also the fate of all Canadian soldiers. Indeed, her work and letters reveal a conscious focus on making her collection a national one – commensurate with her ambition to paint “the landscapes with which the history of Canada will be bound up for generations.” 41 Thus, she made sure she added the missing cornerstone pieces that could elevate the collection to the status of a lasting monument in paintings. Clearly, her vision was to realize an aesthetic whole. This she could then give to the soldiers in good faith. After only two weeks’ rest, the relentless pull of the battlefield, and the lack of her own private accommodation in Paris made her pack up again and head north. Defying the risks of bad health, she headed to the Somme, returning once again to the sites of most intense destruction and harshest living. Later she would explain: “Where our men went under so much more dreadful conditions I could go.” 42

T he S omme and the For got ten Sites

Corpses, rats, old tins, old weapons, rifles, bombs, legs, boots, skulls, cartridges, bits of wood & tin & iron & stone, parts of rotting bodies & festering heads lie scattered about. A more filthy evil hole you cannot imagine. BRI T ISH WA R P OE T A ND RED CRO S S ORDERLY JOHN M A SEF IEL D A BOU T T HE S OMME, 1917 1

Today the Somme is a peaceful but sullen place, unforgetting and unforgiving … When the air is damp you can smell rusted iron everywhere, even though you see only wheat and barley … Everywhere one senses a quiet fury at being condemned to live in this boneyard and backwater, where even the crops contend with soil once ruined by gas. And a boneyard it is. Every week bones come to light. Depending on one’s mood one either quietly buries them again, or flings them into the nearby brush, or saves them to turn over to the employees of the Commonwealth (formerly “Imperial”) War Graves Commission, which supervises the 2,500 British military cemetery front offices in the main cities. PAUL F US SEL L , THE GRE AT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY, 1975 2

Located halfway between Paris, Calais, and the Belgian border, the Somme takes a special status in Hamilton’s journey, as do the locations in the far north, and there are several reasons for this. The Somme was a central destination for her. It was an epicentre of the war where, within a few months in 1916, on a small area of land, an unimaginable one million soldiers had perished. Among the dead were over 7,000 Canadians lost in the Battle of Courcelette, adding to

9

9.1 Map of the Allied battlefield on the Somme, reproduced in Frank Arthur Mumby (ed.), The Great

World War: A History, vol. 6 (London: The Gresham Publishing Company, 1917), 187. The blue boxes indicate Hamilton’s various painting locations in the region.

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Hamilton’s impetus to record it. It was also an exceptionally difficult terrain so reaching her destinations required all of her physical resources and stamina. Like the far north, the Somme in 1920 was still a raw battlefield, with no huts for her to live in, and because of the desolate conditions, her stays here were limited to day trips, the same method she used to reach the widely dispersed locations in the far north. While the forty-kilometre distance from Arras to the Somme required train or lorry travel, the Lucien Lefebvre-Foinet stamps on the back of several of the Somme canvases suggest that she may have stopped here on the return leg of her travels to Paris with new canvases in tow; her letters report she made trips in late July and again in September 1919 and May 1920.3 Records also indicate that one hundred war grave workers made several trips by lorry from the Vimy area to Courcelette in May and June 1919 with orders to exhume bodies,4 which would have provided an opportunity for Hamilton to hitch a ride. Hamilton’s collection counts a dozen oil paintings at the Somme, two-thirds dated 1919 and the rest 1920 or undated. These canvases reveal that she travelled to the Somme in different seasons and weather conditions, when its landscape was still in terrible condition, forcing her to adjust her art practice to the environment. At the Somme, her canvases range from 14.1 × 17.7 cm to 46.1 × 59.5 cm; as she later recalls: “Some of my pictures are quite small, owing to the difficulty of carrying large canvases through the mud and water and the filth of this region of, at that time, unreclaimed shell holes.” 5 Given the harsh conditions, in journalist Frederick Falla’s opinion, exceptional courage was required of Mary Riter Hamilton “to go alone into the nightmare country of the Somme after Armageddon had passed.” 6 Her inspired sightings in “the stricken fields of the Somme” were moments of witnessing that were all the more consequential as the area has remained under-represented in official Canadian war art.7 In the spring of 2014, when I travelled to the Somme, tracing Hamilton’s route, I stopped not far from the 1932 Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, just north of Albert overlooking the Ancre River. As one of the largest Commonwealth memorials to date, it is built in an Art Deco style using the same iron-hard red brick that Hamilton painted in several works, including Street in Ruined Albert (1919),8 a tiny work showing the dingy burnt-out houses, and Albert (Somme) Route d’Amiens (1920; figure 9.2). In the latter, the red of destruction contrasts with the white of the narrow street that draws the viewer’s eye up and through the memorializing gateway of the Somme. The day of my visit was brilliantly sunny, the landscape overlaid with a patchwork of yellow canola fields, and the horizon blue like it had been on the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916. But the most vivid image was the whiteness that covered large tilled fields, reminding me of the whiteness of many of Hamilton’s paintings, and which – now at my feet – turned out to be tiny chalk pebbles

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9.2 Mary Riter Hamilton, Albert (Somme) Route d’Amiens, 1920, oil on plywood, 25.8 × 33.3 cm. Library and

Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-8, Copy negative C-101312.

The Somme and the Forgotten Sites

and dust littering the fields, interspersed with small bones and pieces of metal. Today, these traces of the upheaval of more than a century ago still function as powerful, eloquent relics. Indeed, this startling white chalk is a captivating feature of one of Hamilton’s most recognizable and striking works, Trenches on the Somme (1919). In the oil, crimson poppies cascade down the chalk of the white trench, itself intricately textured with yellow shadows, while the blue of the sky evokes the bright sun and flawless sky of 1 July 1916. The composition’s crimson-red evokes the bloodbath of the Battle of the Somme, when the youth of many countries became fodder for cannons, while the red and white recall the Red Cross flag of the stretcher-bearers.9 Since red and white are also the colours of the Canadian flag adopted in 1965, as well as the prominent colours in the Canadian Red Ensign, this painting functions as a retrospective emblem for Canada, a visual reminder of Hamilton’s own assertion that “it was for Canada I painted them.” 10 With a duckboard running over water in the foreground, she guides viewers through the memory of war at the Somme, as the title’s pluralization universalizes this singular trench, authoritatively and imaginatively extending the exceptional aesthetic to other trenches. Canada Post selected this work to be featured in 2020 on the first stamp dedicated to Mary Riter Hamilton. As she later recalled for the Winnipeg branch of the Canadian Women’s Press Club, who reported the event: “[Mrs] Hamilton had gone out to paint the Montreal monument, but this glorious blaze of red caught the artist’s eye, and she brought it home for others to see.” 11 The Montreal monument refers to the 22nd (Montreal) Battalion, Canada’s French-speaking battalion that was centrally involved in the Battle of Courcelette. She painted this stunning oil among the white chalk trenches of Tara Hill, along the Route de Bapaume. This old Roman road runs for fifteen kilometres from Albert to Bapaume, a heavily used road during the war that bisected the battlefields12 and was mauled by the time Hamilton arrived there. It was from this old thoroughfare of war that Hamilton accessed many of her scenes. As the trenches cascade toward the viewer from painting to painting, Hamilton guides the viewer’s eye through them with her visually captivating V-frame technique. While not exclusive to her painting at the Somme, it is a prominent feature of her Somme compositions, including Dug Out on the Somme (1919), a haunting painting that takes the viewer into a collapsing trench. The sides of the dugout funnel down and come to a point at the entranceway, creating the V-configuration that draws the eye and rhetorically invites viewers to travel into and through this claustrophobic valley. Similar underground shelters were omnipresent in the Somme and Vimy Ridge war landscape, and dugout scenes by Maurice Cullen, David Milne, and John Singer Sargent were typically rendered from a high perspective looking down at the entrance.13 Not content with

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9.3 Mary Riter Hamilton, Trenches on the Somme, 1919, oil on commercial board, 37.8 × 45.8 cm. Library and

Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-38, Copy negative C-104747. Canada Post selected this work to be featured on a 2020 stamp.

painting from above, however, Hamilton often climbed down into the trench to explore the structures of war more intimately in emphatic acts of witnessing. Specifically, in Dug Out on the Somme, her painting style relives the after-quakes of war, as the force of gravity pulls its relics down, wanting to bury them inside the collapsing trench. The oddly skewed dugout entrance sits off-centre, the layering of light to dark colours from top to bottom conveying a sense of burial, with Hamilton (and her viewer) standing low in the crumbling hollow. One assumes that the dugout’s precarious timber support shifted and debris fell around and inside the structure, presumably precipitated by the painter’s own movements,

The Somme and the Forgotten Sites

9.4 Mary Riter Hamilton, Dug Out on the Somme, 1919, oil on cardboard, 35.2 × 44.4 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-3, Copy negative C-104800.

revealing a helmet in the undertow. In this post-conflict work, Hamilton brilliantly visualizes the trembling aftershock of war in a static painting. About halfway between Albert and Bapaume is Courcelette, and the local sugar refinery that had been the famed centrepiece of the German defence system in the area and the site of the Canadian attack in the Battle of Courcelette in September 1916. The battle was infamous among soldiers for the perverse intimacy of its close, individual combat facilitated by the unique military architecture. The fighting took place under the deafening noise of explosive shells and shrapnel, amid shouts and wild cries, according to an eyewitness summary report of the 22nd (Montreal) Battalion: “Quickly, ferociously, they [the soldiers of the 22nd Battalion] spread through every ruined house and cellar and dugout: shooting, bayoneting, returning triumphant with some crestfallen prisoner.” 14 Lieutenant Ivor Castle, a Bristol-born official Canadian war photographer, had photographed Courcelette in 1916 (see figure 9.7), and his exhibition in London

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9.5 Mary Riter

Hamilton, Remains of a Camouflaged Aeroplane, Courcelette, 1919, oil on plywood, 34.2 × 46.0 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-96, Copy negative C-104647.

9.6 Mary Riter

Hamilton, Courcelette au Bois Cemetery, 1919, oil on commercial canvas board, 21.8 × 26.8 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180101, Copy negative C-104242.

The Somme and the Forgotten Sites

9.7 The Battle of Flers Courcelette 15–22 September: The ruins of the Sugar Refinery in Courcelette,

October 1916, photograph by Lt. William Ivor Castle (Canadian official photographer). Canadian First World War Official Exchange Collection, © Imperial War Museum (CO 859).

in December 1916 turned him into a celebrity, with visitors clamouring to see his large-scaled photographs (90 × 90 cm to 180 × 300 cm). While Castle provided war propaganda photographs focussed on Canadian victory and cheerful Canadian troops, he also notoriously cropped and retouched photographs of Canadian soldiers going “over the top,” photographs he had actually taken at mortar school, revealing the troubling fraudulence behind photojournalism’s seeming veracity.15 Several of his photographs reveal the distinctive V-configuration that draws the eyes to the trench and shows the Canadian soldiers emerging and charging forward as they go over the top. While Hamilton uses the same visual technique to draw the viewer in, she does so with different effects and within a different context, now standing in a ghostly stillness where enemy airplanes once roared above and the artillery sounded their quick-firing guns from the ground. On an overcast day, she let this fact sink in, contemplating the silent debris before her. She gave material form to this witnessing in at least three interrelated works: Remains of a Camouflaged Aeroplane, Courcelette (1919; figure 9.5; seen here in black and white) depicts huge pieces of metal and tubing – the spilled guts of the sugar refinery – and a crashed airplane in the foreground; Interior of the Sugar Refinery, Courcelette (n.d.)16 features a dark claustrophobic chamber,

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formerly the space of fighting, now an empty cavity purged of its war debris by cleaning crews; and Courcelette au Bois Cemetery (1919; figure 9.6) depicts a cemetery prominently placed in the top right quadrant. All three Courcelette paintings witness the pain of violence inherent in what Elaine Scarry describes in her book The Body in Pain (1985) as the unmaking of the body, revealing how pain and torture unmake – indeed, shatter – the body and identity.17 This is seen in the crashed plane, painted as a skeletal heap of metal glowing in a blur of teal, yellow, blue, and green camouflaging. With the bunker standing high up to the left, the wreckage tumbles at the viewer’s feet in the immediate foreground to the right. Thick parallel lines of colour evoke quick movement and violent impact. Her crop abruptly halts these lines where the viewer stands, heightening the clash of body and technology, colour and form. When seen in black and white, this painting uncannily compares with Castle’s photograph of the same scene (figure 9.7), both images serving to record a site that is worth remembering for the battle that took place here. In both works, there is a diagonal line from the lower right to the top left leading past the two structures at the top. With its colour underscoring its constructed artfulness, Hamilton’s work displays a littered landscape, a memorial garden of sorts, showing off its relics and emphatically encouraging the viewer to observe the remains. At the same time, the crashed airplane in the foreground is not identified as German or Allied, and this lack of clear national binaries troubles the propaganda function; instead of consuming an unequivocal trophy, viewers are invited to contemplate the wastage and remnants of war. In Interior of the Sugar Refinery, the viewer’s eye is also firmly guided toward the rear of the canvas. Standing inside the chamber, which is bisected by a post slightly off-centre, the viewer stands across from a massive hole in the outer wall, which looks like a doorway enlarged by violence, its shape resembling a soldier’s silhouette. Through the opening, colourful foliage is visible, putting nature’s regenerative power on display. But to the right – the semiotic space in a composition typically communicating the new – the viewer faces the stark and blank interior wall. Contrasting with the outside, the monochromatic and traumatized interior chamber evokes absence: the same dead and deadly blankness seen in the eyes of shell-shocked soldiers.18 But there is symbiosis here: light, entering through the hole on the left, plays upon this wall. The land has begun to heal itself, but human healing would take considerably longer, recalling Fiona Reid’s argument in her book Broken Men (2010) that “shell-shocked men were uniquely unable to forget the war and all its traumas.” 19 Finally, in Courcelette au Bois Cemetery, the V-perspective returns, again on the left side, making the viewer travel into the distance along the curvilinear trail. On this sunken road, a “Bluebird” nurse in blue uniform with white headscarf, a figure of healing, is seen walking toward the village in the far distance. The viewer can

The Somme and the Forgotten Sites

see but remains disconnected from the cemetery in the upper right quadrant. The crosses are endowed with thick shadows, and the cruciform trees in the background speak of the sacrifice. In her book With the Witnesses: Poetry, Compassion, and Claimed Experience (2017), Dale Tracy contemplates concepts of nearness and contiguity in poets’ engagements of situations of trauma and suffering. Developing a theory of ethical reading of atrocity, she warns of the excesses of empathy as she writes: “The terms ‘empathy’ and ‘sympathy’ suggest moving into the other person or that person’s feelings; ‘compassion,’ in contrast, maintains a distance that allows one’s feelings to be one’s own.” 20 Such compassion avoids the over-identification of the artist or poet with the sufferer that can be the result of empathy; while empathy can lead to burnout, compassion maintains a healthy distance.21 For Hamilton, who insists on being near the sites she witnesses, the cemeteries are extensions of a lost humanity seeking a connection through emotional immersion, and her role is to forge a relationship between the dead and the living through her art. Biographically, then, it is imperative to assess levels of distance and empathy in her paintings to gauge, however roughly and unscientifically, her exposure to trauma and the ways in which she attempted to protect herself. Hamilton applies the same visual language of compassionate commemoration to the natural world, mourning the environmental disaster at the Somme, as seen in three small works: her oil on plywood Destroyed Forest on the Somme (n.d.; figure 9.8), her oil on canvas Inundated Territory, Avioli [sic], Somme (1919; figure 9.9), and her oil on canvas board British Cemetery at Avioli [sic], Somme (1919).22 All of these complement Courcelette au Bois Cemetery, in which destroyed cruciform trees also figure prominently. Focussed on arboreal death, these three works place the painter in the middle of the decimated woodland, centrally depicting dead and dying trees with rotting bark and broken arms on small oil canvases. According to Orlando Prestidge’s study “Forêt de Guerre: Natural Remembrances of the Great War,” France lost more than 1,250,000 acres of forest, close to the size of Prince Edward Island, due to shelling; however, even before falling victim to heavy Allied artillery bombardment, 60 per cent of the timber had been cut by engineers to build plank roads and duckboards for troops to travel on.23 Destroyed battlefield sites were left standing in undisturbed stillness and allowed to revert back to woodlands “as landscape[s] of remembrance in their own right.” 24 In them, soldiers’ bodies “became entangled in the splintered roots and vegetation, and remain to this day.” 25 Meanwhile, in Hamilton’s paintings, “history is repeated in slow motion,” to borrow the words of Michael Taussig, and one senses that she needed to paint these images “so as to double the act of seeing with one’s own eyes.”26 In her paintings, the trees perform the emotional labour of mourning, adopting cruciform shapes – precisely

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9.8 Mary Riter Hamilton, Destroyed Forest on the Somme, n.d. [ca. 1919], oil on plywood, 22.0 × 24.8 cm. Library

and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-33, Copy negative C-104804.

9.9 Mary Riter Hamilton, Inundated Territory, Avioli [sic], Somme, 1919, oil on canvas, 26.3 × 34.5 cm. Library and

Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-159, Copy negative OP-0386.

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drawing attention to questions of style, composition, and affect that show her shaping hand and her consciousness as a witness and war artist aesthetically constructing a memorial for generations to come. In Destroyed Forest on the Somme, the painting severely clips the trunks of two trees, while a third tree trunk completes the tripod. The effect is that of a peaked conical monument, a nature-made memorial mourning the death of the forest. In British Cemetery at Avioli [sic], Somme, the cruciform trees provide an expressive counterpoint to the cemetery’s efficient grid-like arrangement emphasized by her extremely light application of colour, which reveals the grid of the canvas board underneath – the crosses seeming to multiply without end in white, black, and blue. In these three works, with no man-made pathway visible, she denies viewers an easy entrance or exit from the scene: they can deduce the intense labour required on the part of the artist both to get into the woods and to get the artwork safely home. Ultimately, these paintings are not gentle or nostalgic deferrals but scenes that immerse the painter and viewer in living memory. Her embodied approach connects her directly with the landscape of war, the result of her hand guiding the brush but also the work of her feet (as she trekked the Somme) and her entire body (as she sometimes slept there and often went hungry). Each work is imprinted with her labour. In this way, her work is akin to that of the war grave workers who struggled through the same sites of destruction, searching for bodies in the swamps and returning deeply affected by the experience. n It was during the summer of 1920 that Hamilton painted one of her most affective and most widely circulated works: The Sadness of the Somme (ca. 1920). Rendered with a minimal palette of brown, beige, and grey, the oil painting depicts a thoroughfare with her trademark diagonal line running from the right foreground to the horizon, facing the rising sun. In its very paradox, the work is emblematic: desolate, with a sense of existential nothingness, and yet also conveying hope. The fact that she witnessed a hazy sunrise at the Somme tells viewers that she had overnighted here, as corroborated in her September letter to Hart (cited below), and leads them to wonder whether the abandoned pillbox depicted on the left side of her painting served as her shelter. This bold geometric cube reflects war’s Brutalist architecture as well as the harsh conditions of her journey. At the same time, her sfumato, or “smoke” technique, which blurs and softens the harsh edges in the manner of Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci provides additional insight. This technique creates a mobile or “oscillating gaze,” as art historian Frank Fehrenbach argues in the context of Rembrandt’s work, a gaze that operates at the boundary of what can be discerned and what

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9.10 Mary Riter Hamilton, The Sadness of the Somme, ca. 1920, oil on plywood, 46.1 × 59.5 cm. Library and Archives

Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-19, Copy negative C-104799.

cannot.27 The blurred surface and contours of the object prevent the scene from coming to a standstill: seeing means searching. The oscillating gaze becomes a never-ending process, enacting a gliding unrest that simultaneously unsettles the gaze and renders it dynamic. Thus Hamilton inserts movement and, thereby also, memory – or as Fehrenbach writes, historicity – into the object, making its variability itself sentient. Moreover, by entirely eliminating pedestrian or vehicle traffic, as Marguerite Helmers has noted, “the viewer is able to be the protagonist, ordering his or her own story.” 28 Helmers sees herein “the neareternal spatiality of the painting.” 29 The forward movement of the road propels the viewer as it propelled Hamilton in her journey, racing to catch the traces of war before they disappeared.

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At the Somme, as in the other battlefields, the very materiality of the painting – the aesthetic constructions she returns home – counteracts the shattering of the body, reminding of Elaine Scarry point that “a made object is a projection of the human body.” 30 Hamilton would later reveal to members of the Canadian Women’s Press Club that she painted many of her Somme paintings on salvaged wood, “the panels of old screens used in the hospitals,” 31 the material inscribing her commitment to healing and restoration. That she was busy managing personal health issues during this same period gives additional biographical poignancy. Hamilton’s scenes at the Somme were the result of a series of short but always intensive sightings that make up the entire body of her Somme impressions as a documentary record, countering the culture of forgetfulness. One imagines Hamilton as she clambers back on a lorry at the Albert-Bapaume road or stands at the Albert train station, exhausted, her muscles aching, her boots heavy with mud and canvases still tacky with oil, both drying concurrently. Once enveloped by the sound of the throaty pulse of the lorry or the chugging train, increasing the distance between herself and the battlefield, it was impossible to forget the silence of the Somme. n During July and August 1920, using her attic studio in Arras as a base, Hamilton interspersed these trips to the Somme with trips to the far north. Just as the official war art program was attempting to cover all of its bases, so too was Hamilton. Respective comparison of official and unofficial activities promises to be fruitful since she sought out important battles that were being neglected, thus filling important gaps left in the official war art program. Without explicit details, a reconstruction of Hamilton’s summer itinerary of 1920 must necessarily be episodic but would involve a number of train rides. This also suggests that by the summer, Hamilton had intensified her efforts to achieve some kind of closure with respect to several far-off places, since reaching them was both costly and onerous. Among these remote destinations in the hinterland of France, Hamilton explored the site of the Battle of Hill 70, where Canadians fought in August 1917. The combat lasted only eight nightmarish days and nights, but its horror made it a microcosm of the Great War: Canadian soldiers gassed the chalky caverns and poured drums of burning oil into the dugouts and trenches, setting Hill 70 alight. Eclipsed by the famous Vimy Ridge, the incendiary Hill 70 was ignored by the government and tourists – but not by Hamilton, or by the soldiers who had lived through it.32 The crater was a burial ground containing the remains of those who perished in the explosive fighting. Overlooked in the official Canadian War Memorials program, these paintings of Hill 70 fill an

The Somme and the Forgotten Sites

important gap in Canada’s heritage. Hamilton’s oil on wove paper Loose [sic] Mine Crater, Hill 70, France (1920; figure 9.11) provides a dramatic cross-section view of the inside with a dark-clad observer standing on the opposite side of the crater turning his back on the viewer, embodying those who have already forgotten about Loos; her oil on wove cardboard War Material (ca. 1920; figure 9.12) provides a close-up of the debris housed inside the crater and made visible to the viewer; and her oil on wove paper Loos from the Crater, Hill 70 (n.d.),33 her vantage point now from the perspective of the other side of the crater, takes on the perspective of the unidentified observer in Loose [sic] Mine Crater to paint the valley. In these paintings, the crater’s dusty white interior works as a blank canvas for the construction of compassionate remembrance and postwar storytelling, contrasting with the harsh debris that spills against this white background. In the foreground of the first, rolls of barbed wire writhe aggressively; one of these expands like a concertina, gripping pieces of blood-red debris while the dark dugout entrances in the white rock glower all around like eyes. These openings lead deep into the small interior living spaces occupied by soldiers during the war. Notably, Hamilton’s signature is entangled in a coil of barbed wire in the foreground,34 a motif continued in the close-up painting. The barbed-wire fencing no longer serves a nationalistic function by separating opponents as it does in Nevinson’s Paths of Glory (1917),35 but pays tribute to the war workers doing cleanup for whom the removal of barbed wire was always the first step in restoring the battlefields. By rendering the war debris as a still life, she both arrests time and animates the sequence of paintings. Her static pictures, each representing its own moment in time, can be placed in a sequence, enabling her mode of storytelling and humanizing this archive of paintings that relies on her continued travels, even as she sought closure. In her 2 September letter (see below) to Hart, Hamilton writes of immersing herself in the Hundred Days Offensive that ended the war. Starting at the Somme in August 1918, this eastward march had involved successive battles at Amiens, Arras, Bourlon at the Somme, the Canal du Nord, Cambrai, and Mons, where the war ended in November 1918. As she ventured through the Canal du Nord and the battlefields that signified the final push of the war, Hamilton made a more personal choice. Among the 45,835 Canadian casualties of the offensive was Hardie Currie, her sister Clara’s son, who suffered a shotgun wound on 28 September 1918 at the Canal du Nord near Cambrai. In Canal, Cambrai (1920), a work bathed in grey, she recalls this terrain of familial injury.36 In the painting, across the canal, the snap of a breaking pollard tree arm opens the vista to the cathedral in the distance, as if acknowledging the miracle of a singular person’s survival. And yet, she refrains from naming the personal connection, as was consistent with her reticence.

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9.11 Mary Riter Hamilton, Loose [sic] Mine Crater, Hill 70, France, 1920, oil on wove paper, 27.1 × 34.7 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-63, Copy negative C-141863.

9.12 Mary Riter Hamilton, War Material, ca. 1920, oil on cardboard, 18.5 × 23.8 cm. Library and Archives Canada,

Acc. No. 1988-180-165, Copy negative C-102987.

9.13 Mary Riter Hamilton, Canal,

Cambrai, 1920, oil on commercial board, 21.8 × 26.9 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988180-152, Copy negative C-103589.

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East of Cambrai, Bourlon Wood was part of what the Allied called the Hindenburg Line, the famous German defensive position from Arras to Laffaux. Here, during the Hundred Days Offensive, the casualties were high, the woods fortified by gunners and strongpoints.37 Many Torontonians and small-town Ontarians lay buried in the Bourlon Wood Cemetery, nicknamed “Ontario Cemetery.” 38 In Hamilton’s undated Entrance to Bourlon Wood (British Cemetery) [ca. 1920],39 crosses stand at a distance in the equivalent of a long shot – visible to the viewer not head-on but from the side – so that they appear joined at the arms. This oblong diminutive rendering encloses the crosses embryonically, an effect heightened by spindly trees that are shadowed by midnight-blue and by the golden-yellow of felled trees that obstruct the entrance. The work provokes. The crosses are the focal point, but Hamilton pulls away. During the war, soldiers were billeted in Bourlon Village, atop a hill, and slept in the cellars of the houses, waiting to attack in the early morning. In pursuit of these subterranean shelters, Hamilton explored the wreckage of the village – houses without roofs, glassless windows staring at her. The cellars were used by hundreds of civilian refugees who had returned to their town only to discover rubble where their homes once stood. Hamilton not only documented the chaos and pathos of a bygone domestic life but also focussed on the uncanny sense of a new postwar normalcy, a sense that will be familiar to those who have lived through the covid-19 pandemic of 2020. Among the paintings that accomplish this is Interior of a Cellar used by Refugees (Bourlon, near Cambrai) (1920).40 Painted on plywood, the cellar is a dark space with flecks of light shining from the right. A woman, wrapped in a blue shawl, sits behind the table. In her arms, she calmly nurses a baby. This wartorn cellar scene recalls the many maternity scenes she painted more than a decade earlier. Similar to the mother in Maternity (see figure 2.9), the woman in the Bourlon cellar sits at a table with pots and bowls. Each detail renders an empathic focus on a new domestic normalcy, down to the glassware on the shelf and the green tablecloth underneath the dinnerware. While her Bourlon cemetery scene creates protection for the dead, here she returns to the living with details reminiscent of domestic and family life. But the apparently normal scene is not at all normal; instead, it visualizes the unpleasant circumstances that survivors begin to accept in the face of disaster and the passing of time. While Hamilton constantly worked to show signs of reconstruction and rebirth, paintings like this one remind the viewer of how slow and gradual this process was and the circumstances endured by those directly impacted. The same perverse normalcy is felt in Hamilton’s surviving work from Mons, in Belgium, where the last shell in the war was fired. Although Mons was not included in Canada’s official war memorials, on my visit there in 2014, I discovered a plaque at the entrance of city hall that reads:

The Somme and the Forgotten Sites

MONS WAS RECAPTURED BY THE CANADIAN CORPS ON 11TH NOVEMBER 1918: AFTER FIFTY MONTHS OF GERMAN OCCUPATION, FREEDOM WAS RESTORED TO THE CITY: HERE WAS FIRED THE LAST SHOT OF THE GREAT WAR. 41

On the train to Mons, Hamilton fell into conversation with a young girl who was from the town. Hamilton was eager to learn about the impact of the war on local civilians.42 “Why not paint our bakery?” the young girl suggested. “Through our roof fell the last shell fired at Mons. That’s why we call it to-day ‘la derniere obus.’” The last shell.43 The recommendation stuck with Hamilton, who painted the town as a panorama in her undated Mons (ca. 1920)44 in a manner that ascribes an uncanny effect: rather than the landscapes of destruction painted up to this point, the town she paints looks unharmed after years of occupation. The details of her scene recall the observation of eyewitness Frederick Maurice: after witnessing sights of chaos and destruction for four years, the opposite sight of “the leafy trees, the harvested fields, the green meadow lands and the valleys” instantly conveyed the end of the war.45 As viewers marvel at the seemingly intact town on the hill in Mons, they also behold the conspicuously pastoral farm with stacks of loose yellow hay in the foreground. Few viewers today recall that the last man killed in the war was a twenty-five-year-old Canadian private, who died just an hour before the war’s end – shot by a sniper’s bullet fired from an ostensibly innocent farmhouse. To the left, outside of town, is the cemetery. Even as the normalcy of the scene proclaims the end of war and the return to a sober civic life, far from restoring a sense of security and safety, it acts as an eerie harbinger of death. A sense of unease and angst lingers, a fear that Hamilton shared in a letter to Hart dated 2 September, just after she had returned to her studio in Arras. My dear Mrs Hart, I have been looking for a letter from you hoping that I might hear before leaving for Belgium but as I expect to leave the end of next week it’s possible that I may leave before it arrives. I have your pictures ready for shipping but am holding them until I add something from Belgium. It was so very [fine] at Ypres that I feel sure I shall be able to do some good work as it is even more inspiring than here in France. In the past two months I have been in the Somme and in the North – Cambris [sic] Bourlon Wood etc. The difficulties of getting about and finding a place where I’m to lay my head were many and I could

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write so much were I a “Brucie” 46 for instance. However, it is impossible to give long descriptions for every day is full of unusual happenings. It is all very interesting and quiet [sic] an experience with regard to the pictures I will send them as soon as I add something from B[elgium] and even then they will go with the understanding that if you prefer others I may have in the collection you can change. Is this quite satisfactory to you and Mrs Green? The last time I wrote you was with regard to the money that went astray. I am anxious to get the trace of the money to know what has happened to it and also to have it. When I can get at it as I may need it one of these days soon my little “pile” is getting dangerously low and with the highest cost of materials for my work and living it will soon disappear I fear all too soon! I enclose the letter or a copy of it that I received from the Banque National with regard to the 974.63 frs which the Vancouver branch of the Bank of Montreal sent on July 10th 1919. That is over a year ago now and I think they ought to make some efford [sic] to trace it. What do you say? When I wrote you last I was ill but after two weeks change spent in Paris I returned feeling fit and with the exception of a bad cold now and again have remained so ever since. We are having very unsettled times here and any day may mean another war. The French asked to “stand by” again. I hope nothing will come of it and I also hope that Irland [sic] will quiet down. How are you all keeping dear Mrs Hart. You are in my mind very very often and I do hope that you are getting along and that everything is well with you. I haven’t been able to do any writing of late as it is impossible when I am going about all the time as it is impossible to even buy a postcard of many of the places and you may believe I carry so little as possible as my painting things are so heavy and I must pack everything. I have just returned from one of these sad trips and I did not even have a “night set” I slept in my blouse and undershirt and for two days I could not even get a wash. My love to you dear and the family. Tell Ellen I found her letters awaiting me and will write soon. 47

Because she was leaving for Belgium a week later, she was holding back her package to add new, special paintings from Belgium. “Is this quite satisfactory to you and Mrs Green?” Hamilton asked, eager to please her patron. Hamilton’s letter was effective and Hart took action with the bank in Victoria. The longlost cheque was finally located, and the transfer of 2,069 francs was executed, providing new sustenance for Hamilton’s journey to Flanders. On 23 November, the Royal Bank of Canada wrote to Hart: “We may state that this money has now been withdrawn by Mrs riter hamilton.” 48 With her promise to her patron, Hamilton set out to make special pictures for Hart – a commission that, even after all her troubles, remained very close to her heart, her words resonating: “I feel sure I shall be able to do some good work as it is even more inspiring [in Ypres] than here in France.” 49

Close Call s in F l ander s

As the war progressed, shellshock increasingly interfered with the efficiency of the fighting forces. Caught between taking the suffering of their soldiers seriously and pursuing victory over the Germans, the British General Staff chose to issue General Routine Order Number 2384 in June 1917 that stated: “in no circumstances whatever will the expression ‘shell shock’ be used verbally or be recorded in any regimental or other casualty report, or any hospital or other medical document.” All soldiers with psychiatric problems were to be given a single diagnosis of “nydn” (Not Yet Diagnosed, Nervous). BE S SEL A . VA N DER KOL K , “P O S T T R AUM AT IC S T RE S S DIS ORDER,” 2013 1

When Walt Whitman wrote about “be[ing] witness again” and “paint[ing] the mightiest armies of earth,” his wound dresser persona knew about the pain of “sitting by the wounded, or silently watch[ing] the dead.” Since witnessing means being there, as noted at the outset of this book, it also means becoming imprinted by the experience as witnesses often “bear traces of their injuries in subliminal ways.” 2 Mary Riter Hamilton’s journey, which she recorded in her paintings as “impressions,” affected and transformed her in a manner that was as slow and imperceptive as it was consequential. None of her friends appears to have been aware of these changes at first, though two years later, by 1922, Frederick Falla and other journalists consistently report on Hamilton’s reluctance to talk about her battlefield hardships. “How the pictures were painted is a story Mrs Hamilton is less willing to dwell on than why they were painted.” 3 This very reluctance to speak of the environmental harshness, the trauma, and the fears suffered are of interest here, because as affect theorist Megan Watkins formulates, “it is this capacity of affect to be retained, to form dispositions and

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thus shape subjectivities” 4 that makes it consequential. In earlier letters, Hamilton had talked about the “strain” of the battlefield, and the “tense” work. Later, Hamilton would talk about some “close calls” that she would blame on symptoms that today we would call ptsd, though she was never officially diagnosed with this condition. Given the social stigma relating to mental illnesses caused by the war and the denial of the existence of shell shock in sufferers even on the part of medical professionals (as reflected in the epigraph above), it is illuminating to consider also the psychological findings from the Second World War based on experimental studies conducted by Canadian psychiatrist John T. MacCurdy and reported in his book The Structure of Morale (1943). Exploring the adaptation to danger, MacCurdy studied experiences of fears and terrors during the London Blitz, noting that “during the Blitz season motor cars kill[ed] more people than bombs. But who [was] afraid of traffic?” 5 As one citizen explained: “When the first siren sounded I took my children to our dug-out in the garden and I was quite certain we were all going to be killed. Then the all clear went without anything having happened. Ever since we came out of the dugout I have felt sure nothing would ever hurt us.” 6 According to MacCurdy, this swing from a conviction of death to a sense of near invulnerability is not unusual. Even though when a bomb exploded in one area of London, a small number of people inevitably died, MacCurdy’s study is concerned with the effect of the Blitz on the survivors who fall into two categories. The first category concerns a small group of people in the immediate neighbourhood witnessing the death of their friends with horror and shock, representing the group coined as “near-misses.” MacCurdy expands: “they survive – deeply impressed. ‘Impression’ means, here, a powerful reinforcement of the fear reaction in association with bombing. It may result in ‘shock,’ a loose term that covers anything from a dazed state or actual stupor to jumpiness and preoccupation with the horrors that have been witnessed.”7 However, the much larger group contains those that McCurdy subsumes under the umbrella of the “remote-miss group.” 8 For the latter, the positive consequence is actually to exhibit more courage than before the event. MacCurdy concludes that since humans adjust to danger, the London Blitz actually contributed to building morale and stamina in the general population.9 The shared experience of survival strengthened the citizens’ resolve as they hunkered down in the face of danger, refusing to leave their city, defying the real danger of deadly blasts. Such bravery, as MacCurdy documents, was the result of remote misses. These insights apply to Hamilton, a civilian forced to adapt to the dangers of the battlefield throughout her exceptionally long expedition. Alongside her letters and interviews stating that she was “too deeply impressed,” 10 Hamilton acknowledged the war’s deep impression on her as an artist by poignantly

Close Calls in Flanders

titling her paintings “Impressions from the Battlefields by Mary Riter Hamilton.” Numerous works, including A “Dud” (see figure 4.7) and A Ruined Interior (see figure 4.3), document some of the pride – and perhaps even the addictive thrill – of seeking out danger again and again, and of placing her own life at risk. Other works, like Battlefields (see figure 4.8) and British Cemetery, Zouave Valley (n.d.), both at the Vimy Ridge, depict her impressions of remote misses as she represents her calm and composed response to witnessing the explosion of unexploded ordnance in her vicinity. In each of these works, the large plume is integrated into the quotidian scenes of the postwar battlefield without startling the viewer, and presumably without much startling the painter recording them. Even though such mine blasts can travel and their waves can be felt several kilometres away, it hangs calmly in mid-air; at a distance, it is oddly comforting, like the rolling thunder of a receding storm. Clearly, these remote-misses contributed to Hamilton’s sense of invincibility and self-confidence, the paintings themselves testifying to her fortitude on the battlefield, perhaps fuelling her daily search for new destinations. As MacCurdy writes, “the conquering of fear produces exhilaration – hence the joy of adventure.” 11 At the same time, however, sometime in the course of her expedition, the exposure to danger suggests that Hamilton related more to the near-misses group, being transformed by the shock in the precise manner described by MacCurdy: “In the near-miss group are those who have been mentally incapacitated by bombing, or are, at least, shaken. Their attitude is: ‘The next one will get me’; or, ‘Will the next one get me?’” 12 While a “miss is, mathematically, as good as a mile,” MacCurdy reminds readers that “emotionally it is not.” 13 Since “morale deteriorates chiefly in the near-miss group,” what helps support morale is the “feeling of civic unity,” 14 the strong esprit de corps, reminding the biographer that Hamilton was becoming more vulnerable as she felt increasingly isolated. She was cut off not only from her Canadian home by 8,000 kilometres, with mail often lost in transit, but also, after her first year in Europe, from The Gold Stripe. Further contributing to her sense of isolation were her peripatetic movements as she switched camps and living quarters every six weeks coupled with the pressure of being a woman travelling alone on the battlefields. Perhaps all that was needed during this time of vulnerability was a single near-miss, but her understated accounts suggest that in fact several episodes contributed toward derailment of her morale. Always reluctant to talk about the dangers of the battlefield, unwilling or unable to verbalize the fears and traumas, Hamilton nonetheless did share a few fragmentary episodes that provide insights and that are also complemented by her paintings. One episode concerned her experience with the tanks in Flanders located on the Menin road, where a tank cemetery became a tourist attraction soon after the war. Here, Hamilton spent several hours sketching and painting,

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10.1 Mary Riter Hamilton, Untitled painting of a destroyed tank, 1920, oil on board, 45.7 × 58.4 cm. Ronald T. Riter

Collection, Vancouver, BC.

judging by half a dozen paintings and drawings she returned, including her Untitled painting of a destroyed tank (1920; figure 10.1). As one of the new inventions of the First World War, the tanks left deep impressions on soldiers, not because they were truly effective as combat vehicles (in fact, they were often cumbersome and ineffective) but because their novelty instilled instant panic, putting fear into entire regiments. The fact that there were “no major paintings of tanks made by cwmf artists,” as Maria Tippett reports on the work of the official war artists,15 may have fuelled Hamilton’s interest. Her Tank Cemetery at Zillebeke (n.d.)16 rendered in oil several British Mark IV tanks, with an unconventional positioning of one tank in the upper-right quadrant. Precariously tilted, rear tread hanging in the air, antennae stripped, it looks oddly vulnerable. In most of the units depicted, the sponson, the tank’s head where the main armament

Close Calls in Flanders

was originally mounted, has been mercilessly punctured; through these holes, the viewer can see the incapacitating damage wrought by enemy guns. Yet even though she depicted the weapon as a relic symbolizing war’s end, in her own experience, the tank also maintained its original capacity for panic. When she was in Flanders, a whistle was blown as a warning when ammunition was about to be defused by clean-up crews. Engineers and those close by were expected to seek shelter to protect themselves from flying materials. As her friend with whom she shared the story retold it, “When she was working in the vicinity of [Hill 62] one day she heard the whistle and hurriedly got into an abandoned tank. Pretty soon a man came along and got in too. Being more afraid of him than the shells she decided to get out again.” 17 The fact that she had to choose between the hazard of flying debris or being trapped in the tank with a suspicious man reminds us of the omnipresent physical dangers she faced as a female traveller through the battlefields. The way she describes it, the moment appears to have involved a response akin to muscle memory, instant and almost unreflective. She felt fortunate to have survived the tank episode unscathed, assuring her friend that she “got through safely.” 18 In this retrospective anecdote, there is pride in having made it through. And yet, there is also an admission of genuine fear and relief about the outcome. Even more powerful was the threat of explosive ordnance that impressed itself upon her, notably with an episode in St Julien, a few kilometres north of Ypres on the Ypres-Poelkapelle road. An important commemorative site in the Canadian imagination, an official memorial, The Brooding Soldier, stands today to remind visitors and locals of the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915. For Hamilton, too, St Julien was a point of return. First visited when it was still an untouched site, she painted the cleanup in her elaborately titled oil St Julien, First Gas Attack Launched Here (1920; figure 10.2).19 With huge bunkers overpowering the landscape, it takes the viewer a moment to realize that there are people present – subtle dots of blue and red uniforms obscured by the outsized pillboxes. In the war zone, delayed perception can have deadly consequences, and even in the aftermath, dangers can strike unexpectedly. In Principal Street in St Julien (1920), dark shooting slits stare us down from this cordon of gunmetal grey and ochre; animated rebar stabs the air. To this day, the remaining bunkers – now overgrown with ivy and set back from the road – look formidable and daunting. In the immediate vicinity of the bunkers in St Julien, Hamilton discovered “an ebony Madonna,” a tree so severely shelled and carved by the impact and fire of war that the skeletal remains had come to resemble a religious shrine that became personally significant to Hamilton as the site of a great shock, as she later recalled for a journalist. “At St Julien, where 18,000 of our boys first encountered the horrors of gas, Mrs Hamilton was painting a blighted

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10.2 Mary Riter Hamilton, St Julien, First Gas Attack Launched Here, 1920, oil on wood panel, 26.8 × 34.5 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-66, Copy negative C- 104399.

tree, carved by shell and fire into the form of an ebony Madonna, when she narrowly escaped being blown to bits by a pile of ammunition recently taken from the cleared ground.” 20 There is one oil painting in Hamilton’s collection that closely resembles the setting she described for the journalist: Dumping Place for Unexploded Munitions (1920).21 The painting’s vantage point has the viewer stand to the side of the road, uncomfortably close to a pile of unexploded ordnance. In the foreground to the right, the pruned willow with several oddly splintered arms rises tall – the Ebony Madonna. One serendipitously shaped branch evokes her head, and a fervent believer has adorned her with a crown and given her a baby Jesus doll to hold. As a relic of war and religion, an example of

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impromptu vernacular “monument building,” the Madonna stands seemingly impervious with a quiet, unperturbed expression, with the Julien bunkers lining the road at mid-canvas. Here, the biographer pauses and replays the moment when Hamilton perhaps felt herself levitating in the air with the shock wave of the explosion, perhaps thinking she had been hit. “Affect here does not so much precede will and consciousness, it simply evades and bypasses them, provoking habituated behavior stored in what could be termed ‘muscular memory,’ the ‘motor significance’ of which Merleau-Ponty writes.” 22 Madge Macbeth evokes this sense of affect in her article on Hamilton: “Again and again, she risked danger from flying explosives, but seemed to consider this merely a part of the day’s work. In clearing the ground, all manner of ammunition was conveyed to given spots and then deliberately fired. If the workers saw Mrs Hamilton, of course, she was warned. Sometimes, however, she was hidden by brush, and many a picture might aptly have been titled ‘A near thing.’” 23 Like an artist-reporter, she sought out such scenes of risk taking as a regular part of her job; there was pride and a growing resolve in being able to survive such dangers. The bravado is clear in some of her works. Macbeth’s article is illustrated with Hamilton’s charcoal drawing on cardboard entitled Dangerous Dugout (n.d.): the charcoal depicts a dugout with a sign that repeats this warning – and Hamilton paints immediately next to it. Thus Hamilton places emphasis on the importance of recording the sites of danger as part of her affective approach, at the same time that the “near thing,” or “near-miss,” had a cumulative effect, shaping her psychology in its engagement with the battlefield. Such dangers are further evident in her evocative oil Hollebecke [sic], Flanders (n.d.),24 in which a road runs through the centre of the canvas with huge quantities of ammunition piled to the left and right, the result of the busy work of cleanup crews. A boy of about six tiptoes around the pile of shells, his posture showing some curiosity, but also a precocious awareness of the danger just within reach, his hands cautiously buried in his pockets. Even though the boy is faceless, like Hamilton’s adult figures in her other paintings, her rendering of this postwar scene is nonetheless psychologically powerful. The prominent blue of the sky and the pop of red roofing in the background hint at the primarycoloured building blocks of childhood, signalling the boy’s necessary postwar navigation of danger, despite his youth. Her painting makes viewers experience the boy’s curiosity and awareness of danger: the power of her work is precisely its ability to compel emotions through communicating her impressions. And here in Hollebeke, the danger is felt. The most dramatic explosions of the war had taken place just southeast of Ypres, at Hill 60, Saint-Éloi, and the Messines Ridge. In 1917, Australian

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engineers incited an inferno that disfigured the landscape by carving huge craters into the earth. In the largest non-nuclear explosion in history to date, an estimated 10,000 Germans were killed and an entire division of soldiers obliterated.25 Mining warfare was indiscriminate in its destruction, producing earthquake tremors, splitting and collapsing entire hills, and killing a staggering number of people. In a war that was one of the deadliest in human history, the explosion of Hill 60 was emblematic. On her first visit a year earlier, Hamilton had given voice to the land’s mutilation. In Shell Holes in Flanders near Ypres, No Man’s Land (1919), which she reported was painted “on the … Hill 60,” 26 she painted the affecting scene in oil on a small sheet of wove paper. Neon turquoise shell holes proclaim the toxicity of the water, while thick, white clay erupts noisily from within the earth. In midfield, the dead trees form a blue-purple line; with one tree serving as the post for a cross, she placed the symbol of death and mourning in the centre of this painting. Meanwhile, the deforested land behind displays its muted loss in ivory and taupe. In the far distance, the destroyed town of Ypres mourns in red. Returning a year later to paint Hill 60 Mine Crater, Flanders (1920),27 Hamilton transformed this site of trauma, capturing the crater’s rounded form. Primary colours infuse the work, evoking the beauty of a volcano or geyser after the deadly eruption settles. The closely cropped edges of the canvas compress the scene, instilling depth. With a profusion of yellow flowers growing against the dark-purple shadows, the crater’s gigantic dimensions make it her largest tribute to the fallen victims – mostly Germans. The Australian monument is visible, not so much a victory symbol as a small reference point helping viewers to appreciate the extreme scale of the crater. Her return to this haunting place had a distinct purpose: one returns to see things anew and from a different angle. As Eliot concludes in Four Quartets: “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.” 28 Through the difficult process of mourning, and the return to the place of trauma, viewers can begin to see things anew. It’s interesting to note that on the back of the painting, she misspelled “crater” as “CREATER.” In this transmutation of trauma into history, there is also a strong orientation to the future. As Hamilton continued further south of Ypres, she entered Heuvelland, site of the massive spring 1918 Kaiserschlacht that involved Voormezeele, Dickebusch, and Mount Kemmel. When I visited Dickebusch Lake in 2014, I was struck to behold an almost identical scene to the one Hamilton painted in Dickebusch Lake, Flanders showing the Reconstruction (1920).29 Down to the budding lily pads floating in the water in the foreground and the wind billowing through the poplar trees and clouds in the background, Hamilton captured a landscape that would transcend destruction. The most

Close Calls in Flanders

10.3 Mary Riter Hamilton, The Kemmel Road, Flanders, 1920, oil on cardboard laid down on cardboard,

18.9 × 24.0 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-51, Copy negative C-104482.

atmospheric work painted in Heuvelland is The Kemmel Road, Flanders (1920; figure 10.3), depicting the path where the Americans advanced alongside the British.30 Whereas Hamilton’s earlier roads in Lens-Arras Road or The Sadness of the Somme were lopsided and turned away from the viewer, this one starts directly from the viewer’s position – an instructive perspective, providing a route for the postwar generation. There is a rare symmetry to this composition since this road is centred vertically. As a result, endowed with its own dynamism, it seems to speed along as it travels toward Kemmelberg and its immediate neighbour, Lettenberg (both studded with bunkers to this day). Moreover, two-thirds of the painting is above the horizon line, with the light concentrated in the centre and the sky radiating in azure. The painting suggests to viewers a

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10.4 Mary Riter Hamilton, The New Home, 1920, oil on cardboard, 22.1 × 27.1 cm. Library and Archives Canada,

Acc. No. 1988-180-64, Copy negative C-132009.

Close Calls in Flanders

rush forward toward their destination: presumably a future without war, though born of it. In looking down the Kemmel road, did Hamilton see the end of her own journey ahead? Or was she compelled by the need to revisit the sites of battle? Madge Macbeth later writes about “her passion to paint, faster and faster, before the face of the country changed.” 31 With so many impressions collected and so many works to exhibit, returning home and curating her work would add a female voice to the burgeoning history of Canadian war art. The works of Jackson, Milne, Varley, and others had been exhibited in London, New York, and Toronto as part of collective exhibitions organized by the Canadian War Memorials Fund, representing many stylistic variations. No major war art exhibitions had been shown in Western Canada, other than Hamilton’s own Vancouver and Victoria exhibitions of 1919 and 1920 with focus only on the Vimy Ridge works. But perhaps it seemed a foregone conclusion to Mary Riter Hamilton that the Canadian art bureaucrats would dismiss her and her work just as stubbornly as they had before the war. In all of this, she was ambivalent: if she left for Paris, London, or Canada, her collection might gain exposure and value, solidifying her reputation; if she stayed, she would capture additional scenes otherwise lost. Hamilton was at a crossroads. During the war, road intersections were favourite targets for the military, who lobbed shells at them hoping to destroy enemy supply routes. Crossroads are plentiful in Hamilton’s collection, including Cross Roads, Vimy Ridge (1919) and Les Tilleuil [sic] – Crossroads (1919), surreal sites of threatening bunkers, and Cross Road of the Somme (1919), depicting a thorny warpath lined with barbed wire. Yet the viewer’s experience of Cross Roads Kemmel and Dickebusch (1920)32 is different. Behind a screen of tall, silvery, leafless trees, a mysterious silver-grey pillbox rises like a question mark. It stands at mid-distance, with dramatic light illuminating the structure and extending to the right; the path covering the foreground is heavily textured and uneven and thus still difficult to travel. As winter once again drew near, Hamilton was now facing her third winter in the battlefield and would have to decide if she wanted to continue living in these harsh conditions, with severely compromised accommodations and still lacking nutrition. Other works have a similar biographical undertone. A small oil on cardboard, The New Home (1920; figure 10.4), depicts an ordinary domestic scene with three women outside a Nissen hut decorated with white curtains inside. Whereas two of the women remain faceless but are dressed in full or partial black mourning attire, the third younger woman at the centre goes about working on an intricate white and blue textile. Given Hamilton’s own work in textiles, and her earlier paintings of knitters and lace makers, this painting offers something akin to a photographic negative of herself, revealing, perhaps even with some nostalgia,

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how far she had moved away from the conventionally feminine pursuits that once corralled her life and art. The New Home is light years away from the complex ironic mirroring effects of the female grooming gaze in her watercolour La Toilette (1905–11).33 No longer the object of male gazes but subjects of survival positioned outside a Nissen hut, these three women are immersed in a postwar environment that requires their aesthetic hands and minds to shape it, art making becoming the metaphor for Hamilton’s own gendered interventions in navigating the recovery. Clearly, she has evolved a female gaze on the (post)war, her perspective being that of a woman battlefield painter who chooses to include other women; she focusses on attire in a way that reveals their identities and relationships, highlighting also the women’s agency in their survival. In exploring The New Home, I am reminded of a later article accompanied by a sketch of a pillbox, captioned “for a time mrs hamilton lived in this double-decker pill-box,” 34 showing a remarkable two-level structure made of concrete and rebar and more common in Flanders than in France. With the help of the In Flanders Fields Museum, I tracked down the double-decker pillbox in Hamilton’s sketch to Potijze, just east of Ypres, where she had painted British Cemetery (Poityze [sic]) (1919) in oil and drawn Chateau Grounds, Poityse [sic] (n.d.) in charcoal.35 There it stood in the backyard of a humble family home, surrounded by a wooden fence and overgrown with ivy and shrubs, looking like a scene out of Hansel and Gretel. With Hamilton’s drawing of the double-decker pillbox in hand, I knocked on the door of the home. The owner, an elderly woman who spoke only Flemish, led the way to the secluded yard and into the pillbox, which was dark, damp, and spooky but also fascinating with thick rounded concrete walls and low ceilings. I climbed up the original steel ladder, which was anchored in the concrete wall, and reached the structure’s second storey where I could survey the surroundings through an opening at the top. Evidently, Hamilton the war artist accepted the abjection of a soldier’s life, disregarding discomfort as well as dirt, filth, and vermin. Her oil Interior of a Pill Box, Flanders (1920; figure 10.5) likewise takes viewers inside the crude underground shelter. Underneath a dome of rough corrugated metal, painted carefully with deep shadows, the viewer stands on a muddy floor. Hamilton’s remarkable vantage point is softened only by an aperture showing a bright sunny vista with tall ruins (possibly Ypres) in the far background and a tuft of red flowers at mid-distance. Outside, a set of stairs leads up from this dingy underground shelter to a war landscape of tree stumps above. Refusing domesticity and defying the male powerbrokers of Canadian art through her very presence here, Hamilton conveys a fierce rejection of the limitations imposed on women under patriarchy. At the same time, there are points of continuity. Mary Riter Hamilton remains loyally attached to flowers, an artistic subject she had loved as a child and

Close Calls in Flanders

10.5 Mary Riter Hamilton, Interior of a Pill Box, Flanders, 1920, oil on cardboard laid down onto cardboard,

35.3 × 44.1 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-9, Copy negative C-132004.

teenager, when she posed with her crocheted veil of daisy wheels and earned prizes for flower paintings in Port Arthur. Flowers, of course, are a feminine symbol in art history, as seen in the beautiful still lifes of her Toronto teacher Mary Hiester Reid. Hamilton’s flowers were bold and groundbreaking: she consistently used flowers to make viewers look at pain and loss. She moved the flower as an artistic subject from the domestic realm into the war zone’s aftermath, making her audience return to the scenes of death and come to terms with these spaces through art. A small oil on wove paper, only 22 x 26.9 cm, entitled No Man’s Land (1920; figure 10.6) depicts a stunning field of crimson poppies. In these flowers the viewer can sense something of the strength that sustained Hamilton on the battlefield. These are not Victorian flowers that

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10.6 Mary Riter Hamilton, No Man’s Land, 1920, oil on wove paper, 22.0 × 26.9 cm. Library and Archives Canada,

Acc. No. 1988-180-113, Copy negative C- 104405.

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symbolically speak of innocence and love, nor the floral arabesques of Art Nouveau, nor the campy and giant Modernist flowers of Georgia O’Keeffe and Florine Stettheimer. Hamilton takes to the battlefield to reclaim flowers as symbols of regeneration, their wild robustness encoding her refusal to yield. A variant of this painting, entitled Flanders Field, alludes to the poppies of John McCrae’s famous poem “In Flanders Fields,” 36 but with very different effects. Here, they function as flowers of resilience and defiance that push against the overwhelming greyness of the sky that covers three-quarters of the canvas. As the war recedes and as the acrimony surrounding postwar commemorative debates slowly cools, there comes a thrill of new life in the present. Perfectly symmetrical on the opposite side of this oil, she wrote in slick, black paint: no man’s / land. Having gone from a feminine focus on textiles and flowers early in life to embracing a behaviour that was culturally and socially encoded to be masculine, Hamilton achieved a synthesis that is her lasting mark as an artist. In A Room of One’s Own (1929), Virginia Woolf asserted that “a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion [of male and female] takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties.” 37 In her life of dedicated creativity and empathy, Hamilton achieved an androgynous ideal, which Woolf said “is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided.” 38 Propelled by her sense of freedom in her role as a battlefield artist, Hamilton inhabited new spaces but also used feminine codes to explore the battlefields. “Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind,” 39 Woolf writes – and in travelling the battlefield, Hamilton redefined it as a land that must include women’s expression and women’s art to achieve its full expression. By the end of the fall, as the weather once again pushed Hamilton inside, her collection had grown to nearly 300 paintings, drawings, and sketches, some still unfinished, showing the symbols of reconstruction. Her sprawling collection was characterized by a wild branching out, revealing her expansive artistic temperament as well as her points of return. And still, a decision confronted her. Was it not time to at last safeguard her collection? She could use her scant remaining funds to return with her paintings to Canada. Had she not achieved her goal of creating an everlasting “monument in paintings” that she could take back home and exhibit, and use to generate funds for the veterans for years to come? Perhaps the very loftiness of the goal made the moment of closure difficult. Hamilton remained ambivalent. By the end of 1920, after twenty months of relentless work, gruelling day treks, and cold, lonely nights with bouts of illness and exhaustion, why did she keep chasing the battlefield? Through her letters, one can hear her answer: “the crosses.” 40

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It is interesting to note the many changes that have taken place in the last year. Many of the villages that I was in at that time had not a house standing that was worth anything and there was scarcely a soul but myself in them. Now they are all villages of huts and dugouts and they seem to me even more sad than when there were no houses and fewer people. M A R Y RI T ER H A MILTON, 1921 1

Mrs Hamilton hopes to obtain one of the huts of which she speaks, and settle down in some village to make more detailed and finished paintings of the many drawings and sketches that she has started in her dearly loved works of art. THE DAILY PROVINCE ( VA NC OU V ER), 1921 2

During the winter of 1920, instead of returning to Paris or Canada, Hamilton returned to her studio in Arras, where she enjoyed seeing the local children wave their hands and throw kisses at her from their windows. She noted that the faces were pale and famished, like her own, all of them lacking fresh fruits and vegetables. Alarmed to learn that some of the children had never even seen an apple, she wrote a letter imploring the Red Cross of Montreal to send apples for the children of Arras. Humanitarian Lady Julia Drummond was the head of the Red Cross in Montreal, and having lost her son in the war, she never ceased searching for him. Hamilton’s impassioned letter incited her sympathy, and soon after, apples arrived from Canada by the case.3 Granted the assistance of a military driver, Hamilton spent the winter travelling from village to village in a car full of red apples, delighting the children with a treat

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from Canada; she was ecstatic when the children sent letters of gratitude to the Red Cross in Montreal, referring to Hamilton as the “Lady of the Apples.” 4 In a letter cited in The Daily Province, Hamilton explained that what affected people the most was “the thought that they had not been forgotten after these two long [postwar] years.” 5 After the “apple venture,” as she referred to it, she went to Cambrai, “where she had volunteered to help decorate and make more comfortable and homelike the Foyer du Soldat, the French y.m.c.a.” 6 As the reporter notes, “it takes courage to enter the lives and sufferings of those poor destitute people.” 7 Reconstruction, she informed her friends at home, was “slow in Belgium but in France it was even less advanced.” 8 By mid-January, Hamilton had returned to Ypres. She rented a room at the Hotel Ypriana near the Menin Gate, “the first Belgian hotel which was opened after the signing of the armistice,” 9 where a month later she penned a letter to Hart at night. Hotel Ypriana Feb 15th [1921] Porte de Minen Ypers [sic] Belgium Dearest Mrs Hart You will think I am a long time in replying to your dear letter which I was so glad to receive but the fact of the matter is when it arrived I was head over ears doing an apple job for the Montreal Red Cross. It was a big undertaking and a great responsibility. They sent a car load – and I with the help of the military delivered them in the most devastated parts to over two thousand children and in 26 villages. When that was finished I had some work for the French to do for their Foyer du Soldat. It is really a ymca at Cambrai in the north so I was on the go all the time and writting [sic] was simply impossible besides I had no place to write in. You will see by the address that I am in Belgium at Ypers [sic]. I’m not settled as yet that is I am at the Hotel and I’m waiting to get in a little Hut where I can have a fire and my things together. The food is better then [sic] I have had it is good food and clean which is a great joy after what I have been having in France while with the peasants! But it is costing me far too much though things are cheaper a bit but of course I am getting something to eat here and I could hardly call it living at all when I have been in Arras or the Somme and in the North. I get more meat to eat in one day then [sic] I would have in a week at Arras and I feel much stronger in fact my health is improved greatly. I do not get so tired as I did while in France. So much for the living and this place is too wonderful. Sad, terrible so – yes – but beautiful. I hope to do something worthwhile as for the surrounding country it is simply one hudge [sic] cemetery. I must not begin to write about it.

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11.1 Ivan L. Bawtree,

Hotel Ypriana, Ypres, 1919, photograph. Ivan L. Bawtree Collection, © Imperial War Museum (Q 100427).

… I think it is simply too wonderfully kind of you and Dr Green to want me to take this money. I accept it with a heart full of thanks. It means so much to me now for I do want to do the work that is to be done here, and I only hope that I will be able to make good and not disappoint you who have trusted me. It certainly will be a great help and make things so much easier for me. I cannot begin to tell you how much I appreciate the assistance. To have the honor of doing a portrait of the Col. [Hart] will be something to look forward to and I hope it will be one of [my] best. It ought to be but I insist that you sit for me as well. You know I’ve always wanted to paint a portrait of you and now more then [sic] ever. … I have written to Mr Taylor to try and sell these lots for me also I have to sell my C.P.R. stock I have eight shares, of course it is very low at present.10 I’m very anxious about that stock as I haven’t anything to show that I have any, you see he Mr Taylor has it in his name. I made it over to him before leaving as he said it would be more easy to sell it, in case I wished to do so. Now I regret that I did not have it made over to you, for in that way I should feel alright about it, in the case of anything happens to me or Mr Taylor. I haven’t even a scrap of paper to show that I have any stock do you not think that I could have it done over? Advise me please. My candle is almost burnt out so I will close and shall write again before long with my best love to you all. Your dearest of friends, Mary Hamilton. P.S. This is the first letter I have written for many months excepting to Mr Taylor last week. Yours MRH11

Hamilton’s achingly poetic inflection by candlelight reveals a rare moment of respite and luxury, with food and rest breaking her routine of malnutrition and exhausting work. Even though exceedingly modest, the Ypriana was expensive,

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quickly depleting the funds just recently received from Hart. Once again, she was trying to secure new funds to finance her stay in Ypres. For the first time in writing to Hart, she considered her affairs “in the case of anything happen[ing]” to her, acknowledging her limits, but she remained unshaken in her determination to continue her expedition in the graveyards of the Ypres Salient. Still, this was a topic difficult to put in words: “I must not begin to write about it.” Her letter alludes to but refuses to make explicit the complex, upsetting feelings associated with these sites, hiding and displacing her emotion, which might cause discomfort to herself and her friend.12 Clearly, where she herself was concerned, her role was to be affirmative. Hamilton’s collection reveals that her entire output in 1921 would be just twentythree new works, a radical change of pace from the total of nearly 300 works painted, drawn, and etched in the two previous years. Here one has to ask the evident question: Was painting becoming increasingly and prohibitively difficult, and did her charity work offer a welcome means of obscuring this – perhaps even from herself? The newspaper had reported that she was so busy with charity work “that she [was] doing very little painting at present, the other work having occupied most of her time recently.”13 Her letter and the epigraph above speak of her hope to obtain a hut and make more detailed and finished paintings of her many sketches, suggesting that she focused less on travel and spontaneous painting in the field and more on completing works on-site. Still, “working up” her unique oil paintings into large canvases had never been Hamilton’s strong suit, and Robert Amos’s comments about her pre-war working habits apply to her battlefield work. He writes: “The paint is handled with abandon and one can imag[ine] her making three or four ‘sketches’ at a sitting. ‘Sketches’ may be a misnomer. They were never ‘worked up’ into anything later. Her colours were a realistic transcription of what she saw. Rarely does she repeat the same colour or composition.” 14 And so even though the well of energy that enabled her to go on painting such emotionally difficult scenes for the dead, the wounded, and the survivors was beginning to run dry, her intent for staying in Ypres was to paint the destroyed region: “Pour peindre des tableaux dans la région dévastée.”15 This is what Hamilton declared on 28 January, two weeks after her arrival in Ypres, when she registered with the local Police des Étrangers. As for her date of birth, she indicated 7 September 1884, keeping her age at a youthful thirty-six. In reality, she was fifty-three years old. By 1921, a large-scale effort was underway to remove the almost incalculable number of makeshift crosses from the war cemeteries and replace them with permanent white headstones – a daunting enterprise that also aroused controversy among those with Christian convictions. During the war, comrades had placed many crosses on the battlefields in small cemeteries; they used scraps of wood on which they wrote the name and regiment of the deceased before

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nailing it on the wooden shaft to create the crossbar. As a result, every soldier-made cross was unique. As Saunders writes: “The war revitalized the image of the crucifix, both as miniature portable object and enshrined as wayside calvary.” 16 The cross stood for individual presence: it was the visible emblem of the connection between the living and the dead. The cross is foregrounded in Hamilton’s work, and painting the cross was a ritual of mourning. This is emblemized in The Supreme Sacrifice (n.d.), depicting a cross rising in the foreground from the trench below amid a field of sticky, heavy clay, painted in thick impasto white. The cross is decorated with an evergreen sprig. Next to the cross sits the dead soldier’s mustard-yellow Brodie helmet, not emerging by accident amid debris as a helmet does in the undertow of Dug Out on the Somme (1919), but staged for the viewer by a caring hand. Before Hamilton packed her tools and headed back to re-enter Ypres through the Menin Gate, she too paid tribute, jotting down the title in black ink and adding these fragments in pencil on the back of the canvas: “The supreme sacrifice shell [hole]/Sanct[uary]/Flanders.” At the same time, by 1921, the War Graves Commission and the war workers were creating huge fields of mourning, and their task was to plant the same oblong headstone where each cross stood so that each death could be marked, regardless of the soldier’s belief, race, rank, or contribution. While Hamilton was likely in agreement with this democratizing endeavour in as far as it sought to treat each death with equal value, her continued race to document the makeshift crosses before they disappeared was becoming ever more intense. In her entire collection, there is not a single painting showing the industrial cemeteries with the new oblong stones, which seems like a form of artistic protest. Instead, about a third of her paintings show crosses. Of the twenty-three works from 1921, ten depict graves. Among them is Boesinghe (1921), a site located on the Yser Canal just north of Ypres and depicting Essex Farm Cemetery.17 During the brutal fighting of the Second Battle of Ypres, this gravesite near the advanced dressing station famously inspired surgeon-poet John McCrae’s verse that would be recited internationally: “In Flanders Fields the poppies blow / Between the crosses, row on row.” 18 Hamilton’s bright palette of yellow, green, and purple echoes the verse’s pastoral opening, while the signs of severe shellfire damage introduce a more disturbing counter-narrative, with the row of dead splintered trees along the bank of the canal at mid-distance and maroon-coloured metal debris lodged in the foreground. Here, separating the viewer from the cemetery, slimy water pools in a large shell hole, evoking the same impression as war photographer Ivan Bawtree recorded in his diary in 1917: “Cemetery in a terrible state. Air foul and tear gas about.” 19 On the back of her canvas, Hamilton identifies one of the trees as an observation post and notes that the cemetery is near “Devil’s End,” a site also referenced in an earlier work.

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Also north of Ypres, at another advanced dressing station, Hamilton painted the crosses of Duhallow a.d.s., Ypres (British Cemetery) (1921).20 Amid a sea of simple white industrial crosses from the war’s middle and later battles arise several distinctive shapes and colours: a golden Celtic cross featuring a ring, a large Roman cross made of thick grey wood, and a tall skinny cross with a metallic glint of navy blue. As Saunders writes about war cemeteries, “the complex interplay of the imagery of the cross, at once Christian, pagan, prehistoric and modern.” 21 She neatly painted the Duhallow name in the left corner, like signage guiding the living, while in the bottom right, her signature is embedded under an angry ball of barbed wire. Just four kilometres east of Ypres stood the remnants of the “Tuileries,” a former tile factory in the village of Zillebeke, through which ran the front line of war. A friend of Hamilton’s later recalled the anecdote of how she came to paint British Cemetery at Tuileries Zillebeke (1921):22 “Mrs Hamilton had heard about how the Tuileries had been fought over and the graves destroyed. She decided to get a picture of this place. The day she arrived was a dark rainy one and she found that only one cross stood intact. She had almost finished this when the sun broke from the clouds, flooding the lone cross with glory. This added to the picture made it a very fine one. She hated parting with this although she finally added it to her Archives collection for Canada.” 23 Relayed around 1932, this anecdote conveys her personal attachment to her work, whose very composition would create memorial biographical events for Hamilton herself. “Shortly after, she heard of the cemetery called ‘Maple Tueleries Copse.[’] An officer who told her about it, agreed to take her to it. He drove her as far as the mud would permit and she walked the rest of the way. It was in a hollow surrounded by barbed wire, and several of the crosses were intact. There seemed, however, no way of making it a composition for there was nothing but the mud and the crosses. Behind it there was a glimpse of Zillibeke [sic] Lake which added somewhat [to the scene].” 24 In these retrospective anecdotes, time contracts. In fact, Hamilton had first drawn Maple Copse in pastel in 1919, exactly as she describes it with barbed wire and deep water-filled shell holes in the foreground, the drawing made in rich velvety pastels. Visiting this small site today, with Hamilton’s work in hand, remains a deeply moving experience. She returned in 1921 to paint her panorama Overlooking the Battlefields from Hill 70 [sic] (1921),25 now confusing Hill 70, which is in France, with Hill 62, which is in Flanders; clearly it is the vicinity of the latter that is being depicted in the painting. She adopts a distanced perspective inscribing the back with an elaborate note: “Overlooking the battle-fields from/Hill 70 [sic]. In the foreground, tank/ Bandit; in the middle distance/Maple Copse Cemetery; in the/distance Mont Kemmel, Zillebeke/Lake, and Ypres.” The rusted tank in the left foreground,

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11.2 Mary Riter Hamilton,

Boesinghe, 1921, oil on wove paper, 26.9 × 35.2 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988180-71, Copy negative C-132002.

11.3 Mary Riter Hamilton, Duhallow A.D.S., Ypres (British Cemetery), 1921, oil on wove paper, 23.1 × 27.0 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-158, Copy negative C-103985.

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11.4 Mary Riter Hamilton

asleep in her canvas hut, n.d. [between 1920–November 1921], photograph. Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, BC.

which she identifies as a “Bandit,” meaning an enemy combat vehicle, looks familiar. Her mapping of these sites across ten or more kilometres provides a visual retrospective, a summing up of her geographical immersion, with most sites already depicted in close-ups in her collection. This contracting of both time and space, of forming aesthetic wholes, helps turn the enormity of war into something that can be seen, held onto, even put on a shelf for later – rather than letting it remain as so many chaotic somethings to become irretrievably lost within. A snapshot photograph, later willed to her family, gives viewers a rare intimate glimpse of Mary Riter Hamilton inside her canvas hut; the style of hut being the same in France and Flanders, the photo could have been taken in either location. Some twenty canvases, unframed except for two, are hung row by row all the way to the peaked roof,26 and because these works include many from Écurie as well as canvases dated 1920 from St Julien and Shrapnel Corner in Flanders, I have chosen to feature this photo here in the Flanders chapter. This view of a tightly packed claustrophobic cabin cum war artist’s studio is stunning, and with Hamilton asleep in the foreground, the viewer becomes a voyeur exploring her private life in this interior space. The window’s bright light falling in gives her loose hair a flaming white halo. The photo is a portrait of the artist in her own jerry-rigged battlefield domesticity. A motto, “from the veils of the morning to where,” drawn from “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by W.B. Yeats, written in 1890, is carved on a beam spanning the hut. Yeats’s verse, “And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes

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dropping slow, / Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings,” 27 is about the desire to find peace and refuge from a dangerous world, words that apply equally to the servicemen who carved the verse during the war and to Hamilton who inhabited their space in the aftermath, sacrificing personal safety and comfort. Despite the auspicious events inaugurating the new year – the apple delivery and travels with the military, the recuperative rest at the Ypriana – internal and external pressures were building. On Tuesday, 5 April, after another Monday with no mail, she penned a follow-up letter to Hart that revealed the pent-up irritation and sadness of her situation – a first serious indication that things were unravelling in Hamilton’s life. My dear Mrs Hart I have been hoping to hear from you but no doubt you are terrible [sic] busy. This is your very busy season. I’m living in a Hut canvass [sic] one the same as I lived in while in France. The first days were rather damp and wet so I had a return of my rheumatism, a very bad time and am still feeling it but then last week the weather has been warmer and not so wet and besides I got a mattress. I was beginning to do without one they cost a lot but I found I was obliged to have one. Otherwise I shouldn’t have got on at all. Everything is so terrible dear. Realy [sic] it seems impossible to pay the prices my painting material costs so much too – but I suppose you are in the same conundrum as far as expenses only in a lesser degree. I am just sending off a cable to Mr Taylor – asking him to send my cpr stock over here. I can sell it as I need it. I hate to part with it as it is all I got but feel I must go on with this work. Perhaps something may turn up so I will not have to sell it all. I enclose a copy of the cable I am sending off and perhaps you might ask him if he has sent it as I have a perfect horror of being without money as I was in 1919 and you have my address here so can make sure that he has the same it seems to me that he only has Poste Restante but of course either will fit me. The Canadian Capt (who is a Scotchman) is going to England tomorrow so I may send this letter with him as I am sending the cable with him I do not want it to be sent from here as they do not speak English and may make a mistake so I may send this letter also so if you see an English postmark do not imagine that I’m in England. No such luck! I haven’t seen England yet and I wonder if I ever shall or even Canada. I have been making a painting of the Princess Pats Cemetery where so many of these gallant men are laid to rest. I so often wish that I could more do of these cemeterys [sic] before they change the crosses for the Head Stones. I am wondering how you all are. Fancy Ellen being so far away and Teddy too. What changes for you all. No doubt you are looking forward to the holidays. I haven’t heard

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from Ellen for ages. Give her my love and tell her I miss her letters for now I do not know how the Hart family goes on. I’m trying to get this off in time – with the one for Mr Taylor. Give my love to the family with lots to you dear. Hoping to hear some day soon. Lovingly yours Mary Hamilton. c/o Ypriana Hotel Ypres Belgique April 5th 192128

In this letter, there is no more pretence: a stark material reality confronts her along with the pain of rheumatism, the same affliction that paralyzed many soldiers during the war. Determined to continue her expedition, she proposed to liquidate her Canadian Pacific Railway stocks, even though the timing was extremely inopportune as she stood to lose a third of its original value. The frailer she became, the more important the cross and the grave became in her work, and the more she felt guilty about how little she could do; as she noted, “I so often wish that I could more do of these cemeterys [sic] before they change the crosses for the Head Stones.” She mentions “making a painting of the Princess Pats Cemetery,” but her only painting of this site, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Cemetery, Voormezelle, is dated 1920. Did she paint a second canvas lost today, or did she return to this very canvas in 1921? A 1921 photograph (figure 11.6) from the same angle reveals the crosses standing in a perfect military grid: row upon row of mounded soil, each a uniform distance from the next. In contrast, Hamilton’s painting is more abstract and expressive, the crosses appearing as an intensely white triangle contrasting with the opaque grey sky. Although the canvas looks as if painted in one sitting, a pair of purple pollard willows leaning in mourning toward the crosses, could conceivably have been “worked up” later, marking a particular affect by leaning whereas they look more upright in the photograph. Because of their severe pruning, these trees stand as figures of wounding, and their posture is one that Hamilton herself adopted in an undated photograph from the early 1920s: standing among crosses with her head bent, her expression spent and looking decades older than the thirty-six years she had told the registrar.29 X-ray analysis will be required to see the extent to which Hamilton fine-tuned some of her composition at various stages, and what specific alterations she made during a time when her former optimism gave way to pessimism, as she writes: “I haven’t seen England yet and I wonder if I ever shall or even Canada.”30 Despite her hope to write again soon, this letter was among the last correspondence family and friends received before the summer months brought ominous silence.

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11.5 (facing page, top) Mary Riter Hamilton, Princess

11.6 (facing page, bottom) Voormezeele: English

Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Cemetery, Voormezelle,

Cemetery, October 1921, postcard, Westhoek

1920, oil on cardboard, 19.0 × 24.0 cm. Library and

Verbeeldt. Private collection, Poperinge, Belgium.

Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-46, Copy negative C-104645.

n Today, this very silence – the increasing withdrawal from friends and family in Canada – allows me to date her first serious mental breakdown to the summer of 1921, occurring just over two years into her expedition. Although she may never have received a ptsd diagnosis, it’s safe to conclude that she suffered from some type of ptsd, then a highly stigmatized mental disorder. “Although scholars have written extensively about wartime shell shock,” Fiona Reid writes in her study on ptsd among British soldiers from 1914 to 1930, “the life of the mentally wounded man after the armistice has been strangely neglected.” 31 Thus the very refusal of journalists and scholars to talk about Hamilton’s condition is symptomatic of a social phenomenon, even though, paradoxically, the afflicted men continued to constitute a “very real and very visible problem for their families and for the politicians and civil servants who had to organize veteran welfare in the 1920s.” 32 Hamilton’s own silence is consistent with that of the men described by Reid, who writes that “the voice of the ordinary shellshocked soldier is largely silent.” 33 However, even though it was unacceptable to broadcast one’s nervous collapse, this did not mean that afflicted sufferers did not find ways to cope with it; indeed, they developed tactics and support systems that allowed them to manage their condition: in the words of Reid, for the afflicted sufferers and their families and caregivers, it was “just one of a whole host of trying conditions that they had to manage.” 34 By the summer of 1921, in addition to managing her finances and itinerary, her colds and physical pains, Mary Riter Hamilton was busy managing a mental wound and nervous collapse. As her correspondence became less frequent, the few paintings she dated 1921 provide some insight, though it is impossible to date them by month. In Reconstruction of Ypres (1921), she looks across the Ypres Canal and ramparts on a hazy day to paint the scene on a piece of cardboard the size of a regular paper grocery bag. Although it is landscape in orientation, the composition is organized vertically, with a staggered stair-stepped design leading up from the moat to the halfway line of the canvas, where a large group of people has congregated at the bell tower. But as the slightly curved tower pushes toward the top of the canvas, showing the bricklayers at the very top high in the sky, there is an echo

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11.7 Mary Riter Hamilton, Reconstruction of Ypres, 1921, oil on cardboard laid down onto cardboard,

26.5 × 33.5 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-105, Copy negative C-103989.

of Pieter Bruegel’s Tower of Babel (1563), exposing both the ambition and the instability of the enterprise. The ladder found in Bruegel’s work is represented here, as well as the same frantic race to turn rubble into architecture. At the bottom, the water in the canal shoots by, mirroring the acceleration of life in the town. In the right foreground, a pile of rubble cascades like a waterfall. Given Hamilton’s own hurry to build her collection, Reconstruction of Ypres offers a parable for her impassioned project and the stress of completing and managing such a large collection.35 Would her collection serve its intended purpose or become as so many scattered languages, unable to communicate with those for whom it was constructed? Perhaps her most apocalyptic work, Clearing the Battlefields in Flanders (1921) depicts a crepuscular scene in oil on cardboard. A large group of uniformed

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11.8 Mary Riter Hamilton, Clearing the Battlefields in Flanders, 1921, oil on cardboard, 26.3 × 35.0 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-142, Copy negative C-104244.

labourers files along the path that trails to the left. They carry lit torches to clear the fields by burning tree debris. With three giant columns of smouldering whiteblue smoke rising in the centre near the road, Hamilton visually translates the danger of the men’s work into the language of sacrifice by evoking Christ’s Calvary: the three columns of smoke, with the tallest in the middle, paralleling the three crosses of the crucifixion. The scene’s mysterious daytime gloom evokes the sudden darkness that accompanied Christ’s death in the Gospel according to St Matthew: “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.” 36 Hamilton conveys the experience in visceral terms, and the workers are dwarfed by the decimation. This is a battlefield inferno three years after the war’s end. Here she emphasizes the peril facing war workers, who are

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immersed in the site and breathe the toxic fumes that would cause them longterm health problems. Meanwhile, Hamilton’s signature is a reminder that she herself was living in the bottomless pit. Whereas Hamilton’s earlier works, such as Filling the Shell Holes in No Man’s Land (see figure 8.15), depicted scenes of restoration and repair, this later work shifts her emphasis. She opens the viewer’s eyes to the dangers surrounding those who braved the postwar battlefields – not least of whom was Hamilton herself. Her undaunted risk-taking is also evident in her travels to Houthulst Forest, one of the most dangerous sites she visited, filled as it was with stockpiles of gas shells and other explosive materials – and it remains so to this day. Located some twenty kilometres north of Ypres on the Poelcapelle road, the Houthulst Forest was so soggy that it remained inaccessible for many months after the armistice. This, along with its dark tone and subject matter, suggests that Hamilton’s undated Clearing Houthulst’s Forest of Gas Shells was painted at the tail end of her expedition in 1921. In a dirty-looking scene of varied hues, wildly coloured plumes of smoke rise amid scraggly trees. Grimy shell-hole puddles populate the foreground. Death traps. Her inscription on the back says it all: Clearing Houthulst’s Forest of gas-shells (a most dangerous and most costly under taking).

And then, throughout the spring season, which usually brought a renewed energy and zeal to Hamilton and her work: silence. All communication stopped. Letters went unanswered. Most of April, all of May, June, July, and much of August passed without a sign of life from Hamilton. n As spring became summer, and weeks turned into months in eerie silence, worry grew exponentially among her family in Canada. Suspecting that something was wrong with her dear Auntie May after her early spring letter remained unanswered, Hamilton’s niece Bertie Bryson Currie, her sister Clara’s daughter, made enquiries. When she could not get any answers as to her beloved aunt’s whereabouts, she enlisted the help of former Gold Stripe editor Alex Paton to locate Hamilton through the Belgian authorities. Even though Paton was no longer linked to Hamilton’s expedition, he answered Bertie’s call for help and notified the Belgian consul, whom he knew personally, hoping they could track the missing person. Bertie knew something was

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seriously wrong when she could still not be found. She continued to write letters while anxiously awaiting news.37 Finally, in late summer, after fearing the worst, Bertie received a response to her original early-spring letter. With Hamilton’s letter in hand, her abstract worry quickly became concrete concern. While Auntie May was alive, she was in serious trouble. The letter was one of several efforts by Hamilton to communicate difficult news about her own mental wounds – afflicted as she was not just with melancholy but also with a more taboo condition that required great circumspection. Even Hamilton’s previous letter to Hart was alarming, though it revealed nothing specific. Since Hamilton’s letters to Bertie are lost,38 readers are left to read between the lines of Bertie’s heartfelt answer, which begins to peel back layers of secrecy, even while she carefully avoids stating the obvious fact of Hamilton’s ill health in plain terms. My dear Auntie May, Never in all the world was I ever so glad to receive a letter from anyone as I was yours on Friday morning at the office here, and Auntie May when I read your letter I just could not keep back the tears. I have not heard from you for months and this last time has been the longest spell. How-ever, I have kept on writing and expect you will eventually receive all my letters as you did the one you mentioned in this letter of yours dated August 4 th and in answer to mine of the 27 th of May. I seem for months to have had a feeling that you were in trouble, but of course did not know and thought I was just giving way to imagination, but I have been partly in the right as I now know from reading your letter. I can’t imagine who the people are who are doing such treacherous deeds because that bomb setting is terrible and I don’t wonder that you having escaped those different times realize that a higher hand is guiding you in this work. 39

The correspondence is as stunning as it is allusive. After thirty months in the battlefields, often trapped in isolation, Hamilton blames bomb blasting for her condition, reporting that bombs were being purposely set to kill her (“such treacherous deeds”), a fear possibly inspired by the assault in Arras (see chapter 8). Her reference here is to grenades, which were then called “hand bombs” or “Mills bombs,” many of which were left unexploded on the battlefield. This reference implied shell shock, then still a misunderstood phenomenon, which in popular imagination was believed to be caused by physical damage to the nerves through the airwaves and noise of shells. In a second letter to Bertie, dated 9 August, Hamilton bequeathed her “pictures + things” to her niece. Like soldiers who willed their belongings before going “over the top” in a dangerous

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battle, making sure that their affairs were in order, so Hamilton seemed to prepare for the eventuality of being killed on her expedition. Understandably frightened for her aunt’s well-being, Bertie scrawled a shocked reply to the will she had received: “My heart is very very full. I look for [sic] as I ponder over your dear letter, and I’m watching + praying for you dear: may God protect your dear life from the dangers you were facing just now … And Auntie May in telling me I’m to be given your pictures + things I feel it is a sacred trust, and your memory, because I have always loved you dear, will ever, ever live in my heart of hearts. All along I have had a feeling that perhaps when you returned we might find ourselves to-gether. It may be that some day not too far distant this may come true and I’ll be your ‘lady in waiting.’” 40 Having known heartbreak and loss, including the loss of her own mother, which had made her the caregiver for her younger siblings at the age of twenty-five, Bertie knew instantly the severity of her aunt’s situation. Bertie’s response was admirable: she did not insist that Hamilton was certain to live; instead, she concluded there was a high chance she might not. Her expression of heartfelt love and grief, and her use of the past (“have always loved you”) and future tense (“you dear, will ever, ever live in my heart”) read like a solemn deathbed goodbye. At the same time, however, she refuses to abandon hope and makes an appeal to her stubborn relation: “I can’t bear to talk about your not coming back – Auntie May you must [ensure] nothing will happen to you, my heart aches for you because you are enduring such hardships in these long tramps. My heart dear – is very full and I can’t begin to express to you how I feel but I love you dear and may God protect + keep you from harm.” 41 Hamilton had sent Bertie a prayer card, a significant gesture as these cards often served as funeral cards, and Bertie now repeated the card’s mantra: “God is all in all: there is none but God.” 42 The need for spiritual affirmation gives readers a glimpse into how Hamilton strengthened herself during crisis. Her spiritual roots became her anchor, an element of continuity and stability as her world was unravelling. Sometime that year, Hamilton painted A Misty Morning, the Ramparts of Ypres (1921), in which she returned to the wounded rock face of the Ypres ramparts. Combining the abstract style of her battlefield painting with realistic depth, perspective, and intricate shading, the rock face haunts with its manic shapes and colours. On the left side, two uncanny holes left by bombs double as the eye sockets in a skull. The reflection in the turquoise water further distorts one of the holes like a widening gyre, while the other disintegrates in purple, bruising in the water, with her signature immediately underneath. What the viewer sees in the water is a nightmare world and the reverse of her idealistic endeavour, her transcendental vision turned upside down. Is this a self-portrait of sorts, as Hamilton’s interior world began to resemble the destroyed landscapes

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11.9 Mary Riter Hamilton, A Misty Morning, the Ramparts of Ypres, 1921, oil on plywood, 45.8 × 58.3 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-47, Copy negative C-105254.

she had spent so much time painting? Her friend W.G.W. Fortune (see chapter 7) would later write that she suffered from great “nervous strain.” 43 Like the soldiers in the epigraph, her status seems to have been “Not Yet Diagnosed, Nervous.” Hamilton was a prime candidate for traumatic injury, due first to her sustained exposure to sites of violence and her proximity to exhumations. A second reason for her susceptibility is her early history with trauma: she had suffered the sudden loss not only of a husband and baby but also of siblings who died young and a niece who died during the war, making her vulnerable to re-traumatization. Thirdly, and crucially, were the deplorable material

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circumstances that added significant stress to her mental health struggles, making her both more vulnerable and more determined to continue her trail-blazing work. Even though she occasionally had access to comfortable (albeit still humble) accommodations, she always ended up back in the battlefield canvas huts (a cycle that went on the entire time she was travelling); also, she only ever took rest breaks in places like Paris when she had reached her absolute physical and mental limits. While Hamilton seems to have managed largely on her own, an elucidative photograph held at the In Flanders Fields Museum gives some insights about possible helpers in Zillebeke. Taken by Antony d’Ypres on 15 September 1921, it shows the attic studio at the “Chateau Hooghe turned into an artist workshop for the baron’s daughters Daisy, Louise, and Betty de Vinck.” 44 Two of the women to the left are working on trench art and sculpture, respectively, while the third woman sits in the centre with her palette and brush. But most astounding is that while Hamilton is not present, the painting on the third woman’s easel is identical to one of Hamilton’s, Derelict Tank of Hill 70 [sic] (1920; figure 11.11), which is among her largest at 80.4 × 64.6 cm and its variant Untitled painting of destroyed tank (see figure 10.1). A second painting, sitting to the left on the floor, is identical to Hamilton’s Bleeding France (1919).45 The photo suggests an answer to the question of where Hamilton found safe storage for her Ypres Salient paintings. One assumes she was friends with the de Vincks, a family of artists with great social prestige, as their father, Baron de Vinck, was the long-time mayor of Zillebeke. But the photo also raises questions. In 2016, a Dutch auction house sold a watercolour painting dated 1920 and entitled English Tank at the Zouave Valley at Hooghe Near Ypres with Louise de Vinck’s name inscribed on the front.46 Was Hamilton teaching Louise to paint war art? Did Louise help her make copies? Hamilton’s collection and correspondence reveal that she made multiple copies of several works that were important to her. In the end, then, although it offers a glimpse of the connection between Hamilton and the de Vinck sisters, this photograph raises more tantalizing questions than it answers. n Hamilton first announced a longer rest in Paris in a postcard she wrote from Zonnebeke near Passchendaele in mid-October. It was addressed to her late husband’s cousin, William A. Hamilton, in Toronto, who was like a brother to Charles. While the postcard is lost, William’s prompt and heartfelt response to it provides insight. Despite the brevity of the postcard format, she was working to overcome the silence of her illness and isolation. William Hamilton responded on 5 November in a long letter that begins as follows:

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11.10 Chateau Hooghe,

turned into an artist workshop for the baron’s daughters Daisy, Louise, and Betty de Vinck, 15 September 1921, photograph by Antony d’Ypres. Oostende/ In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres. Painting on the easel is Derelict Tank on Hill 70 [sic] by Mary Riter Hamilton.

11.11 Mary Riter

Hamilton, Derelict Tank on Hill 70 [sic], 1920, oil on cardboard, 64.6 × 80.4 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-88, Copy negative C-107010.

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Dear May We received your Post card from Zoonebeke [sic] yesterday and we were glad indeed to again get word from you. It is a rather strange coincidence that almost exactly on the date on which you were writing this card to us, after not having heard from you for so many years, Florence discovered the visiting card which you left with her with a memorandum on it for Mr Townsend to deliver for us for safe keeping the picture of the ‘Mother and Child’ [see figure 2.11] which was left over from your sale in Toronto, she had entirely overlooked this card and found it in some old purse and gave it to me to get the picture, which I did, and just when we were thinking of you and hanging your beautiful painting on the walls of our parlor you were writing us the Post card. I was glad to note that you said in your card that your trip to Paris was going to be a rest for you and I trust you have not been working too hard. I wish we were near enough to drop in and see you, I was sorry that I was not in Toronto the last time that you passed through. 47

William’s affection and admiration for his late cousin’s wife is evident in the detailed account he gives of her painting and the lovely anecdote of having thought of her at almost the same time that she wrote to them, a story that would have deeply pleased Hamilton and made her feel connected to the family.48 No doubt gestures like these helped Hamilton in her plight, pulling her out of her isolation. Was this first connection with William after years without contact a gesture of farewell (should anything happen to her)? Or was there hope for a turnaround in her life? Perhaps it represented both. William’s family updates later in the same letter, too long to reprint here, reveal that life in Toronto had long since moved on from the war and that William was getting on with his large shoe business and family, the older children attending university and the younger attending school. Of course, William’s “trust” that she has “not been working too hard” is almost laughable considering Hamilton’s situation. His casual phrase, hoping to “drop in,” rings equally strange given her situation, and yet was a salutary reminder of familial normalcy that she had long since abandoned. Although Hamilton intended to continue her expedition beyond the autumn of 1921, there are several paintings that give her collection a sense of rounded completion. Zonnebeke is close to Passchendaele, where she circled back. In 1919, she had first started her Passchendaele series with her haunting pastel drawing Sunrise on Passchendaele Ridge (1919), the inscription indicating “crosses are German isolated graves.” 49 As one of only two pastel landscapes (the other being Maple Copse British Cemetery, Zillebeke [1919] as discussed above), Sunrise exhibits circular bands of red, blue, purple, and orange in the eastern sky illuminating the heavily silhouetted cross rising like a human presence to the right. As an affective transnational work of mourning, Sunrise proclaims a new beginning that starts with mourning the dead as a gesture

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11.12 Mary Riter

Hamilton, Sunrise on Passchendaele Ridge (crosses are German isolated graves), 1919, pastel on paper, 24.0 × 32.1 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-180, Copy negative C-104484.

toward healing. To this series, she adds other nationalities: The Grave of an Unknown British Soldier, Passchendaele Road (1920),50 depicting a sturdy cross with a thick patch of daffodils, and the Canadian Monument, Passchendaele Ridge (previously discussed in chapter 9). By 1921, this transnational narrative is further amplified with a singular Australian stone cross with the elaborate title Grave of the Son of Premier Hughes of Australia, Passchendaele Ridge (1921). A photograph found on the Australian War Memorial shows a strong similarity between the site Hamilton painted and what is described in the photograph as the grave of Claude Clark Hughes, a regular soldier (not a premier’s son), who died in action in October 1917; the monument was erected by his friend Corporal Walter E. Brown. What remains is the story of human connection, a perfect humanitarian emblem, and it seems to matter little that in this case Hamilton’s documentary record is erroneous.51 By rendering German, British, Canadian, and Australian crosses and monuments, Hamilton creates a transnational series of mourning, validating mourning as a fellow feeling that requires a consideration of the other. She also gave her series of the Menin road its poignant concluding emphasis by drawing Menin Road – Hell Fire Corner (1921),52 near the Menin Gate and Hotel Ypriana – one of the most fearsome locations of the war – in a trademark style. Remnants of past violence share the canvas with a shepherd and his dog

11.13 (above) Mary Riter Hamilton, Grave of the Son of Premier

Hughes of Australia, Passchendaele Ridge, 1921, oil on wood panel, 26.4 × 35.0 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-108, Copy negative C-103580. 11.14 (left) The Grave of 9712A Private Claude Clark Hughes

of the 20th Battalion, AIF of Whittlesea, Victoria, ca. 1918–19, photograph. Australian War Memorial, Campbell, Australia, A02288.

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11.15 Mary Riter Hamilton, Lille Gate, Ypres, Looking Outwards, ca. 1921, oil on plywood, 45.5 × 58.3 cm.

Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-82, Copy negative C-104803.

behind a flock of sheep. Where once the trucks raced past and shells hit the ground, now new life inserts itself amid the relics of violence. In the foreground, the railway that runs horizontally into the picture from the left comes to a halt before it reaches the centre – evidence of destruction. This gesture, too, sums up her empathic style, which opens a new third space for contemplating life beyond the war: a complex space of unquiet tranquility, a surreal juxtaposition of war and peace, where sheep graze on grasses still contaminated by mines and where flowers grow through barbed wire. While the Menin Gate served as a famous memorial site, the southern Lille Gate, which she painted in her large oil on plywood Lille Gate, Ypres, Looking Outwards (ca. 1921; figure 11.15),53 was the gate actually used for transporting troops to the front lines during the war. Additionally and important for Hamilton’s collection was that the Lille Gate ramparts served as Ypres’ headquarters for Canadians.

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11.16 Mary Riter

Hamilton, Ypres en fete, 1921, charcoal, 27.8 × 36.0 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-207, Copy negative C-008476.

Her last drawing in Ypres was likely made on 31 October 1921, Ypres Day, when 800 visitors arrived in the town. She made a small charcoal drawing entitled Ypres en fete (1921; figure 11.16), in which a large group of pilgrims gather in the Grande Place. This reprise of her 1920 oil Ypres Honours the Acting Mayor of 1914 (which had the descriptive inscription “Ypres en fete”), depicts a pair rushing forward to join the crowd, contrasting with the middle-aged woman in the centre, bent and wary, burdened by sorrow. While the crowd is abuzz, she stands apart in the foreground as a figure of isolation and loneliness – indeed, she might represent Hamilton herself. This sober picture mirrors Hamilton’s battered internal landscape, visualizing the moment when she decided – what was likely a most agonizing decision – that she could no longer continue her expedition. She must halt her work and take a rest – not yet knowing or admitting to herself that this moment would be final. Another dramatic turning point. This resilient city, which was a central location during the Great War and which Hamilton had immortalized in her paintings many times, would never see the artist again. She left Ypres a wounded war worker but also an unsung hero who now needed help herself. The police record would later indicate that she had left the city without registering her departure. It was not until fifteen months later that Hamilton provided explanations to Margaret Hart (quoted here ahead of the chronology).

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3 rue Joseph Bara Paris Feb. 7 1923 My dearest Mrs Hart It seems such ages since I heard from you but even so I know you have some good reason for not writing. I have done no writing at all for months since I left Flanders in Oct and very little before as you know.54 It is always difficult and was especially so when in the North and Flanders. When I left Ypres for Paris it was with the intention of taking a rest. I came to Paris but unfortunately was taken ill and haven’t been able to do any thing at all – since my arrival. You wouldn’t know me as I had to have my hair cut off. Not that I had such a lot of it but even the little I had makes a difference. I had several “close calls” and it worried me a lot to think that I hadn’t got my pictures in shape to show. My first efford [sic] after I get back to normal will be to put them in shape so that if I must die, I will be able to do so in peace. But I’m not going to die so there is no need for any one to get gloomy about it … My pictures are all here [except for] those I sent to Vancouver. My artist friends are most anxious that I give a Ex both here and in London of course there is no doubt that I would give it a good start for Canada if it could be done, but at present I cannot see my way clear. Fortunately for me one of my artist friends had rented a small studio appt for me and while it is the very simplest still it seems like a palace to me after my living in a canvass [sic] hut for so long and it seems too wonderful to have a fire and hot water. Paris is more normal than when I was here in 1919 but even so it is a very different Paris to what it was when I was here before the war but all the same Paris cannot help being Paris. 55

She brought her work to 3 Rue Joseph Bara, in the artist quarters of Montparnasse in the 6th arrondissement. The house still stands, revealing that the dormer windows of Hamilton’s attic studio overlooked the roofs and red chimneys of Paris. Today considered a historical site, the white sandstone building was then a renowned address: the ghosts of Modigliani and Jules Pascin still haunted the building’s illustrious lower halls. Of the 227 paintings that Hamilton later donated to the Public Archives of Canada, 64 have an inscription on the back bearing the address 3 Rue Joseph Bara, suggesting that they were returned there following her various exhibitions. She was still hoping to turn some of her sketches into paintings in her studio, and also hoping to continue her expedition after a rest; clearly, she was set to manage the psychological wounds she had suffered. However, the ensuing events in Paris – though the records remain enigmatic and fragmentary – put a definite end on her expedition, leaving only the echo of her words: “My first efford [sic] after I get back to normal will be to put [my pictures] in shape so that if I must die, I will be able to do so in peace.” 56

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I was very glad to lend the collection, of course, and the exhibition was opened in the foyer of the National Opera House by the Minister of Fine Arts on June 10th, 1922. After opening the exhibition, Monsieur Bérard, on behalf of the French Government, presented me with the “palmes académiques,” and in presenting me with the decoration said that he “was happy to be able to add another link to the chain binding France and Canada so closely.” M A R Y RI T ER H A MILTON, 1926 1

On the sunny Saturday morning of 10 June 1922, seven months after settling in Paris, Mary Riter Hamilton stood in her best frock in the foyer of the Théâtre National de l’Opéra on the Right Bank of the river Seine. Around her, the walls soared eighteen metres high, sparkling in red and gold. With Diana, Eurydice, and Psyche watching from the vaulted ceiling, Hamilton’s artworks had been curated around architect Louis Duthoit’s scaled model of the proposed Somme Memorial for the Dead, a large sprawling structure in white replete with a rotunda. Organized by the Somme Memorial Fund, the exhibition was part of a large-scale fundraiser: five million francs would be required to build the ambitious monument to the dead of the Allied Somme. Though the number of visitors is unknown, newspaper records indicate that government officials, military commanders, and the opera director were present to champion the new plans.2 Today, that the proposed monument never materialized3 is but a footnote to what does matter for Hamilton’s story: her vision of public exposure for her collection came to fruition in a brilliant fashion. While the official war workers had exhibited in group shows in London, New York, and Toronto, by 1922, Hamilton had exhibited her war work in Paris, Amiens, Arras, Vancouver, and Victoria.

Into the Limelight

In this opulent public ceremony, reported on by national newspapers, the French minister of public instruction and fine arts, Léon Bérard, awarded her the Palmes académiques, the highest distinction (except for the Legion of Honor) that could be conferred upon a woman.4 No other Canadian war artist – officially commissioned or otherwise – was distinguished in this manner, and her name and achievement were brandished in the international newspapers. “Mary Riter Hamilton, Canada’s First Woman Artist,” the Calgary Herald had recently boasted, claiming her as a figure of national pride after her Market among the Ruins was exhibited at the Paris Salon (see figure 8.14).5 The exhibition ended with a performance of the opera The Martyr Saint Sebastian (Le Martyre de saint Sébastien), drawing an audience of 300 people to the opera house. With music by Debussy, libretto by D’Annunzio, and costumes by Léon Bakst, Russian actress Ida Rubinstein was cast in the leading role of the patron saint of soldiers and athletes. Having miraculously survived the Romans’ attempts to execute him, Saint Sebastian’s is the story of a martyr who displays tremendous grace under pressure – much as Hamilton did herself. In mid-July, Hamilton travelled to Amiens, north of Paris at the Somme, for another exhibition.6 In a formal address, the president of the General Council of the Somme Department praised Mary Riter Hamilton for her exhibition and courageous presence on the battlefields. At least one newspaper alluded to the possibility of Hamilton donating her work to the French cause.7 Despite the increasing international recognition, however, Canadian officials were not so forward in acknowledging Hamilton’s accomplishments. Coincidentally, Edmund Walker was touring central Europe at the time looking for paintings to purchase for Canada’s National Gallery. During a dinner with Beaverbrook in London, the two men might well have discussed the recent acclaim of their countrywoman, who had applied to both men during the war and been denied institutional support from each. In the end, she delivered them an unexpected blow, receiving highest accolades for her work in France.8 Their continued silence speaks volumes about their embarrassment and their irritation in witnessing Hamilton’s public success. Even then, with her battlefield odyssey completed, a small subsidy would have helped her immensely, as she was still stranded in Paris, unable to travel for lack of funds. In 1922, after the sparseness of the war years, the National Gallery received $30,000 to purchase new art, but none of this made it her way (it is worth noting that Walker’s spending received regular criticism from the public).9 By March 1923, her sister-in-law Annie May Hamilton Strong, in Toronto, wrote to Walker on behalf of Hamilton,10 at around the same time that she purchased Les sacrifiées (informally known as the Goose Girl). Despite Hamilton’s continued financial difficulties, she was delighted to see her work resonating with such a vast audience. On 20 June, in a rare moment

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of self-satisfaction, she wrote a brief but heartfelt note to the Hart family in this regard: 3 rue Joseph Bara June 20th 1922 My Dearest of Friends I am mailing you a few copies of newspapers which will let you know better than I can how my work has been received here. I am sending them to you because I feel I owe it to you to let you know what I have been doing since I left you. For if it had not been for your financial and moral support I never could have had the courage to undertake what I did – and my thoughts are of you and what you will think for I know that though we seem not to have kept in touch by letter that our hearts remained the same … Affectionately yours Mary Hamilton.11

The whirlwind of exhibitions and media attention continued into the summer, when journalist Frederick G. Falla interviewed Hamilton for the McClure Newspaper Syndicate. The interview took place in Hamilton’s studio near the Luxembourg Garden, prompting Falla to remark: “And one’s eyes must wander from the woman to her work and back again to the sensitive ‘hallucinated’ face – as the French would call it – of the artist to grasp the full spiritual significance of what she has accomplished.” 12 Despite her reluctance, his article elaborates on Hamilton’s landscape of menace and fear in its subheadings, turning the artist into a heroine: MENACED BY HUMAN JACKALS Solitary Artist Was Continually at the Mercy of Prowling Gangs of Criminals and Often Had no Neighbors Save the Chinese Engaged in Exhuming the Dead. ROAD SHE USED BLOWN UP. Although the Cut-Throats of No Man’s Land Seemingly Made at Least One Attempt to Kill Her, Plucky Canadian Artist Makes Light of the Risks She Ran While Picturing War’s Inferno.13

The accompanying photograph captures Hamilton in harsh cinéma-vérité style from a low angle. Standing in her artist’s white frock, her hands are busy with her dog. Averting the viewer’s gaze, she guards her internal life from prying eyes. Despite the youthful bob and finger waves in her hair, her face exhibits the effects of time and hard living. The grooves around her mouth reveal her exhaustion, even though her firm jaw still gives her face a strong, determined look.

Into the Limelight

12.1 Mary Riter Hamilton making light of her affliction in her postcard to Ellen Hart,

postcard postmarked 12 September 1922. Margaret Janet Hart Collection, MLCRC, Toronto.

Falla’s reporting would seem to mark the horrors as largely historical, yet Hamilton was still being haunted by that history in the present. Not even the glamorous exhibitions could vanquish her ghosts. By the time Falla’s article appeared on 10 September 1922, a doctor had recognized that she needed medical help, issuing a referral to Hertford British Hospital. In the beautiful Chateau-on-the-Loire-type structure located in the north of Paris, where many soldiers had been treated during the war, she was now receiving nourishment and treatment for her psychological collapse. This hospital would become a place of return, as she writes at the very end of an undated letter, confiding to Hart: “Do not be worried when I tell you that I am in the Hospital. I’ve been ill and under heavy strain for so long and unable to look after myself as I should. Went to see British doctor and he sent me here. It is the Hertford – British Hospital at Neuilly. I am being well cared for and had I had some help sooner should not have arrived at this state. I will write you more fully later.” 14 She never shared a diagnosis in her letters, and may well never have received one beyond being malnourished and “nervous.” Hamilton’s September 1922 postcard to Ellen, for instance, light-heartedly focuses on the goose and cat shown on its front, the mascots of the Hertford British Hospital. “This little cat is a friend of mine,” she wrote whimsically, detracting from the severity of her illness.15

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n Earlier that month, Hamilton had opened an exhibition, showing “a small selection of pictures of the battlefields and devastated areas of Northern France at the Galeries Simonson, 19 rue Caumartin, Paris.” The review of 17 September 1922 offered critical praise: “A great epic poem has resulted, from which M. Simonson has selected a few of the most suggestive verses.” 16 These selections included paintings from Arras, Ypres, Dixmude, and Menin, which the reviewer considered “valuable both artistically and historically, as they commemorate phases rapidly changing or already changed.” 17 The exhibition uniquely magnetized the appreciative expatriate crowd, which included American painter Adele Watson, who had studied with Hamilton years earlier in Paris. Adele Watson decided to seek out Hamilton’s studio and did so accompanied by her sister, Katharine Watson, who would soon play an important role in Hamilton’s life, and their mother. The three women climbed to the fifth floor, where the corridor became claustrophobically tight, and knocked at the door with Hamilton’s business card tacked on the outside. They were dismayed by Hamilton’s stark poverty and felt compelled to offer their financial support. Recognizing the vastness of the collection, the Watson sisters urged her to sell some paintings as a means of subsistence – to think of her own needs before the needs of the soldiers. They introduced her to an American heiress who was impressed with the work and purchased a painting of the ruined belfry of Ypres.18 Even though Hamilton did sell a small number of paintings during this time to her American friends, she did so most reluctantly, as if she was breaking her idealistic principle in doing so. Considering her collection sacrosanct, the idea of selling her battlefield work was accompanied by guilt and anxiety; as she had written to Hart just a few months earlier: “I am not selling the pictures though I do need the money but shall try and keep them for the purpose I told you off [sic]. I cannot break away from my ideal and of course I never should have done them at all had I not had an ideal.” 19 Despite being given the opportunity to improve her own condition, Hamilton continued to insist on bringing her collection back to the people of Canada, though the cost to herself and her own well-being was immeasurable. n During the cold winter months of 1922–23, Hamilton paused to rinse her brush in a jar of murky fluid, looking out onto the grey Paris winter through the foggy window of her studio. The unfinished canvases beckoned, keeping her indoors through the coldest months. Of her 320 battlefield paint-

Into the Limelight

ings, 60 were in Vancouver with Alex Paton, having already received impressive exposure on the west coast of Canada; but the rest were with her in Paris, some of them still unfinished. Even though the work was slow, and she was not entirely happy with the results, she finally considered the battlefield paintings Hart had commissioned to be complete. When her patron first offered to support Hamilton, she did so with the expectation that she would receive some of these paintings to do with as she wished. Finally, Hamilton was delivering on that promise. After shipping them to Hart in Victoria, she anxiously awaited her patron’s verdict. Hart’s swift and effusive response brought great relief and joy to Hamilton in early 1923, when she was sick with a bad attack of the flu. On 3 February, she penned a response to her patron that was as enthusiastic as it was illuminating: Paris Rue Joseph Bara Feb 3rd 1923 My dear friend, I find no words to express the pleasure your letter gives me … Your letter has cheered me a lot and I am so glad you liked the pictures and feel that I realy [sic] had to give them they never could have been done otherwise – knowing your feeling for art and appreciation of the whole situation, I am more than glad of your approval – to feel that my financial situation is about as bad as it can be, is not so much a cause for me to worry as it should have been had I received a letter from you saying that you thought the pictures not worthwhile. I will not try to conceal the fact that I should be glad indeed to have some of my pictures in Victoria sold and knowing that you are less busy now than you may be when the spring comes … You see I used up all my cpr shares so now I’ve nothing and here I am! … Your approval of the pictures is worth more to me than any title besides I realy havn’t [sic] done the work as well as I ought to have done it and if there is any thing good in it it is owing to the courage and inspiration given me by our heroes! So I only hope if the work will be a help to those maimed men Heroes … You are so often with me in thoughts but I should live to see you all but unless the unexpected happens I am without any hope of returning for the simple reason I haven’t the money it cost me considerable to have the pictures to show them here. But I felt that I ought to show them before sending them to Canada as they now have the approval of the French critics and Government. So this ought to put a value on them for the Amputation Club. I have great regrets at not being able to carry the matter further but I owe still for some of the framing and so for my living I will not speak of that part of it. Please give my best thanks to all who are so kind as to take an interest in your efforts for a show and my love to my friends and you all. Believe me that I am full of gratitude for your kind thoughts. Affectionately yours Mary Hamilton. 20

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Her reticence and understatement obscure the red flags readers of her letters can see with hindsight. In confirming that money from the sale of her cpr shares is used up, her letter corroborates her material crisis and her aggressive selfdenial and self-restriction imposed by poverty (“for my living I will not speak of that part of it”). As well, the letter lays bare the enormous guilt and self-doubt (“I realy havn’t done the work as well as I ought to have done”) in the face of all the positive attention her work was receiving. As counter-intuitive as it may be, this artistic self-doubt was exacerbated by her change in living situation. No longer spontaneous and impulsive as an itinerant artist on the battlefield, she hoped to turn some of her sketches into formal studio paintings, but was too exhausted and burned out to work, as she explained in a frank letter to Hart (quoted at the end of the previous chapter). That said, she never doubted the ultimate importance of her war collection. She was working to add value to her paintings through exhibitions, and yet her ambitious efforts to exhibit her war art in London would become another biographical turning point, a crisis that would shape her legacy. How much she associated her legacy with this London exhibition, a fundraiser arranged by the organizers of the Somme Memorial for the Dead, can be seen by the fact that she created a beautifully designed and printed catalogue to distribute to the public ahead of the exhibition21 even though she was bankrupt, and had to starve herself to finance its production. The catalogue presented her charcoal drawing of the Cloth Hall on its cover and listed 125 works she planned to send to London; she even had Paton ship several of her earliest battlefield paintings for inclusion.22 One is compelled to conclude that for Hamilton’s expedition, this showcase represented some much-needed closure; it was a major milestone in being able to consider her battlefield work complete. The pressure that resulted is evident in the desperate tone of her next letter to Hart. Those framing her work had taken a large number of paintings hostage, threatening to sell them if she was unable to settle her debt. As she explained to Hart: When I received your dear letter dated Jan 8th and you generously suggested that you might be able to dispose of some of my pictures if I would give you a price in then knowing how long news takes to reach you and that you would be more likely to have the time to give to the matter if I let you know at once I sent you a cable saying to sell pictures at half price and less if necessary … You see I owe for part of the framing of the pictures and as the bill is now standing for a year the people are pressing me for the money and unless I can know something definitive soon I fear I will lose my pictures as they are becoming impatient. I called to see them just now and asked them to waite [sic] until I could get a reply to this letter. They have pressed me to do so but if you should not let me know at once when you receive

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this it is hard to tell just what may happen to one in the matter. I have given these people thousands of frs but since the war, the French are very different. Please do not hesitate to tell me if nothing can be done as it is better for me to know the worst and face it. I have had rather bad attitude with my heart lately and worry perhaps more than [is] right … If nothing can be done I beg of you to let me know as the matter is urgent – critical. Fortunately I do not care for anything else as I simply do without everything. Please forgive me for writing in this pressing way. With much love to you and the family. Affect. Mary H – . 23

Even as her idealism forced her to do “without everything,” the stark reality of poverty and debt closed in on her. That she still owed the framers a considerable sum of money related to the Théâtre National de l’Opéra exhibition the year before was a source of extreme stress – and most dangerous to her vulnerable psyche as she was doing her best to manage. By threatening to sell the paintings they held, the framers jeopardized not only her London exhibition but also the war collection itself. Her heart palpitations returned. n Thousands of kilometres away, on Canada’s west coast, Hamilton’s paintings hung on the walls of Hart’s townhouse in Victoria. Responding to the artist’s call for help, Hart sold one of these paintings to her daughter Ellen and sent $50 ($740 in 2020) to Hamilton. Unbeknownst to Hamilton, Hart then contacted Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the famous arctic explorer and a former rumoured romantic interest of Hamilton, urging him to buy a painting. Stefansson, who then lived in London, received the note with concern and did not hesitate to offer help. His friend, Montreal composer and organist George Brewer, happened to be visiting him in London before travelling to Paris. As Brewer recalls in his diary,24 Stefansson was anxious for his friend to look over the paintings. Brewer had instructions to buy them. After arriving in Paris’s mid-July heat, Brewer headed to Hamilton’s studio on Rue Joseph Bara, where he found what he described in his diary as “Bohemia with a vengeance.” Elated and buoyed by Brewer’s good news that Stefansson wanted to buy her war collection to help her – she served him tea and kindly declined the offer; that same evening she penned a letter to Stefansson to communicate that she had no intention of selling her collection. My dear Mr Ste[f]ansson Your friend Mr Brewer called this afternoon with your message. I am deeply touched by your trouble and want to thank you most warmly for your kind offer of assistance in my financial difficulties for the moment the urgent need is past as Mrs Hart to whom I wrote

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asking her to dispose of some property and pictures in Victoria had already sent me fifty dollars for pictures sold, with this I was able to pay part of my bill for framing my pictures the framer firm who were pressing me for this balance because of my intentions to send part of my collection to London – and it was the fear that I might lose my pictures that made me send the s.o.s. I do not owe for any thing else so have nothing to fear [from] elsewhere … Please excuse this hasty card I felt I must write you at once it is such a comfort to know I have so good a friend and I find no words to express my appreciation. Kindest – regards May Hamilton 25

Despite her reassurances to Stefansson that the crisis was past, in fact, her decision would require a most painful final sacrifice from her: a relinquishing of her pre-war collection. How much this collection meant to her, and how excruciating a sacrifice it was, can be seen by the fact that for over a decade, she had priced a good number of paintings in the Paris Collection so high that no buyer would be able to afford them and they would therefore stay in her possession. At this watershed moment, she entreated her friend Hart to come to Paris herself and stay in her studio, to talk things over: “no words could in any way express the joy of seeing you.”26 At this point, she placed an enormous trust in her long-time friend and patron who was now becoming her partner in selling – far below par – the precious works she had painted in Paris, Italy, and Spain more than a decade earlier. She instructed Hart: “If you can sell [the pictures] do so. If the price is low well in any case it is at least something when I have nothing to go on with, and the fear of losing all my years [of] labour … I’m in need – desperate need, and they must go for what you can get for them.”27 That Hamilton did this confirms without a doubt the high value she assigned to her war collection. She had come to consider her war work as her magnum opus, the work that would define her legacy for decades and perhaps centuries to come. The work that she had wrested from the scarred landscape of France and Belgium would not only give her a place and voice in her nation’s history but also would acknowledge the suffering and resilience of a generation of soldiers and civilians. Still, the price was enormous. Whereas Hamilton had left Victoria four years earlier independent, with a strong and resilient body and mind, and with modest savings, she was now forced to make the shameful admission of her utter material defeat. But worse was to come. n It was in the troubled twilight of these dramatic summer events, in September 1923, that Hamilton’s friend from Pasadena, Katharine Watson, returned to Paris for a visit. While the Watson sisters had been concerned about Hamilton’s abject poverty when they saw her a year earlier, Katharine

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was now shocked by it. Well dressed and well spoken, Watson was a Californian of means with interests in art and international travel. In stark contrast, Hamilton’s life and garments were in tatters, and Katharine could see that behind the facade of bohemianism lay the stark reality of deterioration. Realizing that her friend was too poor to afford a daily meal and was enfeebled from lack of nutrition, Watson took action and invited Hamilton to dinner almost every day of her three-week stay, and in that time earned the trust of the increasingly reclusive artist. During one of these meals, the emaciated Mary Riter Hamilton shared the letter she had received from Hart effusively praising her work. Here was evidence that the poverty-stricken expatriate had done exceptional work and was able to captivate an audience, earning patronage and admiration. Watson was drawn to Hamilton and came to think of her as a genius who, as such, had become rather detached from real, practical life. Nevertheless, one cannot help but wonder if Watson was not also interested in securing the collection for a California museum, as she repeatedly urged Hamilton to sell her work. In the same letter to Hart, Hamilton mentioned that “The Director of the Museum of San Francisco has his eye on [her paintings] it would be easy enough to sell them to the Americans but of course that is not Canada and it was for Canada I painted them.” 28 But more likely, Watson was motivated by a humanitarian desire to help an artist who had fallen on hard times. Moreover, Katharine enlisted her sister Adele, now living and working as an artist in New York, to help Hamilton with small subventions of money. By October Hamilton was alone and starving when she received news that her much-anticipated exhibition in London was put on hold. The 120 battlefield paintings she had readied for the occasion – which had been such an agony to frame and ship – were now sitting idle in storage at 1 Marble Arch in London instead of being seen. Hamilton received this piece of bad news from Joseph Coudurier de Chassaigne, the general commissioner and delegate for propaganda of the General Council of the Somme, in a letter dated 19 October. “A small setback. In other words a delay. Again!” 29 Workers’ strikes, inflation, and the rise of fascism had pushed commemoration and the fate of the wounded soldiers off the agenda of the media, governments, and the public. With the silence of the weeks and months that followed, Chassaigne’s reassurance – “I remain convinced that your exhibition will take place this winter in London!” – began to sound hollow.30 With her work sequestered in a London warehouse and her plans for a large exhibition now indefinitely on hold, Hamilton was reaching a breaking point. How would she reclaim and repatriate these paintings with no money and few physical and mental resources remaining? Looking in the mirror, did she glimpse the spectre of her flamboyant yet defeated father?

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n Meanwhile, in Pasadena, Katharine Watson was haunted by the image of Hamilton alone in the damp winter of Paris, teetering on the verge of breakdown. Having vowed to help her from afar, Watson sat at her typewriter and wrote to Hart, whom she had never met. In late November, she typed: 283 South Grand Avenue Pasadena, California, Nov. 29, 1923 My dear Mrs Hart: Please pardon me for using a typewriter to save you the trouble of deciphering a long letter in unfamiliar hand. When I was in Paris for three weeks in September of this year I saw Mary Riter Hamilton nearly every day. Before I came away she allowed me to read a very beautiful letter from you which was obviously one of her treasured possessions. I took the liberty of noting down your address with the definite purpose in mind of writing to you after I reached home. It is not possible after reading your letter to doubt that you have a deep affection for Mrs Hamilton as well as a real admiration for her character and a high opinion of her ability as an artist so I shall make no apologies for writing you at length in regard to the desperate situation in which I found her … When I went to Paris this fall, quite unexpectedly, I sent word at once to Mrs Hamilton and I had not been with her very long before I made up my mind that she was literally starving. She had a little money left I think but she was so frightened that she dared not spend enough to more than keep her alive. She was living on potatoes and onions and tea. She took one or two meals with me nearly every day and it was pathetic to see how ravenous she was. Before I left I learned that at one time she had only a franc and a half in the world, when help came from some quarter. She told the friend who was with me that this experience terrified her so that even when she had a little money she was afraid to spend a sou [five centimes] more than she had to, to keep alive. She looked so poverty stricken, so haggard and distressed that I realized very soon that she must be assured of the means to live for a few months at least, and also that she must have a few decent clothes in which she could appear before she could hope to find employment. I managed to persuade her that she must accept this help in order to get on her feet and eventually take care of hers[e]lf. She seemed so broken and worn out body and soul that I spoke more confidently to her than I felt myself. My sister and I and a friend are sending a little money each month because we think that she would starve if we did not do so. We are at the same time trying to sell a few of her pictures, small oil sketches of Ypres etc. and we are making every possible effort to

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find some way to help her to help herself. All she asks for is work, but she is so typically artistic in temperament and lack of practical ability that it is a difficult problem. It has been suggested that she might teach in a girls’ school and I shall be glad to know if you think she could fill such a position and if there might be an opening for her in a Canadian school with the reputation she has in her own country to back her. Unless we succeed in disposing of a picture or two we shall continue to send a small sum each month until her friends in Canada can be informed of her situation and take some measure to relieve her. Is there any possibility of her receiving a pension from the government? Have you societies or associations which have funds to be used for even temporary assistance in such a case? If no other means can be found are there not people who will at least join with us in helping her until some solution of the problem is found? It is very tragic, very humiliating to Mrs Hamilton to be in her present situation but there she is, and surely some way can be found which will not be too bitterly hard for her to accept, by which she can live without losing her self respect. My own sympathy for her is very deep. I shall appreciate it very much if you can suggest any solution to the problem. Sincerely Katharine C. Watson. 31

Watson’s deeply unsettling letter counters Hamilton’s secrecy with frank observation. This letter brings an urgent clarity to the vicious circle of self-starvation and self-abnegation in which the artist was trapped. With hindsight, her earlier comments regarding food reveal what she did her best to hide. Dying for a noble cause was preferable to the shame of admitting to poverty and bad health, but her idealism had ultimately brought her to the material and mental abyss. Just days before Christmas, her situation reached a crisis point. Now increasingly frightened of her own neighbours, Hamilton ran away from her studio, apparently without her paintings, and took refuge at the ymca in Paris. In the course of her flight, she had neglected to inform any of her loved ones, who were already gravely concerned for her well-being. In early February, Watson wrote to Hart and sought updates on their mutual friend, whose condition and erratic behaviour had become the subject of concern and gossip: Mrs Hamilton wrote us from the Y.W.C.A. on Dec. 21st, + mentioned the fact that a friend in Canada had sent her some money, and also that she had been quite ill + had been in the hospital. She did not mention the nature of her illness, but a friend of mine writes me that Mrs Hamilton thought the people in the apartment house had poisoned her. We became convinced that she would have to leave her studio because of the real, or

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imagined, persecutions to which she was being subjected. She had the fixed idea when I was in Paris that the concierge was putting vermin in her room in order to force her to leave. Because of this she was bathing in such strong disinfectants that the odor was very unpleasant. It seemed hardly possible to us that anybody could do such a thing but I have been assured that a low class concierge is capable of almost anything – anyway it seemed to us that a change of environment was absolutely essential to prevent her mind giving way under the strain of these real or imagined evils … Sincerely, Katharine C. Watson 32

Even though it seems difficult to trump the shock of Watson’s first letter, the details of her second letter compel us to see Hamilton’s mental collapse in relation to the battlefield. The fear of persecution reminds one of the “close calls” she wrote of – the dangers of the battlefield, from violence to toxins, and the fear of being poisoned became a recurring theme in her life. The reality of the battlefields was often one of lice nesting in the seams of shirts and rats scurrying through pillbox lodgings. Her earlier focus on having had to cut off her hair also suggests a response to vermin. What she refused to reference in even a single letter available to us today – that the battlefield was infested with lice and “corpse-rats” (as the soldiers in Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front called them) – now became a source of torment. As a biographer, I am left with a haunting image of Hamilton, emaciated, undressing in her grubby little apartment, stepping into a makeshift bath of bleach, scrubbing her grey skin red in an effort to rid herself of the terrifying vermin. The picture I paint in my own mind, of Mary Riter Hamilton in the flesh, disturbingly recalls the gravediggers protecting the corpses from vermin by dousing them with a strong chemical mixture. With a stress response that would not heal, her mental balance now shattered under the pressure of quotidian triggers in her entrenchment of the aftermath.33 The pains she inflicted on herself – from bathing in bleach to the enforced near starvation – were less severe than the mental torments she sought to escape. As with all private problems in Hamilton’s life, only glimpses survive. Two of these appear in her 21 December postcard to Hart, stating that she is “out of the hospital,” 34 and in a February 1924 report in The Daily Colonist indicating that “her health suffered severely by exposure and privation during those two years, and she has just lately left a Paris hospital after a long illness.” 35 And yet, her symptoms continued for months after, as a brief note to her friend Rosalind Young dated 13 May 1924 suggests: My dear Mrs Young After posting my letter to you I realized that I hadn’t given you my present address [and] I do so now. I haven’t been able to do any writing since my letter to you as I have this pain

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12.2 Mary Riter Hamilton escapes

from her studio and takes refuge with Mme Bourlain. Mary Riter Hamilton’s notecard to Rosalind Young, with chalk drawing of colonnade with human figures and a pool, one-page notecard on verso dated 13 May 1924. Mary W. Higgins Collection, Victoria, BC.

in the back of my head which prevents me from writing or expressing myself intelligently so while I have written both to Brucie and Mrs Hart on reading over the letters they were consigned to the waste basket. I suppose I cannot expect to get well in a day after being so long at a high tension. Today I’m feeling more like myself and mean to make another try. With much love to you all Mary Hamilton 36

These private lines suggest that Hamilton’s breakdown – or collapse, as she would call it – reached a new depth that kept her paralyzed and unable to function from the fall of 1923 to at least May 1924, with symptoms that included

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chronic headaches, an inability to work or even express herself coherently, and insomnia, as she reveals in a later letter. Interestingly, she illustrated her notecard to Rosalind with a drawing, proof that some days were better than others. She continued to manage her symptoms as she had since the summer of 1921, but now working to pull herself out of a deeper, more paralyzing crisis. Brushes lay untouched for weeks, then months. In the midst of this depression, she officially signed over to Hart her entire collection of pre-war paintings, which Hart had been storing for her in Canada, asking that Hart sell them in order to improve her financial situation in Paris and help save the war collection, which would give her peace of mind. To that end, the legal document that Hart asked the ailing artist to sign granted her Victoria patron sweeping executive power to “take possession of all paintings and other works of art [belonging to Hamilton] … within the Dominion of Canada.” 37 It is understandable, of course, that Hart wanted some legal protection for herself and some clarity before proceeding to sell Hamilton’s pre-war collection of paintings. But the heavy legal jargon of the document and Hamilton’s own health crisis, along with her implicit trust in Hart, may have obscured the fact that she effectively signed over full control over all of her work to Hart (technically including even the war work she had sent to the Amputation Club in Vancouver, which was clearly not Hamilton’s intent, judging by her own letters). Hart was to sell as much of the pre-war work as she could and remit the funds to Hamilton. With a mixture of both pride and anguish, Hamilton once again asserted that her war collection had supreme value and was worth the sacrifice. n Fortunately, help was on the way, as the women of Victoria had been alerted and took action. The University Women’s Club in Victoria, of which Hamilton was an honorary member, was soon abuzz with action, as Hart had shared the contents of Watson’s letters with these friends. Among these women, Hamilton had several other long-time friends who offered to help, including Rosalind Young, a scientist and geographer whose portrait Hamilton had painted years earlier. Long interested in issues of art, education, and social justice, these capable and conscientious women were early change-makers who did not wait for the government to improve social conditions but took things into their own hands, creating pragmatic solutions. Young contacted the Shuniah Lodge in Port Arthur, where Hamilton’s late husband had once been a member, with the aim of securing a small pension for her. Young’s engagement of a lodge member prompted action: as per their practice, the Port Arthur lodge took the case to the lodge in London, England, and two years later, Hamilton was granted

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the pension. Though small, this pension would support her in part to the end of her life. While it is lucky that Charles was able to help her from beyond the grave, it is sad that despite her contributions to Canada and to the world of art, Hamilton could not secure a pension on her own merit.38 In February, the Victoria women also appealed to Edmund Walker in a letter printed in The Daily Colonist (Victoria): “We beg your consideration regarding the work of our honorary member, Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton. We understand on good authority that her war pictures are cased and at No. 1 Marble Arch, London, England, and in grave danger of being lost to the Canadian nation. Such a loss would be incalculable. We beg you, therefore, as chairman of the National Gallery Committee, to take immediate action so that these war pictures may be preserved for succeeding generations of Canadians.” 39 The women of Victoria vividly remembered Walker from their futile efforts to lobby him for support of Hamilton’s work a decade earlier. Walker never replied – neither in 1914, nor in 1924; they made their protest known by publicizing their request to preserve Hamilton’s war work. As the letter went unanswered, one assumes that Walker had little interest; however, even if he had had an interest, time was not in his favour as just a month later, he died following a sudden bout of pneumonia. In April, Hart lobbied the government of British Columbia on behalf of Hamilton’s war art collection. Alex Paton, now publisher of the Grey Point Gazette, was holding the battlefield paintings that she had sent to The Gold Stripe. Paton did not recommend these paintings for the commercial art market but thought that ideally they should become the government’s permanent collection, as he argued: “The sketches sent from overseas were painted so soon after the war as to make them valuable in a way from that standpoint. In addition, the conditions under which she lived while doing this work should not be overlooked.” 40 These plans never came to fruition, as the government had little interest, not even in a decorated Canadian war painter. Their focus was no longer the war but workers’ strikes, the dissatisfaction of western farmers over wheat prices, and the repeal of prohibition – in short, concerns related to peacetime. Still, Hamilton was extremely touched by the Victoria women’s efforts. “I’m most pitifully home sick so much so that I cannot write without crying so please excuse a disjointed letter written through tears.” 41 From May to July 1924, the ideals of peace and friendship embodied by the Olympic Games overtook Paris, and even though Hamilton never mentions the Games in extant letters, this was a time of recuperation and consolidation. Through early summer, she boarded with a French family at 206 Boulevard Raspail. Though the comfortable bed granted her much-needed rest, she must also have taken solace in being unequivocally separated from her war paintings. Indeed, at Rue Joseph Bara, Hamilton had struggled daily to turn over her canvases and the stiff leaves of her unfinished work; to rotate and

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retouch them; to lay aside and shuffle and move about among them like a soldier constantly watching his step – and over his shoulder too. No doubt it was a relief that no trench scenes or paintings of dugouts or pillboxes or cemeteries leaned against the baseboards of her room or lay drying on every surface, triggering a return to the turmoil of the battlefields at all hours of the day. Perhaps by retreating from her war work, she was finally able to start healing. As she temporarily closed her door on her Rue Joseph Bara war work, another door opened during her recuperation. Hamilton once again displayed her remarkable resourcefulness. After experimenting with a variety of new tasks, she found herself returning to the realm of textile art. Having purchased no new clothes for a long time – her attire drab, as Katharine Watson noted – one imagines that part of her recuperation was her desire to make new clothing for herself as she had done in the past. While she provides no details about how she came to renew an old craft, the reader is left to imagine Hamilton’s encounter with silk. No doubt, the delicate material reconnected her with her teenage years, when she had won competitions with her textile accessories. Handling the silk and painting flowers was an artistic homecoming, a folding of herself back into the past when she was young and resilient and had been photographed with a crocheted veil adorning her head, dreaming of her future. After two-and-ahalf years of tense and feverish work followed by almost two years of abatement and depression, the pleasure of beauty finally returned to her a sheer joy in her work – the joy that she knew from childhood and that had prompted her original desire to be an artist. After months of affliction, Hamilton began to paint flowers on silk – massive apparitions of Flanders poppies blooming in more abstract style in the fertile soil of a new material (figure 12.3). In place of death scenes, she chose to paint large flowers in pink, exorcizing the trauma through abstraction. With a crock of heated wax and textile paints, Hamilton bent over her workbench. She cut silk, applied wax and then colour. She folded the dried scarf in a large newspaper and ironed out the wax before drying the beautiful scarf and draping it around her shoulders. These flowers became the garden that helped restore her to herself. Her day and night terrors became less frequent. By July, having emerged from her “collapse,” Hamilton was cautiously optimistic; the breakdown was becoming a breakthrough into a new life. Her friends were delighted when they visited and saw the colourful scarves drying on the clothesline. With the critical success of her scarves, she was now making scarves for a growing paying clientele. “She had been doing the square scarves in new and unusual effects much to the delight of the Paris dressmakers, when she got a rush order for eighteen to go to England. Such was the hurry that they were to go by aeroplane. How to get so many done in so short [a] time was the trouble. To save time Mrs Hamilton not to be beaten devised the scheme of cutting

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them diagonally and got her order off in time. So evol[v]ed the triangular scarf which has been such a popular one.” 42 In textile art, Hamilton had hit upon a conduit for recovery, independence, and financial security all at once. Even though she always downplayed the significance of her batik scarves in relation to her paintings, in fact, she must have considered them art since she submitted them for the Société des amis des arts de Seine-et-Oise’s 67th exhibition at the Versailles Orangerie, Palais de Versailles (6 June–15 July 1924). The event catalogue shows that she exhibited not only two war works (Notre-Dame de Lorette en 1919, la Chapelle and Le Marché dans les ruines, Ypres 1920) but also three batik scarves and one batik shawl.43 As she summed up in her letter: “I’ve been living through strenuous times but am glad to say that my health is greatly improved.” 44 n When Hamilton felt her health improve to the point of being ready to get back to work on her war paintings, she returned to her studio, sat down before a painting, picked up her brush … and paused. Perhaps her eyes searched over the canvas slowly, hesitantly. The more she examined it, the more it seemed to do everything it was meant to do, and she put it away. She looked at other canvases, and whereas they had seemed lacking before, they too felt complete. In this intimate moment, she made a realization that saved her life. Her collection was complete. As she emerged from illness and despair, her desire to paint her battlefield canvases was gone!45 Probably the single most dramatic and consequential moment of her recovery was this shift in her own perception of those paintings: she no longer had to trek the battlefields and add to the collection, or improve upon what she had done. They were no longer unfinished but completed sketches and paintings. In this way, the “collapse” was an opportunity for Hamilton to understand how to cope, how to make a significant change in her life, and how to move forward with her collection. Her letters reveal that by July she was making new plans. “I should like to go to work on a fruit farm in Canada. I think it better to do so then [sic] to try to make a living in Art.” 46 After years of expatriate living, she was once again in search of a home in Canada. The news of Walker’s death also seems to have opened a new path for her return. “I [forgive] him for what he did to keep my pictures from being bought for the National Gallery in 1912 … They have appointed an excellent man in his place who I believe is sincerely interested in Art (not as a means to benefit himself) and one I feel sure (from what I hear) who will take an interest in the work of Canadian Artists.” 47 While nothing seems to have come of Hamilton’s quixotic plans to become a fruit picker, more realistically,

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12.3 Mary Riter Hamilton, Untitled, n.d., silk batik scarf, 186 × 43 cm, signed by the artist. Mary Riter Hamilton

Collection, MLCRC, Toronto. Photograph by MLCRC (Justin Dyck), March 2017.

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12.4 Mary Riter

Hamilton’s Gold Medal, Paris, 1925. Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, BC. Photograph by MLCRC (JeanPaul Boudreau), September 2012.

she returned to teaching art, partnering with American book illustrator Richard W. Wallace, a close friend of modernist author James Joyce whose novel Ulysses had come out in 1922 in Paris. Hamilton secured a rare copy for her Victoria friends but did not read the novel herself.48 Wallace’s later January 1926 letter to Hamilton reveals their shared cultural values: “a large studio two rooms and a garden if you please. If Ruskin were alive he might tell of a little grille which lets one into a garden over which plays the halo like light of Art. I also have ivy on my door post and most of the other poetic necessities.” 49 He continues: “I had Miss Wyatt to tea the other day and I am going presently to her studio to get it back. We will talk much of you and say nice things about you and be sorry that you are not here.” 50 In her Paris studio, her hand continued to follow the expansive curves of abstract flowers – a biomorphic rhythm and style different from her battlefield paintings. She signed these scarves as works of art. They stood out from mainstream fashion for their bold textile designs, with giant floating flowers that remind the viewer of the integrative aesthetics of New York artists Florine Stettheimer and Georgia O’Keeffe – an art that crossed boundaries from the battlefield canvases into textile art with her continuing floral motifs. As her business thrived, Hamilton cultivated well-to-do and stylish customers in Paris and London. No doubt it was her passion for remembrance that

Into the Limelight

drove her to paint the commemorative flowers – both wild and newly cultivated – of Europe’s battlefields. It was this passion that earned her international acclaim, and at least one of Hamilton’s scarves has survived (see figure 12.3) and is on permanent exhibit at the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre Gallery in Toronto. After the vicissitudes of two and a half years in the battlefields and four years of recuperation, the decorative art that had first launched her creative career finally enabled her return home. With renewed ambition, Hamilton submitted seven hand-painted and hand-dyed scarves to the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in 1925, for which she was awarded the Gold Medal in the British Textile Section for hand-painted dress accessories. On this emotional high, she spontaneously decided to return home to Canada, doing so with a clear vision for her war collection, which must have been sharpening for some time. As The Chicago Tribune and the Daily News New York reported on 3 November 1925: “Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton left yesterday by way of London for Canada to carry forward another fine of her artistic endeavors, that is the exhibition in several Canadian cities of her collection of Canadian battlefield pictures … After the pictures have been exhibited in various cities, they will be placed permanently in a Canadian museum.” 51 As she travelled to London, England, to reclaim her paintings, and on 28 November left London for Canada, Hamilton was travelling with a sense of purpose for her collection, though it was less clear how she would achieve her goals. She had sacrificed a great deal to paint the battlefields and blaze a new trail with her art – and when she finally returned home, she did so by reasserting her proud independence. As she later summed it up: “I made enough money to bring my pictures and myself, home.” 52

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It is a great honour and privilege to know that the work done within the inexpressible desolation of No Man’s Land has been considered worthy of a place among the Memorials of our Canadian men, the survivors and the fallen. I do not think I could re-live that time; and I know that anything of worth or anything of beauty which may be found in the pictures themselves reflects only dimly the vision which came then; the visions which came from the spirit of the men themselves. M A R Y RI T ER H A MILTON 1

I am so glad that you are having the success that you deserve over there and I join in the applause. RICH A RD WA L L ACE, C A . 1926 2

A fitting end to her turbulent expedition, the westward sailing on Hamilton’s journey home was rough since hurricane winds on 5 and 6 December 1925 put the 141 passengers on edge. They were midway across the Atlantic travelling on the ss Minnekahda from Southampton for New York when a terrible storm shook the boat.3 The tempest was so fierce that it was reported in the newspaper, although Hamilton, calm and cool, did not mention it in the letter she wrote to Margaret Hart. Nonetheless, as she sat down at a table on board the ship on Monday, 7 December, the passage of time and the irrevocable shift in her life was evident. When Hamilton left Canada in 1919, her skirt fell all the way to her ankle boot, in keeping with the custom of previous centuries, whereas now she sat with a modern hemline just under the knee, and with short-bobbed hair under

Going Home

a cloche hat. A photograph from that time shows Mary Riter Hamilton gazing at the camera with intense stoicism: her eyes marked with severe dark shadows, her body emaciated and fragile; her knuckles prominent as she holds her fox fur stole, two wedding bands encircling her finger; her face square like that of a young boy. The six years spent in Europe had passed in a blur of activity that transformed her. Ruminating on the ways in which she had changed, she penned the following note on steamship letterhead just hours before arriving in New York, announcing in elegant script her imminent return to Canada. Dearest Mrs Hart This is just a few lines to let you know that I am returning to Canada with my pictures. I’ve waited to write because I wasn’t at all certain that I should be able to leave. First let me ask you to forgive my silence. I trust you will do so for although I didn’t write you have been in my thoughts. My reason for not writing was simply that I was going through such hardships and finally I found that I could make money with my art decorative work so I have been working hard at it and got together sufficient money to return. I needed quiet [sic] a lot but for my pictures were in London those I sent over for Ex. and it has been rather an expensive affair to get them again. I had to leave without all of them, and was unable to remain longer on account of those I sent in from Paris as I must be in Canada to receive them as a matter of fact I couldn’t come back now only I have a definite place to return to, owing to an offer and suggestion from a Mrs Weir of Winnipeg who was in Paris last summer[.] She has a daughter who teaches dancing and she (Mrs Weir) is confident that I shall have no difficulty in getting a class. I am going directly to her home so will give you her address below. Of course I am unable to do any thing about my pictures that is as to showing them as I haven’t the means to do so, but I will store them until such times as something can be done. Any suggestions or plan that you or the Womens University Club may have with regard to the future of the pictures will be most gratefully received. I wish I could come and talk it [over] with you but on the other hand it may be better that it should be arranged by you. I personally only ask that they serve as far as possible the purpose for which I painted them, that is as a monument in benefit to the Amputation Club and those who never returned. I shall write again when I reach Winnipeg I should like to see you. I hope you are all well and prosperous. We shall arrive tomorrow at 9 in New York. With much love to you all As always affectionately Mary Hamilton. 4

This was Hamilton’s first letter to Hart after an eighteen-month silence, and though her tone was cordial, she was not returning to Victoria. Indeed, there was an increasing rift between the two, stemming from the fact that Hart had

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13.1 Mary Riter Hamilton wearing fur stole, in a rare

13.2 Mary Riter Hamilton to Margaret

photograph of the artist in the wake of her expedition,

Janet Hart, handwritten six-page letter on

though it is not clear if the photo was taken in Europe

Atlantic Transport Line letterhead dated

or in Canada, n.d. [ca. 1920s], photograph. Ronald T.

7 December 1925, 1. Margaret Janet Hart

Riter Collection, Vancouver, BC.

Collection, MLCRC, Toronto.

sold most of Hamilton’s pre-war collection to family members for very low, almost wholesale, amounts, perhaps with the assumption that Hamilton could buy them back upon return. Having given Hart carte blanche in executing the sale, there was little Hamilton could do, but she resented being treated like a charity case. Having long since emerged from her deepest hour of need, Hamilton began – perhaps uncharitably – to regard Hart’s expedient aid as a lasting insult. The resulting acrimony would grow over the following years. Hamilton’s homecoming would be slow, with several stops and emotional visits in between. In wintery New York City, at 51 West Tenth Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues, she entered the renowned Studio Building, then the centre for the art scene in New York. Here she visited Kahlil Gibran, her former partner in running an art school in Paris around 1910, now the famed author of the prose poem The Prophet (1923), which would become a cult text of American

Going Home

counterculture during the Vietnam War. In his apartment was a precious piece of the now-distant past, of the innocent past, which came back to her there: a little shrine of the Madonna. It was a relic that once belonged to Hamilton, but Gibran had won it from her in a child-like wager during a sketching trip – she had dared him to jump over a brook without falling in. The Madonna was a totem of the spirituality and idealism that united the two visionaries. Hamilton later recalled this visit most affectionately.5 Just a few houses further down on Tenth Street was the studio of Adele Watson, who with her sister Katharine had been Hamilton’s life saver, supporting her from afar in the Paris winter of 1923–24. While it’s easy to imagine that Hamilton, still vulnerable, would have been teary and extremely grateful during this visit, in her later account of the occasion, she makes only passing reference to visiting New York friends. Moreover, in Hamilton’s personal archives, they are listed merely as collectors of her work. No doubt the deficiency of the available archived material is at fault, but questions remain. Did she resent that Watson had revealed her tragic circumstances to her friends in Victoria? One suspects that the memory of being in such dire need was acutely painful and shameful to be recalled. Hamilton’s reticence and secrecy would continue to hide the underside of her life. Two weeks later, Hamilton arrived in Montreal by train and stayed at the University Women’s Club while awaiting the arrival of her paintings, which she personally checked through customs, before sending them off to Winnipeg by train. Speaking to a reporter from the Montreal Gazette on 20 December, she circled back to the idealism first expressed in her interview with Anne Perry in 1919: “The desire to help, particularly the men of the Amputation Club, of Vancouver, by presenting to them a collection of paintings which could be exhibited to raise funds for the veterans, used for etchings or postcards, which might be sold for their benefit … inspired the artist to spend three years undergoing hardships which require a high degree of courage.” 6 She next stopped in Ottawa, where Aurelia and Robert Rogers, trusted friends with deep roots in Ottawa’s political sphere, were able to advise her toward finding a permanent home for her collection in the nation’s capital. Next, she travelled to Toronto, visiting the home of her husband’s cousin William A. Hamilton and his wife. In Rosedale, wandering past the sprawling mansions of Toronto’s elite, she “found the address difficult to find owing to the contours of the streets in that district. She was in despair, when suddenly she saw a man coming along toward her. So she asked him to tell her where she would find the address she sought. At her question he immediately put his hand in his pocket and brought out a long instrument which she thought at the moment was a gun. However, when she got her breath she realized that it was only an ear trumpet.” 7 That Hamilton feared he was pulling a gun, and may even have started to bolt

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or make the beginnings of a scene, speaks volumes, showing how her automatic responses were still attuned to the battlefield. She would need time to readjust to her home country, and she rested in Toronto into the New Year. Finally, in frigid January 1926, she made her long train ride home to Winnipeg, travelling westward like so many returning Canadian veterans before her. Hamilton’s friend, forty-five-year-old Adina Falconer, now a librarian at the University of Manitoba, was a godsend of homelike familiarity, their friendship dating back to Hamilton’s time as a young widow and their shared travels to Berlin in 1901. Cheery Adina helped her friend settle into her new studio at Devon Court on Broadway, then a premier apartment complex in Winnipeg, where she would stay until 1928. In the following months and years, Adina also did her best to patch up Hamilton’s friendship with Margaret Hart, as Hart was upset by the growing alienation. “Hammy really adores you, and is very distressed at the thought of you having suffered at her hands,” Adina wrote to Hart in an undated letter.8 Hamilton herself, appearing to understand that her dissatisfaction with Hart’s efforts to help was not entirely fair, was not ready to end the long friendship, adding a postscript in a scrawling and uneven hand that also reveals her continued mental troubles: “It is impossible to make myself understood at present, I am so terribly disturbed that you should have suffered.” 9 In defiance of her fragile health, on 27 January 1926, Hamilton had a showing of her battlefield paintings, the first since her return to Canada. The large exhibition, Impressions of the Battlefield after the Armistice, was held at Winnipeg’s Marlborough Hotel, its marble and stained-glass architecture echoing something of the splendour of the Théâtre National de l’Opéra. By this time, the interest in her work was no longer exclusively commemorative; it was artistic but also biographical. The night before the opening, Hamilton, like Odysseus to the Phaeacians, recounted the tale of her wanderings and experiences for the women of the Winnipeg branch of the Canadian Women’s Press Club: how she first began to paint the battle zone for the Amputation Club, before “extending her work till it covered a large area of the segment of the line held by Canadians.”10 A few months later, on 8 May, the Women’s University Club of Winnipeg opened another exhibition of Hamilton’s paintings at the Fort Garry Hotel, on 222 Broadway. n By February 1926, Hamilton had embarked on a new campaign. She had entertained a visitor in her studio, Madge Macbeth, who was writing an article for the Toronto Star Weekly, which would appear on 22 February under the title, “One of Our Last War Workers Comes Home.” 11 For Macbeth, a feminist writer and the first female president of the Canadian Authors Association, Hamilton

Going Home

represented a trail-blazing modern artist. Specifically highlighting the artistic nature of this odyssey, Macbeth was the first critic to make a case for the multimodality of Hamilton’s art: in addition to her war art in oil (grinding her own colours in the battlefield), pastel, and charcoal and pencil, her impressive record also included work as a portrait painter (live portraits and from photographs); a theatre painter (“curtains, furniture and costumes all profited by her artistic brush” during the war); and an award-winning textile artist (exhibiting “originality of design and effective method of painting on silks – the result of which can best be described as slightly resembling batik”).12 In her new studio, Hamilton enjoyed talking with this intelligent counterpart: a writer who was a widow like herself and in whom, with rare frankness, Hamilton confided about her mental breakdown and recuperation. In turn, Macbeth recognized in Mary Riter Hamilton a complex artist who had made consequential contributions to shaping her nation: “she has performed a service of incalculable value not only for the soldiers but for the Dominion of Canada.” 13 The image reproductions feature what looks like Hamilton’s sketch of a concrete pillbox captioned: “For a Time Mrs Hamilton Lived in this Double-Decker Pill-Box.” 14 There is also a photo of Hamilton in her painter’s smock in her new Devon Court studio surrounded by some of her battlefield paintings – the Cloth Hall and Nine Elms camp with her own Nissen hut behind her, the cross in Passchendaele to the right, and more Ypres paintings in the foreground. She looks directly at the camera, confident and proud, with the caption underneath: “Mrs Hamilton at Work.” 15 With the destiny of Hamilton’s battlefield collection still pending, Macbeth’s tribute was a timely call-to-action for Hamilton’s artistic achievements to be recognized at a national level. Despite the past grievances, Hamilton still hoped to find a home for her collection in the National Gallery. By the spring of 1926, Hamilton had strategized her campaign from Winnipeg, where she was holed up in the safety of her studio, which she rarely left. Her friend Aurelia Rogers (the experienced spouse of a long-time federal politician) was keen to help, and did so by delivering in person a sampling of seven battlefield paintings to the National Gallery. On 14 April 1926, the gallery trustees sat in judgment of her war work, as they had done a dozen years earlier. This time, Dr Shepherd served as chair on the committee that included Eric Brown, still the gallery’s director, and the Hon. Vincent Massey, who was among the newcomers on the board. The board reached a compromise – a small gesture. On the one hand, they declined the full collection, reasoning that her work duplicated work already in the Beaverbrook Collection of War Art.16 This was only partially true, given Hamilton’s original focus on reconstruction, and the scenes she painted of Hill 70, St Julien, Farbus Wood, Mons, and her series of every part of the ramparts, to name but a few.17 On the other hand, they recommended that a small selection

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13.3 Mary Riter Hamilton in her studio at Devon

Court, Winnipeg, photograph reproduced in “A Generous Gift to Canada,” Echoes, March 1928, 11. Library and Archives Canada/OCLC 3339442.

of her war work should be purchased for the gallery’s permanent collection.18 Thus, the trustees finally acknowledged that Mary Riter Hamilton did have a permanent place in the National Gallery. This in itself was a victory. For Hamilton, it was perhaps yet another Pyrrhic victory. She felt that selling the group of paintings to the National Gallery was tantamount to asking her to split the collection. When Brown contacted Hamilton on 15 April regarding the gallery’s interest in acquiring three oil paintings (Strong Hold – Dixmude [1921], Mine Crater – Hooghe [n.d.; figure 13.4], and Ruins at Ypres, Cloth Hall [see figure 8.11]), and one etching (Military Kitchen; see figure 5.12),19 instead of rejoicing, she stalled. Was it the coldly perfunctory letter that made her suspicious? Even resentful? Brown’s letter consisted of only two short paragraphs, with not a single word about her two-and-a-half-year journey or about the accolades received abroad or even about the work itself that she had painted and brought back at such great sacrifice.20 His response differed greatly from the public enthusiasm her work had generated, and he also failed to commission her for a new series of Canadian landscape paintings, as she had asked. A month later, amid the stress of preparing for her exhibition at the University Women’s Club of Winnipeg, scheduled for Saturday, 8 May, at the Fort Garry Hotel, Hamilton was quoted

Going Home

in the paper: “‘If they are good enough,’ says the artist, ‘they will find a place. I have done what I could.’” 21 Even though she does not give any details, there is a new confidence that signals a turn of events. In May, while Hamilton was still considering the available options regarding the collection’s fate, another federal institution reached out after Aurelia Rogers contacted them on Hamilton’s behalf. The Public Archives of Canada in Ottawa expressed their interest in housing the collection. Here was an opportunity for her voice and vision to be available for generations to come and also for her work to remain available for exhibitions. Hamilton was elated: “I cannot tell you how delighted I was to get your very kind letter, and to hear that there was a prospect of having the pictures in the Canadian Archives with Dr Doughty.” 22 She continued: “It is, of course, of all places the one I should prefer; especially as Dr Doughty is in command, and as the collection has historical interest.” 23 The deciding factor was her personal trust in the national archivist, Sir Arthur George Doughty, who “seemed so interested in the collection, and so thoroughly ‘en rapport,’ that I should like him to know how appreciative I am.” 24 The en rapport understanding invoked here was part of her ethos, the same affective focus that also marked her art. This sentiment was passed along as Aurelia Rogers forwarded Hamilton’s letter to Doughty, with this telling note: “I thought it would interest you to see how perfectly happy you are making one poor lone woman.” 25 Undeniably, Rogers’s news was a turning point, as Hamilton writes: “Your letter was most heartening and has helped me put through the exhibition which the University’s Women’s Club gave for me on Saturday at the Fort Garry Hotel. Otherwise I should almost have lacked the courage to go through with it. There is an unbelievable amount of work, including real physical labour (!) in connection with such an exhibition … Thanking you again and again for your ‘optimistic vibrations.’” 26 If there was a small wrinkle, it was the Public Archives of Canada’s specific focus on the country’s documentary heritage, which would associate her contributions less with art and more with documentation, facilitating the opinions of some detractors trivializing Hamilton’s artistic immersion in her work. Since her collection was already split – with the Amputation Club of British Columbia holding paintings, of which eleven works are still on permanent loan to the Museum of the Royal Westminster Regiment today,27 and with Hamilton also keeping some works for herself – having at least a portion of her work represented in the National Gallery would have been an advantage without any significant symbolic or material cost. Nonetheless, upon receiving another offer, Hamilton swiftly declined Brown’s proposal to purchase a number of pieces for the National Gallery (see figures 5.12, 8.11, and 13.4). This refusal to give even a small group of paintings to the National Gallery was unwise, but reflected a

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13.4 Mary Riter

Hamilton, Mine Crater (Hooghe), n.d., oil on cardboard, 22.2 × 27.3 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-18043, Copy negative C-101325. One of the paintings that the National Gallery was interested in acquiring in 1926.

lifetime of bad experiences. In turn, her unprecedented refusal was seen as an affront, and the uncharitable tone of assistant director Harry McCurry’s 28 May note to Eric Brown says it all: “You will be pleased to hear that Mrs Hamilton is not satisfied with the proposal of the Trustees to buy some of her pictures and that she is turning the whole lot over to the Archives!! What a bear garden that place will be!” 28 Even though it is unlikely that Hamilton was aware of this note, she intuited the feelings correctly. It was the last time she interacted with the men of the National Gallery. n On the morning of Thursday, 27 May 1926, Hamilton delivered five large boxes containing 109 battlefield paintings to Winnipeg’s Canadian National Railway Express; and several days later, Rogers, who was in Ottawa, confirmed that the paintings were hung in the Public Archives of Canada and were now accessible to the public. Perhaps Hamilton needed this reassurance before she could send off and effectively separate herself from another large group of battlefield paintings. On 22 July, amid a flurry of telegrams and regrets

Going Home

about the delay, Hamilton sent a second shipment of 110 works: “ninety one paintings five pastels fourteen drawings one hundred and ten in all value seventy five thousand dollars.” 29 The substantial insurance value of what amounts to just over $1.1 million in 2020 gives a monetary indication of the high artistic value she assigned her collection. Aurelia helped with the second group of selections, and Hamilton created typed catalogues for each shipment. Anxiously, she followed up a few days later: “I hope that you will like the pictures you received. If you think that there are too many cemeterie [sic] in the collection, please do not hesitate to return those you do not want. It has been rather difficult for me to judge without seeing the collection in its entirety, which it was not possible to do.” 30 With a deceptively simple note, Hamilton stamps the end of an era both personal and national, material and spiritual, as reflected in the epigraph above. In this official donation note of 27 July 1926, she practised a radical selflessness referencing “the pictures” and “the work” instead of “my pictures” and “my work.” Fully acknowledging “the visions which came from the spirit of the men themselves” for her paintings, she refused to take credit for the quality of her own impressions and the talent that it took to paint them. But this does not mean that she did not care about the aesthetic quality of her work, as her agonizing desire to perfect the war collection demonstrates. In a war where so many profited materially, her humanitarian refusal to benefit presents a political gesture, while her motivation and drive highlight her idealism. Hamilton decided to leave the paintings she had sent to the Amputation Club in Vancouver out west, at least for the moment. Doughty, who displayed the paintings for the public, wrote to Hamilton in August, the same day he received her anxious note: “On behalf of the Department I beg to thank you for your generous gift of the collection of battlefield pictures. We are very glad indeed to have these and I am sure that future generations will value them even more than the present … The paintings are altogether and are seen daily by visitors to the Archive. I mean to have a large placard painted and placed at the head of these pictures so that people can see at a glance that they are your gift.” 31 These assurances acknowledged that she had made contributions to her country that had extraordinary national distinction. In total, Hamilton donated 227 paintings, drawings, and sketches to the Public Archives of Canada, today Library and Archives Canada,32 where they are still housed almost a full century later, with a portion of them available for viewing as a permanent digital exhibition. During my visits to see the paintings, I witnessed the ongoing care given to these works (several were slated for cleaning); also, in the fall of 2017, Library and Archives Canada chose to purchase one of Hamilton’s Canadian paintings, Canadian Rockies Sketch (1912; see figure 3.3), which shows their continued recognition of her work. As usual, Hamilton garnered zero monetary gain from

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this contribution; but this time at least – and at last – she was rewarded with a profound sense of closure, which was a great satisfaction and relief after so many years. The bold dream that Mary Riter Hamilton had started with so many years before – to pay homage to the wounded and the dead Canadian soldiers of the First World War – was finally being realized. After a seven-year odyssey, she was transported to a plane of spiritual tranquility, no matter how brief. As Jay Winter reminds us, “after the First World War, commemorative efforts aimed to offer a message that loss of life in the conflict had a meaning, that these sacrifices were redemptive, that they prepared the ground for a better world, one in which such staggering loss of life would not recur.” 33 Some of the results of the First World War – the nascent peace movement, the League of Nations, the embracing of democracy and an international spirit – seem emblematized by Hamilton’s idealistic gesture – a gesture and spirit that would be crushed again by Fascism, the Holocaust, and the Second World War, by which time Hamilton’s work was obscured and forgotten. The revival of interest in her artwork is evident by the fact that, as I write these final paragraphs, a Canada Post Stamp Services advisory indicates a 2020 printing of “a stamp featuring an evocative work by First World War artist Mary Riter Hamilton.” 34 Still, today it remains an unfortunate fact that the philanthropic vision attached to these paintings – that they should be used to generate funds for veterans – is still unrealized. It is one hope of this book that this vision might spark some social good, including perhaps the launch of a foundation for the veterans in her name and the reproduction of some of the artist’s work. One imagines that during the weeks and months of selecting the works to donate to the Public Archives of Canada, Hamilton took stock of the price she had paid. More than once on her journey through postwar Europe, she nearly gave her life to replicate its darkest corners. Hamilton’s collection is a testament to the repercussions of a war that not only took the lives of the soldiers whom she wished to honour but also transformed her profoundly. True to her empathic approach, her visions and her paintings had merged with experiences of the soldiers – the living and the dead alike. She had been there, on Europe’s battlefields, facing outer and inner destruction, all the while blazing a rugged path for the women who recognized her bravery. That Hamilton had prevailed on such a volatile journey was nothing short of miraculous.

I Have Been Luck y Epilogue

Hamilton spent the final two and a half decades of her long life in Vancouver. She moved there after living holed up in her Winnipeg apartment (“I have hardly been out of my apartment these three years” 1) where she struggled with her health and unsuccessfully tried to make a living from “decorative work” (“impossible” because of its low “worth” in Winnipeg2). And yet the paintings held by family descendants in Winnipeg indicate that she was far from idle. One fascinating untitled work, dated 1927,3 shows a memorial of sorts: to the left, a trio of people – a man in uniform, a woman in black wearing a cloche hat, and a little girl holding what looks like flowers or a flag; to the right, a cluster of flowers; in the foreground, multiple colourful wreaths, perhaps a memorial day remembrance. Tropical plants, including palm fronds, are suggestive of the Palm House erected in Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park in 1914. In Vancouver, Hamilton opened a studio in Douglas Lodge, an Art Deco low-rise on South Granville Street, which would later become the home of many famous artists, from painter Emily Carr to singer Sarah McLachlan. Here, she would stay for over a decade, relaunching her career, teaching students, and collecting commissions for portraits. In December 1927, Gay Page celebrated Hamilton’s gift to Canada, on display “in the handsome new building of the Public Archive,” and quoted others praising her as “a truly great artist; Mrs Hamilton is easily Canada’s greatest artist since the death of James Wilson Morrice.”4 The famed Impressionist painter from Montreal had died in 1924, yet this line would conflict with the deafening silence surrounding Hamilton over the following decades. From late 1928 into 1929, she suffered from pernicious anemia, then a dangerous autoimmune illness. Barely recovered, she requested paintings from Margaret Hart, who replied bluntly: “About an exhibit of paintings, unless someone is doing it for you that would be suicidal and I can’t think that the pictures that we have here w’d sell.” 5 Fortunately, Hamilton’s niece Jean R. Bruce,6 Bertie’s

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sister and a trained nurse, had come from Calgary to take care of her aunt, and it was she who now brokered a meeting between Hamilton and Hart. She also requested a list of paintings still in Hart’s townhouse, writing to Hart: “You really have been wonderful to keep the pictures safely for Aunt May all these years and it is appreciated.” 7 Bruce’s deft focus on pragmatic solutions did wonders to smooth over the tension between the two women, and a meeting took place in April at the Hotel Grosvenor. Hart delivered a small canvas sack with Hamilton’s jewellery, and together they established a list itemizing the funds she had sent Hamilton to support her expedition. During the summer of 1929, Hamilton was busy relaunching her painting career from White Rock, just south of Vancouver, where she stayed with her friend and new patron Mrs W.H. Coy.8 “I wonder if you happened to see the sketch I made of Tagore,” she asked Hart in a letter, referring to the renowned Indian poet and Nobel Prize winner for literature who posed for Hamilton on his visit to Vancouver in 1929: “He was so interesting, talked all the time.” 9 That summer, she made paintings of The Pier, where the White Rock Legion Hall would open in July 1929, evidencing her continued interest in the veterans (who built the hall) and her improved health since she was once again well enough to work. She was also working on an exhibition for the Vancouver Legion in October. On 28 August, she met with Margaret Hart in Victoria to pick up her remaining paintings, a full decade after first storing them there. The tension was palpable as Hart relayed the exchange in a statement: “There in my husband’s office she had packed there, then when she came to the house we looked [the paintings] over together. She said now where is the list of the money sent me. You have it, said I, she looked surprised but took from her stocking a roll, apparently all in my hand writing and picked out from it the account we had got from her letters at Hotel Grosvenor in Ap[ril]. There was nothing on the list but what she acknowledged in her letters. The amount was $838.” 10 In other words, the total amount that Hart had sent Hamilton in subvention for her expedition was $838 ($12,500 in 2020). Some of this money had been in exchange for the paintings that Hamilton had asked Hart to sell in 1924. Hamilton now reminded her friend that “the prices you paid were too small,” and Hart retorted: “They were the prices you asked, and begged me to try to sell them.” 11 Ever since Hart had sold Hamilton’s Paris collection at far below par, Hamilton had allowed resentment to fester, which Hart reciprocated with grievances of her own; as she reminded Hamilton: “you’ve been home now nearly four years + never a word to one of us who helped you in your need.” 12 Nonetheless, according to Hart’s account, the two women temporarily settled their differences that day, and Hamilton borrowed a handful of war paintings now owned by Hart to be exhibited at the Vancouver Legion in October.

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301

E.1a Mary Riter Hamilton,

Low Tide White Rock Pier, n.d. [1929], oil on panel, 24.1 × 31.1 cm. Uno Langmann Limited Fine Art, Vancouver, BC.

E.1b Mary Riter Hamilton,

On the Sand, White Rock, BC, n.d. [1929], oil on panel, 24.1 × 45.1 cm. Uno Langmann Limited Fine Art, Vancouver, BC.

However, these half dozen borrowed paintings propelled the feud to its climax. With the paintings again in her hands, Hamilton did not feel obliged to return them; instead, she unabashedly sent Hart recent copies. On 31 December 1929, at 9:30 a.m., Hart stormed into Hamilton’s studio at Douglas Lodge brandishing an umbrella and brusquely demanded her paintings. The exchange was animated, and rapidly escalated to accusatory and abrasive. Hamilton was upset and enraged that Hart should threaten to take her to court. As Hart related: “She said well, take your pictures, I said no you give them to me. She dashed

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around then and pulled the pictures off the wall + threw them in a heap on the floor breaking the frames and glasses. She threw the Asia which was unframed on the top.” 13 When Hart finally left the studio with her four paintings, Hamilton chased her down the corridor and shouted after her: “You’re stealing these pictures + they’ll bring you bad luck!” 14 For Hamilton, this was the end of their long friendship – an explosive ending that had been simmering amid a sense of injustice and material inferiority, exacerbated by paranoia. The woman who had once helped her get settled in Victoria by becoming her patron and facilitating commissions had betrayed her, Hamilton concluded. Meanwhile, Hart and her sister Lavinia Green seemed to treat Hamilton’s afflictions in a manner reflecting the stigma attached to mental illness at the time. As Green wrote: About Mrs H – – yes I do think she is mentally deranged or was when I saw her last in Wpg. She accused some one of stealing from the first house she lived in there and was consequently put out. When I was in Wpg. although she had rooms in one of the best apartments in the city she never left them unless some one came to relieve her.15

Over the next decade, the pillars of Hamilton’s private life continued to erode faster than they could be repaired. Several of her friends and supporters died during the 1930s, including Aurelia Rogers, Robert Rogers, and W.G.W. Fortune. In 1941, her long-time friend Rosalind Young implored Hamilton to make peace with Margaret Hart because “one by one, the old friends pass beyond the veil.” 16 Young’s own husband, Henry Esson Young and also once Hamilton’s close friend, had passed away not long before, impressing upon her the impermanence of life and the persistence of grief. “Another who is soon to go is Mrs Hart,” Young explained, pleading with Hamilton. “She has been in a comatose condition for some time, two nurses in attendance. So you better wash out memory of your feuds. When it is your time to go hence, you will not be able to take any pictures along, only your character.” 17 But the two women did not see each other again, or repair their friendship. The admonishing letter from Young was returned to her without having been read, as Hamilton no longer lived at the address to which it was sent – yet another sign of Hamilton’s inability to tend to her friendships with the women from Victoria, who that same year celebrated Emily Carr’s seventieth birthday. Hart, who suffered from Parkinson’s, died a few months later, and her children inherited the letters between her and Hamilton. That Hart had kept the correspondence in the face of their falling-out evidences her investment in Hamilton’s battlefield expedition, and she too deserves to be remembered for her foresight. In 1946,

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following the turbulence of the Second World War, Alex Paton also died. He left behind very little concerning Hamilton. Despite the monumental impact of these relationships and others, their archives remain wistfully silent. While she did what she could to maintain relationships with friends and family, Hamilton spent her remaining years predominantly alone, perhaps mourning the friendships shot down in the battlefield of her life in Canada. n Ha milton was first admitted to the Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale in Coquitlam, bc, in 1939, at the age of seventy-one. The intake report notes symptoms of paranoia: she was convinced that her food had been poisoned and that somebody had stolen her paintings. Indeed, her paintings ended up in the Point Grey Library, presumably secured there by one of her caregivers around the time Hamilton was taken to Essondale. By this time, with only a tiny pension, Hamilton was supported by social assistance. Her social worker checked her into the institution just six weeks before the beginning of the Second World War. Never one content with being an idle patient, Hamilton soon wished to be released from her daily ennui. She explained to the doctors that she wanted to help paint war camouflage onto airplanes. The physicians saw these lofty plans as part of the elderly patient’s grandiose delusion. That she was – albeit unofficially – Canada’s first female battlefield artist had been forgotten within a generation. There was a whole new war to fight. She received a diagnosis of senile dementia, and while suffering from dementia can be profoundly tragic, the categorical diagnosis glosses over the long-term complexity of Hamilton’s mental life, obscuring that she was a survivor of ptsd. Over the decade following her discharge from Essondale, Hamilton’s mental condition sustained cyclical ups and downs – inconsistent with the progressive deterioration seen in dementia patients. Her displays of hypervigilance and paranoia mirrored the vicissitudes of the battlefields. Her symptoms remained echoes of those she experienced during her breakdown over fifteen years earlier, including her perception that others were stealing from her or were trying to poison her. She was known to rub her hands, a gesture often used by sufferers to hide tremors in public. Another decade later, Jean Howarth interviewed Hamilton in the spring of 1948, describing “as she sat with her old hands tremblingly still in her lap.”18 Over the years, Howarth writes, “her sight started to go. For years she painted and taught by the light of one eye alone, and that was a deep secret between herself and her doctor. And then the good eye gave way.”19 By this time, Hamilton’s new friend, Dr Douglas Telfer, pastor at Vancouver’s Point Grey United Church, was raising funds

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for a cataract operation to regain at least partial sight: he tracked down her paintings at the Point Grey Library and organized a barebones exhibition of her work in the manse.20 As she turned eighty, her world shrank, and on the wall of her tiny room at 4594 West Fifth Street in Vancouver hung a single painting from decades earlier: her portrait of a tired old Italian peasant woman. While Hamilton couldn’t be as still as the woman in the painting, she was slowly becoming as stationary. n By 1952, when she was eighty-four, her body had grown thin and her chin was jutting out exactly the same way her mother’s had just a few years before her death. Acutely aware of her pressing mortality, Hamilton put her legacy in order accordingly. With assistance from Dr Telfer, who had helped Hamilton catalogue her work by organizing and detailing the private collections, and the Women’s Auxiliary to the Vancouver Art Gallery, Hamilton was also able to exhibit her remaining work one last time, in March 1952 at that gallery. As Hamilton immersed herself in these works from years past, she reluctantly recounted her triumphs to enraptured listeners. Even after decades of defiance and accomplishment, she embodied the same humility of her youth. She nervously twisted her wedding band round and round her frail white finger as she spoke. The works were for sale, with benefits going to Hamilton herself – at last. A photograph taken at the opening shows Hamilton touching the frame of her painting of the Cloth Hall in Ypres, staring at a detail through thick round spectacles, a lace handkerchief in her jacket pocket. Joking with the reporter – and still embellishing her age for the public – she said she had recently checked her birth certificate and was astounded to be in her seventies. Although she could not wield a brush anymore, she said that she continued to paint pictures in her mind.21 “I’ve been lucky … in that I have never had any disappointments about my work.” 22 Her connection with the veterans, the Amputation Club, and women’s groups continued – a testament to the lasting value of her artistic contributions to their causes and identities. Major Matthews, a veteran and Vancouver city archivist, delivered the address on her behalf at the 1952 exhibition. Knowing the horrors of the Great War first-hand, he marvelled at “the courage, the fortitude and the perception [she had] to enter that hellfire corner called Ypres, or that former blood bath called the Somme.”23 As Matthews sums it up: “As a woman, she could not fight, so she did the next best thing; she portrayed the deeds of those who had; in the one particular manner the soldiers could not do themselves.” 24 The Amputation Club of British Columbia was the first club of many that eventually amalgamated into The War Amps of Canada; they issued a new magazine, the Amputations Quarterly, which became

Epilogue: I Have Been Lucky

E.2 Mary Riter Hamilton contemplating her

own painting of the Cloth Hall during her last exhibition, held in the Vancouver Art Gallery, 1952, photograph. Lorna Stevens Collection, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The Fragment from 1926 on and is still running today. The War Amps has continued to acknowledge and champion the work of Mary Riter Hamilton, producing a video entitled No Man’s Land and featuring Hamilton on their website. The Canadian War Museum exhibited some half a dozen of her works in 2018–19; British Columbia’s Penticton Art Gallery exhibited the works held in several Western Canadian galleries in 2019; and her work is also part of the 2020 Reconstruction exhibition at the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres. As Hamilton bravely confronted the egregious inhumanity of the war, trying to atone for the death of millions of soldiers and civilians, her work continues to move viewers, shifting their perspective in the twenty-first century. Such is the perennial power of her extraordinary art. n While conducting research for this book I met Hamilton’s present-day estate holder, Ronald T. Riter. Ron recalled the specifics of how Hamilton willed the paintings to his father, Frank Riter, Hamilton’s nephew who lived closest to her and became the faithful executor of her estate. Hamilton had invited Frank for a visit in 1952, and he had brought his son Ron, who was

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then nine or ten years old. She was staying at the Hotel Georgia in downtown Vancouver through the duration of her final exhibition. While Hamilton and Frank discussed her will and the future of her estate, Ron observed the grownups with wide eyes. “They were discussing what was going to happen to the paintings when she was gone,” Ron recalls. Ron remembers the woman being lucid and clear. While she never made a formal last will, sometime in 1953, she did write down what she would bequeath to family and friends.25 The non-family names on this list – Adina Falconer, Fanny Huntley, Dr Douglas Telfer, and so on – document the supporters and helpers whom readers have come to know as the necessary angels of her life. Conversely, she does not appear to have willed anything to Katharine or Adele Watson or members of the Hart family, revealing her alienation from some of those who had helped most in her crisis, leaving us wondering to what extent the events she had lived through – and suffered through – had to be repressed because the memory was too difficult to bear. Finally, she stipulated that each of her many dear nieces and nephews would receive a painting of their choice. In this dispersal of her legacy, her sentiments were remarkably consistent: she trusted family loyalty, even though her family was widely dispersed and no longer close. They, in turn, have honoured that legacy in many western regions of the country. It is true that she never had a stable place to call home, but she found homes in numerous important friendships and dwellings. Such was the fate of the modern itinerant artist that was Mary Riter Hamilton. Two years later, on 2 April 1954, at the age of eighty-six, Hamilton was readmitted to Essondale. “Says she is being poisoned. Others stealing from her. Screams with nightmares. Avers she is superior to everyone around.” 26 When the doctor saw her, she was rubbing her hands constantly. The doctor noted a glass eye in the left orbit. While her restlessness and paranoia lessened under medically supervised bedrest, her blood pressure remained high. The same palpitation that had troubled her heart years earlier returned to disquiet her final days. A few days after her admission, on 5 April, when Dr Richardson made the morning rounds, she lay quietly in her bed. They had granted her wish to lie by herself so she would be able to do some painting, though there is no evidence that she did paint in these final days. When he asked her how she felt, she said she felt very well. But when he asked her what time it was, she didn’t know. Dr Richardson then asked her where she was, and she confessed her uncertainty. Her memory, which had been good a few days earlier, was fading.27 After the doctor left her room, Hamilton rested through the early afternoon. When the nurses arrived with her dinner, she was ravenous – seized by a hunger she never seemed able to satisfy after her years of restricted eating on and off the battlefields as a result of her poverty. She ate at 4 p.m., then

Epilogue: I Have Been Lucky

collapsed to the floor shortly after returning her napkin to her tray. The nurses found her convulsing from chest pain. The doctor tried to resuscitate her, but she was too far gone. The doctor declared her dead at 6:20 p.m. on 5 April 1954. The autopsy confirmed a heart attack as the cause of death, though the report notes her senile dementia as a tertiary factor. The diagnosis glosses over her survival through trauma. She had bravely endured the consequences of the battlefield for over three decades, teaching her craft well into her seventies. As she embarked on her final journey, Hamilton left behind something of an epitaph in brush strokes in Evening on the Belgian Front (n.d.), painted during her battlefield expedition in Europe. Two duckboards bathed in cobalt blue converge and lead across a bridge into nowhere – the two paths that Mary and Charles had trekked together before she travelled the rest of the road on her own. Two crosses rise in the mist on either side of the plank road. The sky is peach coloured, a signal of hope. n During the months and years that followed Hamilton’s death, Frank Riter crated some two dozen of her paintings. He shipped them across Canada along the same railway tracks that carried the artist on her departure route to the battlefields. Maternity travelled to the city of Port Arthur, where it now hangs in Thunder Bay City Hall.28 Cabaret Rouge Cemetery travelled to the town of Miami, near Clearwater, Manitoba, where it remains in the care of Mae Riter Pankiw. Overlooking Vimy Ridge from La Folie Farm travelled to Hamilton’s niece Pearl in La Riviere, Manitoba. After the distribution, Frank kept the remaining paintings that had been part of Hamilton’s personal collection; they are owned today by his children, Ron and Judy. In small private collections, sometimes in remote areas of Canada, Hamilton’s work was relegated to family history, recalled as memories of Aunt May. As an artist and a woman, Hamilton’s national success – however brief – reflects a life of defiance and dedication to art, social justice, and civic responsibility. Canada’s art establishment declined her three times: in 1912, when she returned from Paris a self-made artist; in 1917, when she applied to paint the battlefields; and again in 1926, when she returned with her finished collection. Still, these rejections did not muzzle her clarion voice. In oil, charcoal, and print, she witnessed and reported on the suffering of the soldiers, the civilians, and the wounded land. Her brush strokes are both a site of injury and a source of healing. Trauma and renewal are palpable in a flower that blooms through barbed wire or sprouts that reach through a collapsing trench wall.

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E.3 Mary Riter

Hamilton, Evening on the Belgian Front, n.d., oil on cardboard, 18.7 × 23.9 cm. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1988-180-153, Copy negative C-103587.

Hamilton was always reticent about her private life and preferred that her art speak for her. As such, the possessions that surrounded her at the end provide an intimate material narrative of that which mattered to her most. She retained many of the cherished trinkets that she had entrusted to Hart many decades earlier. She still held her gold wedding band, a cameo brooch, and a locket with hair. After her death, Frank packed these relics with care. He came across a leather folder with portraits of Charles, two bronze medals, and an updated membership card to the Vancouver Art Gallery. After collecting her effects, Frank attended the funeral service in Vancouver, which she had carefully prearranged. The organ piped “Lead, Kindly Light,” 29 the hymn that soldiers sang the night before they were going over the top. After the service, Frank sent his aunt’s ashes to Port Arthur to rest beside her husband.30 n Home at last.

Chronology

1867

7 September: Mary Matilda Riter born in Culross, on, the youngest of five: John Thomas (b. 10 September 1860), Joseph (b. 8 June 1862), Clara (b. 10 May 1864), and Etta (b. ca. 1865). Her parents are John Riter (b. 1831) and Charity Zimmerman (b. 5 November 1837).

1868

John Riter’s sawmill burns down, bringing financial hardship to the family. Riter family moves first into nearby Teeswater and then, in 1870, purchases 51-acre property in Culross (north half of Lot 16, Concession 10).

1878

8 August: Paternal grandmother Maria Riter, née Reed, 70, killed by freight train on Grand Trunk Railway in Halton (now Halton Hills), on.

1882

Riters sell their property in Culross and move to Clearwater, mb, to become a pioneering family.

1882–84

As a teenager, Mary showcases her talent for crafting prize-winning doll hats at Emerson Fair. She also becomes a millinery apprentice under Mary A. Traynor, a widow in Emerson, mb.

ca. 1884

Mary moves to Port Arthur, on, to study millinery and help take care of Traynor’s adopted baby, Ethel Traynor (b. 4 February 1883).

1884

October, Port Arthur: Her sister Clara Riter marries in Port Arthur but resettles in Derby, mb, between Cartwright and Clearwater, and gives birth to Bertie in August 1885.

ca. 1885–87

Mary returns to Manitoba for a long visit.

1887

May: Aged 19, Mary resettles in Port Arthur.

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Chronology

1889

1 March, Port Arthur: With Charles Watson Hamilton opens Paris Dry Goods House on Cumberland Street. 17 July, Clinton, on: Aged 21, marries Charles Watson Hamilton.

1890

14 June, Derby, mb: Her sister Etta M. Riter, 24, dies suddenly of heart disease. 2 December, Derby: Her father, John Saul Riter, 59, dies. By 1892, after his father’s death, eldest sibling John Thomas Riter marries and moves to Stanley, mb, eventually settling in Miami, mb, between 1903–06.

1892

Mary studies painting with artists George Agnew and Mary Hiester Reid in Toronto. 29 August, Port Arthur: Gives birth to stillborn son in Port Arthur.

1893

14 December, Port Arthur: Widowed at age 26 when C.W. Hamilton dies suddenly of “syncope.”

1894

6 February, Port Arthur: Sells Paris House at auction. September, Winnipeg, mb: Opens china-painting studio at 224 Carlton Street.

1895

3–5 December, Winnipeg: Exhibits at Women’s Art Association of Canada Exhibition at Manitoba Hotel. Toronto artist Mary Hiester Reid also exhibits.

1896

September, Winnipeg: Moves studio to 196 Kennedy Street, corner of St Mary’s. Teaches china painting and watercolours; sells decorated china.

1897

19 July, Sault Ste Marie, mi: Her brother Joseph Riter, 35, dies of heart failure.

1899

August: Travels to New York to study art. Also studies art in Toronto with E. Wyly Grier and paints Toronto landscapes.

1900

Fall: Resides in Toronto and studies art with Grier.

1901

4 August: With Adina J. Falconer and Jean Isabel Culver travels overseas to study art. September: Settles at 123 Potsdamer Strasse, Berlin. Has an operation. Studies art history for a year.

1902

Studies with Franz Skarbina until 1903; summer painting trips to Venice (1902) and Holland (1903).

1903

June: Falconer and Culver return to Winnipeg.

Chronology

Fall: Moves to Paris to study art at several private art schools, including Vitti Academy. Between 1903–05; takes lessons from Jacques-Émile Blanche, Paul-Jean Gervais, and Luc-Olivier Merson. Resides at Rue de la Grande Chaumière. 1905

Exhibits her watercolour A Dutch Interior and two oils, Abazia di St Gregorio and Interior of Court Abazia di St Gregorio, at Paris Salon. December: Dans la neige de décembre: Les sacrifiées reproduced in Lectures pour tous, Christmas edition.

1906

Exhibits An Impression of Venice at Paris Salon. Studies with Claudio Castelucho and Percyval Tudor-Hart. Spring: Possible sketching trip to German mountains and meeting with Lawren Harris. Exhibits paintings at Detroit Museum of Art. 8 May: Returns to Winnipeg for one year. 12–30 June, Winnipeg: Exhibits about 60 paintings in the ymca Building. 13–27 October, Toronto: Exhibits at Art Galleries of Messrs Mackenzie & Co., 95 Yonge Street. Easter Sunday, La Petite Penitente (Brittany) is lead painting featured in advertisements. 7–14 November, LONDON, ON: Exhibits at Art Galleries of O.B. Graves, Limited, 222 Dundas Street.

1907

6 April: Leaves Winnipeg to sail from New York to Antwerp. Spring: Returns to Paris and resides at Rue Notre Dame des Champs. Exhibits at Paris Salon. First visit to Giverny.

1909

Spring: Exhibits Les Pauvres at Paris Salon.

1910

Returns to Giverny with Edith and Louise Langley. 13 December, Langham, sk: Her sister Clara Currie, née Riter, 46, dies.

1911

Spring: Exhibits Maternity (watercolour), La Religieuse (oil), and Devant la Fenetre (oil modelled by Louise Langley) at Paris Salon. November: Returns to Canada. 20 November–2 December, Toronto: Exhibits at Townsend Gallery. Meets Sir Edmund Walker.

1912

15–27 January, Ottawa, on: Exhibits at Wilson’s Galleries, 123 Sparks Street. Duke and Duchess of Connaught become patrons for her transCanada exhibition tour. Meets Prime Minister Robert Borden. January–February: Disregarding appeals from the prime minister, the Duke of Connaught, and member of parliament William D. Staples in both Parliament and through personal letters, Sir Edmund Walker and Eric Brown reject idea of purchasing a painting by Hamilton for the National Gallery.

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7–21 February, Montreal, qc: Exhibits at Art Association of Montreal Gallery. 4–25 May: Exhibits at Winnipeg Industrial Bureau under patronage of the Duchess of Connaught and the lieutenant-governor of Manitoba. June–August: Paints mountain scenes in Banff National Park and portraits of First Nations people. 10–21 December, Calgary, ab: Exhibits at public library under the auspices of Calgary Art Association. 1913

12–22 March, Victoria, bc: Exhibits 159 artworks at Empress Hotel, including about 40 new oil paintings depicting Canadian scenes (Manitoba, Rockies, Alberta, British Columbia). March: Takes up residence in Victoria. Opens a studio at 724 Fort Street, and later at 514 Fort Street. June, Victoria: Meets Arctic explorers Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Rudolph Martin Anderson. Makes pastel portraits of Stefansson.

1914

4 August: Britain declares war on Germany. Victoria: Hamilton becomes involved in Red Cross work. Gordon Burdick deeds four Victoria lots to Hamilton in payment of paintings worth $2,400.

1915

February: Travels to Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and exhibits Les Pauvres (oil) and An Old Italian Wife (oil). September: Paints landscapes in Nanaimo, bc. 19 September, Miami, mb: Her mother, Charity Riter, née Zimmerman, 77, dies.

1917

9 January, Victoria: Col. Henry Appleton writes to Prime Minister Borden recommending Hamilton as a war artist. 9 April: Canada successfully captures Vimy Ridge from Germany. 15 April: Writes to Sir Edmund Walker and requests to go to Europe to paint the battlefields. 29 May: Advisory Arts Council for the National Gallery rejects Hamilton’s proposal to be a war artist. 6 November: Moves to Vancouver, bc. 8–17 November, Vancouver: Exhibits her work at Jas. Leyland’s Fine Art Gallery.

1918

January, Vancouver: Writes to Lord Beaverbrook requesting to become an official war artist through the Canadian War Memorials Fund (cwmf); Walker turns her down. 28 September: Hardie Currie (nephew) wounded near Cambrai, France.

Chronology

9 October: Matilda Green (niece) dies of pneumonia at the military hospital in Étables, France. 11 November: Armistice. 28 November: W.B. Shaw writes to Beaverbrook suggesting Hamilton for a position as a war artist. The letter is forwarded to Walker, who ignores it. 1919

15 January: Felix Penne writes tribute to Hamilton in Vancouver Daily World and announces that she will be leaving for Europe to paint the battlefields of the western front. On 17 March, Daily World states the paintings will be commissioned and published by Gold Stripe. 15–22 January, Vancouver: Exhibits approximately 100 artworks at 414 Pender Street W., next to the Board of Trade Building. 24 January, Vancouver: The Empress of Asia ship docks with returning soldiers. Makes her first war paintings titled The Return Home and The Asia. 15 February, Vancouver: Canadian Women’s Press Club holds a tea in honour of Mary Riter Hamilton. 5–10 March: Visits Victoria, and leaves paintings and personal items in the townhouse of Margaret Janet Hart. 16–17 March: J.A. Paton hosts Hamilton and personal friends at the Press Club at Hotel Vancouver before she leaves for Ottawa. Overnights at Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg. 20–25 March, Ottawa: Meets with Duke of Devonshire. 22 March: Governor general issues her passport (number 18868). 25 March: Leaves for Montreal to meet with French consul general. 26–27 March: Crosses Canadian border en route to New York. 2 April, New York: Boards ss La Touraine bound for Le Havre, France. 13 April, Le Havre: Arrives and stays overnight. 15 April, Paris: Meets Philippe Roy at 17–19 Boulevard des Capucines. 26–27 April: Travels to Wimereux, Canadian Section General Headquarters. Is provided with a car; driver, Pte McIntyre; and conducting officer, Lt Wright. 28 April–10 June: Camblain-l’Abbé, first camp. Sleeps in military Nissen hut. 5–7 May: Is involved in a car accident. 24 May: Paints official closing of Camblain-l’Abbé military camp. 10 June–30 July: Relocates to Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, second camp. 12 June and 1 July: On two separate occasions, the Antony brothers photograph a woman artist, likely Mary Riter Hamilton, painting the ruins of Ypres, Belgium.

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Chronology

28 June, Treaty of Versailles signed: Paints on Lorette Ridge. 29 July: Travels to Paris to mail 27 paintings to Gold Stripe in Vancouver. 1 August–9 October: Attached to her third camp, at Écurie Wood. Lives with Canadian War Graves Detachment Technical Branch. September, Paris: Ships 39 paintings to Gold Stripe in Vancouver. 29 September–4 October, New Westminster, bc: Paintings from Hamilton’s first shipment exhibited at New Westminster Fair. 9 October–January 1920: Lives at Nine Elms British Camp, fourth camp. Twenty Chinese labourers carry her hut. November: Cold spell. Likely works on etchings. 1920

ca. March–April: Relocates to 1 Rue Vivier in Arras. Lives with refugees and builds her own art studio in a shelled attic. 9–15 April, Vancouver: Exhibition of 84 paintings by Hamilton, including all war paintings, at Navy League Institute organized by iode. 20 April, Victoria: Private showing of 60 war paintings by Hamilton in Provincial Library for Premier John Oliver and members of the provincial government. Early May: Travels to Paris. 7 May, Arras: Writes to Ellen Hart from 1 Rue Vivier and describes her new attic studio. 10–12 May, Victoria: Exhibition of 60 war paintings opens in Island Arts and Crafts Club, Union Bank Building. 19 May, Ypres: Paints Ypres Honours the Acting Mayor of 1914 of Ypres Military Cross Ceremony. 28 May, Poperinghe, Belgium: Olive Mudie-Cooke arrives to paint Ypres. Late June–early July: Hamilton takes two-week rest in Paris after becoming ill. July–August: Paints at the Somme and in the far north of France, including Loos, Mons, Cambrai, and Bourlon Wood. 10 September–November: Paints Ypres and Ypres Salient. Winter–January 1921: Supervises delivery of food to twenty-six villages on behalf of Montreal Red Cross. Assists Foyer du Soldat in Cambrai.

1921

15 January–15 February: Takes a room at Hotel Ypriana in Ypres. 28 January: Registers with Police des Étrangers in Ypres, indicating her intent to live in Ypres. 15 February: Writes to Mrs Hart. Waits to be assigned a hut. 4 August: Mental breakdown. Letter to her niece Bertie Bryson Currie. 9 August: Wills her paintings and possessions to her niece Bertie. Early November: Ends expedition. Moves to 3 Rue Joseph Bara in Paris.

Chronology

1922

15 April–30 June, Paris: Exhibits Market among the Ruins at Paris Salon. 10–17 June, Paris: Les Champs de bataille de la Somme exhibition of war paintings with French official war painter Georges Bertin Scott in foyer of Paris Opera House. Receives Palmes académiques. 16 July–6 August, Amiens, France: Exhibits 100 paintings at Panthéon: Aux Morts Français et Alliés exhibition, Musée de Picardie. 10 September: Frederick G. Falla’s article on Mary Riter Hamilton released by McClure Newspaper Syndicate. ca. September, Paris: Admitted to Hertford British Hospital. 16 September–7 October, Paris: Exhibits war work with scenes of Arras, Ypres, Dixmude, and Menin at Galeries Simonson, 19 Rue Caumartin.

1923

Fall: Mental condition worsens. Returns to hospital. Struggles until May 1924. November: Victoria’s University Women’s Club and Kumtuks Club make appeal to Sir Edmund Walker to acquire Hamilton’s war works.

1924

3 February, Victoria: Daily Colonist asks National Gallery of Canada to “consider the purchase of the whole or part of this incomparable collection.” “She has just lately left a Paris hospital after a long illness.” 22 March: Assigns power of attorney to Margaret Janet Hart to sell her pre-war paintings. 1 April: Resides at 206 Boulevard Raspail in Paris. 6 June–15 July, Versailles: Exhibits Notre-Dame de Lorette en 1919, la Chapelle (1919) and Le Marché dans les ruines, Ypres (1920) as well as three batik scarves and one batik shawl at Versailles Orangerie, Palace of Versailles for Société des amis des arts de Seine-et-Oise.

1925

Teaches and works on textile art. April–October, Paris: Exhibits and wins gold medal for her handpainted scarves at Exposition internationale des Arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. 2 November: Leaves Paris by way of London, England, to travel back to Canada. 28 November: Departs on ss Minnekahda from London. 18 December: Arrives in Montreal.

1926

27 January, Winnipeg: Shows her paintings at Marlborough Hotel and talks about her expedition.

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Chronology

February: Secures studio at 203 Devon Court, Winnipeg; later moves to 509 Devon Court, where she stays into 1928. Lives intermittently with Adina J. Falconer at 426 Assiniboine Avenue. 8 May, Winnipeg: Exhibits at Fort Garry Hotel event organized by Women’s University Club of Winnipeg. 23 May: Donates 7 artworks to Public Archives of Canada. 27 May: Donates 109 paintings, sketches, and etchings to Public Archives of Canada. 22 July: Donates 110 artworks (91 paintings, 5 pastels, 14 drawings) to Public Archives of Canada. 1927

July, Ottawa: Public Archives of Canada shows Hamilton’s work during Jubilee week. Gay Page’s feature article about her appears in The Western Home Monthly in December. 11 November, Winnipeg: Exhibits at home of Robert and Aurelia Rogers at 197 Roslyn Road.

1928

21 August, Miami, mb: Hamilton’s last sibling, John Thomas Riter, 67, dies. Early September: Still at 509 Devon Court, Winnipeg. Doesn’t leave her apartment and experiences financial troubles but hopes to turn over a new leaf. On the verge of a “breakdown.” 17 September: Arrives in Victoria; stays at ywca. November–December: Stays in private hospitals.

1929

January–March, Vancouver: Treated for pernicious anemia in Vancouver General Hospital. March, Vancouver: Discharged from Vancouver General Hospital and cared for by her niece from Calgary, Jean R. Bruce (née Currie), Bertie’s half-sister. 11 April, Vancouver: Makes portrait of renowned poet Rabindranath Tagore. 14 April, Vancouver: Hart returns Hamilton’s small canvas sack with jewellery. 15 April–27 August, White Rock, bc: Stays with her friend and patron Mrs Coy and paints White Rock pier. Mrs Garland Foster (Annie Harvie Ross Foster) also lives in White Rock. Works on exhibition for Vancouver Legion to open October. 28 August, Victoria: Picks up her pre-war paintings from storage at Hart’s townhouse more than a decade after delivering them. 16 September: W.G.W. Fortune appeals to prime minister of Canada to visit and help Hamilton, who is destitute.

Chronology

11 December, Vancouver: Presents her portrait of Mary Ellen Smith, first female mla, to the British Columbia Art League in Vancouver. 31 December, Vancouver: Final feud with Margaret Janet Hart. 1930

Vancouver: Paints Morning, Yacht Club.

1931

14, 21, and 28 May, Vancouver: Delivers art history lectures with Alice M. Winlow on Raeburn, Rembrandt, and Titian at Georgian Restaurant.

1932

16 June, Vancouver: Hamilton’s students exhibit their work in her studio at 1504 West Fourteenth Avenue. 21 July, Vancouver: Hosts studio tea for French artist Marius HubertRobert. 2 November: At her request, Amputation Club of British Columbia returns 50 paintings (war paintings except for 6 pre-war paintings), 4 frames, and 6 honour rolls.

1933

12 June, Vancouver: Hamilton’s students exhibit their work in her studio at 1504 West Fourteenth Avenue. Her students included famous Canadian ski jumper Isabel Coursier, whose portrait Hamilton painted.

1934

1 September, Vancouver: Resumes teaching classes at her 1504 West Fourteenth Avenue studio.

1935

25 June, Vancouver: Exhibits work (including The Poet, Maternity, and Brebeuf ) and her students’ work in her studio at 1504 West Fourteenth Avenue. 2 December, Vancouver: Exhibits paintings during feminist activist Mary Dingman’s address to Women’s Canadian Club, “Status of Women and Its Implications for Today,” at Hotel Vancouver.

1938

9–17 August: Exhibits 30 artworks at Vancouver Art Gallery.

1939

January, Vancouver: Moves to attic studio at 1125 W. Hastings Street where she pays $25 a month in rent. Receives pension of $20 a month from the local Masonic lodge. 16 September–25 July 1942, Coquitlam, bc: Is committed for almost three years to Essondale where assigned number 17-907. Keeps herself busy with sketching, charcoal portraits, and needlework.

1942

25 July: Released on ordinary probation from Essondale to care of Mr & Mrs J. Erickson of Port Coquitlam, bc.

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Chronology

1943

25 January: Officially discharged from Essondale after probation period.

1948

Vancouver: Vancouver Province describes Hamilton as living alone in “a little room … old and weary, with eyes that are almost blind and no possessions at all” at 4594 West 5th Avenue. Her collection described as being valued at $30,000 by Maclean’s. Suffers from glaucoma. 25 June, Vancouver: Exhibition of her work organized by Dr Telfer at his home at 4593 West 6th Avenue.

1949

Vancouver: Recovers from eye operation while living at Soroptimist House, 1066 W. 10th Avenue. 18 January–6 February: Vancouver Art Gallery exhibits Hamilton’s paintings in small retrospective.

1952

4–23 March, Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery exhibits her work.

1954

Vancouver: Living in boarding house, 1821 Haro Street, assisted by a social worker. 5 April: Mary Riter Hamilton dies at Essondale.

1978

23 August–8 October: Exhibition at Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

1988

11 November: No Man’s Land (video) produced by War Amps of Canada airs on television.

1989

5 November–8 December: No Man’s Land: The Battlefield Paintings of Mary Riter Hamilton exhibition at University of Winnipeg Gallery; travelling exhibition also shown in Ottawa (1993, 1998), Wolfville, ns (1994), Moose Jaw, sk (1995), Thunder Bay, on (2001), and Red Deer, ab (2004).

2018–2019

SEPTEMBER–JUNE: Resilience – The Battlefield Art of Mary Riter Hamilton, 1919–1922 at the Canadian War Museum.

2019

20 SEPTEMBER–11 November: Mary Riter Hamilton: Ghosts of the Great War at the Penticton Art Gallery.

2020

Canada Post issues Mary Riter Hamilton stamp featuring her 1919 oil painting Trenches on the Somme.

List of Exhibitions

Chronology of Selected Exhibitions during Hamilton’s Lifetime (until 1954) Exhibition of Paintings by Mary Riter Hamilton. Pamphlet Invitation. Toronto: Art Galleries of Messrs. Mackenzie & Co., 95 Yonge Street, 13–27 October 1906. E.P. Taylor Reference Library, Art Gallery of Ontario. Exhibition of Paintings by Mary Riter Hamilton. London: Art Galleries of O.B. Graves, Limited, 222 Dundas Street, 7–14 November 1906. Archives of Manitoba. Exhibition of Paintings by Mary Riter Hamilton. Townsend Gallery, Toronto, 20 November–2 December 1911. Exhibition of Paintings by Mary Riter Hamilton. Unpublished typed catalogue listing of thirty-three paintings. Montreal: Art Association of Montreal, Winter 1912. Bibliothèque Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montreal. Exhibition of Paintings, Water-Colors, Pastels and Drawings by Mary Riter Hamilton. Exhibition catalogue [listing 147 items]. Under the Patronage of Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Connaught. Foreword by Fine Arts Dealer Luscombe Carroll. Winnipeg: Winnipeg Industrial Bureau, 4–18 May 1912 (extended to 25 May). Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. Art Exhibition by Mary Riter Hamilton Under the Patronage of [the] Woman’s Canadian Club. Victoria, bc: Empress Hotel, 12–19 March 1913. Archives of Manitoba. [The Daily Colonist (Victoria) also printed a notice on 20 March 1913 indicating that this exhibition was extended to 22 March.] Oil Paintings, Water Colors and Pastel Drawings by Mary Riter Hamilton. Vancouver: Jas. Leyland’s Fine Art Gallery, 609 Dunsmuir Street, 8–17 November 1917. Vimy Ridge Paintings by Mary Riter Hamilton. Exhibition under the auspices of the Amputation Club of British Columbia. New Westminster, British Columbia: Art Gallery of the New Westminster Fair, 29 September–4 October 1919. Exhibition of Oil Paintings of Vimy Ridge by Mary Riter Hamilton. Exhibition catalogue [under the auspices of the iode, listing eighty-four paintings by Mary Riter Hamilton

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List of Exhibitions

and two by Castelucho]. Vancouver: Navy League Institute, 9–15 April 1920. Archives of Manitoba. L’Exposition des tableaux “Les Champs de Bataille de La Somme” de Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton et M. Georges Scott. Foyer du Théâtre National de l’Opéra, Paris, 10–17 June 1922. Panthéon: Aux Morts Français et Alliés exhibition, one hundred canvases exhibited, Musée de Picardy, Musée de Picardie, Amiens, 16 July–6 August 1922. Paintings of the Devastated Areas of Northern France by Mary Riter Hamilton, Galerie Simonson, 19, rue Caumartin, Paris, September–October 1922. In Aid of the Allied Somme Battlefield Memorial: Paintings by Mary Riter Hamilton 1919–1920–1921. Exhibition catalogue. London, England: Surrey House (Marble Arch), 15 January 1923. This exhibition catalogue was privately and widely distributed though the exhibition itself was indefinitely postponed and the paintings remained in storage in London. Impressions of the Battlefield after the Armistice by Mary Riter Hamilton. Marlborough Hotel, Winnipeg, 27 January 1926. With a rare address by Mary Riter Hamilton to the Winnipeg branch of the Canadian Women’s Press Club. Impressions of the Battlefield after the Armistice by Mary Riter Hamilton. Includes forty paintings. Fort Garry Hotel, 222 Broadway, Winnipeg, Opening 8 May 1926, organized by the University Women’s Club of Winnipeg. Paintings by Mary Riter Hamilton. Exhibition of about thirty paintings, including battlefield paintings. 4593 West 6th Avenue, Vancouver, 25 June 1948, organized by Douglas H. Telfer at his home. Mary Riter Hamilton. Small retrospective. Vancouver Art Gallery, 18 January–6 February 1949. Paintings by Mary Riter Hamilton. Exhibition sponsored by Women’s Auxiliary to the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Women’s Service Bureau. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 4–23 March 1952. E.P. Taylor Reference Library, Art Gallery of Ontario.

Selected Exhibitions since 1954 Against Time: Armando en zes Canadese Kunstenaars/Armando and Six Canadian Artists. Amersfoort, Netherlands: Armando Museum, 2003. This was a significant international exhibition in which Mary Riter Hamilton was chosen as one of six representatives of Canadian art. Amos, Robert. Mary Riter Hamilton 1873 [sic]–1954. Exhibition catalogue [with research essay and list of thirty-five paintings]. Victoria: Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1978. A View of One’s Own: Canadian Women Artists 1890–1960. Exhibition catalogue. Calgary: Masters Gallery, 1994.

List of Exhibitions

British Columbia Women Artists, 1885–1985: An Exhibition. Exhibition catalogue. Victoria: Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1985. Featured Mary Riter Hamilton in the exhibition and catalogue. Davis, Angela, and Sarah McKinnon. No Man’s Land: The Battlefield Paintings of Mary Riter Hamilton, 1919–1922/Tableaux des Champs de Bataille de Mary Riter Hamilton. Exhibition catalogue [listing forty battlefield works and sponsored by The War Amps of Canada]. Winnipeg: University of Winnipeg, 1989. Subsequent installations in Ottawa, Acadia, Moose Jaw, Ottawa, Thunder Bay, and Red Deer, 1989–2004. Finlay, Karen. “A Woman’s Place”: Art and the Role of Women in the Cultural Formation of Victoria, bc, 1850s–1920s. Victoria, bc: Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery, 2004. Fortin, Damien. Faceless Portraits. Virtual exhibition. Montreal: Concordia University, ongoing. Parallels: Women Representing the Great War in Canada and Newfoundland. Mary Riter Hamilton, Frances Loring, Elsie Holloway. Presented by the Canadian Centre for the Great War. Toronto: mlc Gallery, Ryerson University, 15 March–30 April 2018; Fort York, 13 August–3 September 2018. Mary Riter Hamilton: Ghosts of the Great War. Penticton Art Gallery, bc, 20 September– 11 November 2019.

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Note on Transcriptions

The letters by Mary Riter Hamilton have been transcribed at the mlc Research Centre by remaining faithful to Mary Riter Hamilton’s original script, reproducing her typos and idiosyncratic punctuation, all of which comprise an essential part of her style and also show the frequent rush of her writing. Repeated spelling errors include the doubling of letters (as in “writting” instead of “writing”) or the use of single letters where double letters are required (such as “realy” instead of “really”). She often pluralizes nouns ending with “y” by adding an “s” (as in “cemeterys” instead of “cemeteries”). She also occasionally uses US spelling, as in “favor” spelled without the “u.” Her lack of punctuation often leaves the impression of oral speech set down in writing. Distinctive characteristics, such as the prominently flying crosses of her Ts that can be easily misread as underlining, convey her energetic and visual style but can make her handwriting difficult to read.

Notes

Abbreviations aggv ago ao bew cwm cwgd lac mjhc mlcrc mrh mrwr ngc rtrc tfrbl

Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, bc Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Archives of Ontario, Toronto Byron Edmund Walker Canadian War Museum, Ottawa Canadian War Graves Detachment Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa Margaret Janet Hart Collection, mlcrc, Toronto Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre, Toronto Mary Riter Hamilton Museum of the Royal Westminster Regiment, New Westminster, bc National Gallery of Canada Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, bc Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto

Epigraphs 1 Whitman, “The Wound-Dresser,” 241–2. 2 Quoted in Falla, “Dauntless,” 14.

Introduction 1 Quoted in Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. See also Brandon, Art or Memorial, 17; Brandon writes of “the Group[of Seven]’s assimilation of elements of war iconography into its post-war landscape art helped create a national art style.” After painting the denuded trees of the battlefields, they turned to painting storm-swept scenes in Canada.

326

Notes to pages 5–10

2 Speck, Painting Ghosts, 17. Likewise, in the realm of war literature, Margaret Higonnet highlights the systematic obscuring of women’s “testimony about the Great War,” because “they stood – even if only symbolically – outside the line of fire”; Higonnet, “Introduction,” xxiii. 3 Speck, Beyond the Battlefield, 104. Besides the home-front painters, the women battlefield painters of the Great War discussed in Speck’s book include Australian painters Evelyn Chapman and Isobel (Iso) Rae, British painter Olive Mudie-Cooke, as well as Mary Riter Hamilton (94–104). 4 Major Wendell B. Shaw to Lord Beaverbrook, typed letter, 28 November 1918, 1. bew Collection. ms1, tfrbl. 5 Although photocopies of many letters were available for Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, only excerpts have been published along with paraphrases; for details see below. 6 Quoted in Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. In the letters, Hamilton’s chronic financial need is evident in implicit appeals to patrons in order to keep her expedition going. 7 The main archives include Library and Archives Canada, the Imperial War Museum, the In Flanders Fields Museum, Les Archives du Pas-de-Calais, Australian War Memorial, and Deutsches Historisches Museum, as well as vintage military postcards offered online for sale. 8 Tippett, Art, xvii. 9 Whitman, “The Wound-Dresser,” 242. 10 Winter, Remembering War, 7. 11 Ibid. 12 Quoted in Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. See also Brandon, Art or Memorial, 17; Brandon writes of “the Group [of Seven]’s assimilation of elements of war iconography into its post-war landscape art helped create a national art style.” After painting the denuded trees of the battlefields, they turned to painting storm-swept scenes in Canada. 13 mrh, Arras 1919, 1919, oil on canvas laid down on board, 26 × 33.5 cm, Strauss & Co., Fine Art Auctioneers, Cape Town, Johannesburg. According to the auctioneer’s sales results, this small canvas sold on 20 May 2019 for R 125180 or ca$11,000. 14 Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 5–21. 15 Angela Davis, “The Artist,” 7–21; “The Battlefield Paintings,” 22–4. 16 Osborne, “Warscapes,” 311–33. 17 Helmers, “Visual Rhetoric,” 77–95. 18 Gammel, “Memory of St Julien,” 20–41. 19 Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 90. 20 While Hamilton’s handwriting is admittedly difficult to read, Young and McKinnon often neglect to transcribe or paraphrase sources faithfully, as exemplified in this brief excerpt from Hamilton’s handwritten 25 March 1919 letter to Hart (mjhc), with their erroneous transcriptions bolded to render them visible in the quotation below:

Notes to pages 10–11

You have no idea of the “red tape” I have had to face here (Ottawa). I should have discharge, but I am doing Art for the Gold Stripe, I have [sic] got arrested yet – that last “Ground Rush” in Victoria almost finished me … (80). Compare the above published excerpt with the correct transcription, proofed against the original, which clarifies the meaning: You have no idea the “Red Tape” I have had to face here. I should have felt discouraged, limp off, only that I am [end p. 1] doing it for the “Gold Stripe.” I realy [sic] haven’t got rested yet that last “Grand Rush” in Victoria almost “finished” me … Besides problems with transcriptions and erroneous dates, Young and McKinnon draw conclusions that the sources themselves contradict, as with their assertion that in the spring of 1921, “Hamilton wrote to Hart from her room in an old folks home in Brussels” (103). This placement of Hamilton in the comfort of a home in Brussels is presumably derived from Hamilton’s stationery in her 5 April 1921 letter, as she used paper sold for the benefit of the Asiles des Invalides Belges in Brussels, which was enough to make Young and McKinnon conclude that she was staying there when writing. Yet Young and McKinnon misrepresent Hamilton’s situation as she describes it in this heartbreaking letter, detailing that she was writing from Ypres and living in a miserable canvas hut. Ultimately, the extremely cursory treatment of the battlefield (and other) sources does not do justice to Hamilton’s words or experience but adds to the confusion. 21 Quoted in M.A.I., “Art Exhibits Attract Attention,” 26.

Chapter One 1 Ahmed, “Happy Objects,” 29. 2 Birth records are housed at the Archives of Ontario but mrh’s birth certificate is absent because she was born prior to 1869, the year the province started to keep the register. 3 No doubt, these institutions and businesses accepted the information provided by Library and Archives Canada, who for many decades listed the 1873 birth year. On my visits to lac, I shared with the archivists my findings and corrections, which I am pleased to see they have begun to implement at the time of writing. One hopes that this erroneous information will continue to be corrected with the information provided in this book. 4 Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, ix–xii; see 160–1n5. They state, “it would seem that the artist was born in either 1867 or 1868 or … 1869.” They continue: “For the purposes of this study, 7 September 1868 will be used as Hamilton’s date of birth.” Unfortunately, a careful review of the census data reveals 1868 to be erroneous

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Notes to page 11

(see n5 below), and because 1868 is stated many times as quasi-fact throughout the Young and McKinnon book, including over thirty times in the list of illustrations alone (viii–xii), the book adds to, rather than clears up, the confusion that has long plagued the biography of Mary Riter Hamilton. 5 The death certificate establishes that Mary Riter Hamilton was born on 7 September: see Death Certificate of Mary Riter Hamilton, British Columbia Death Registrations, 1872–1993, Registration Number 1954-09-004233, Film Number b13219, Victoria: British Columbia Archives. The following pattern of birth year is consistent over decades allowing me to establish that Mary Riter Hamilton was born 7 September 1867. • In the Canadian Census of 1871, Mary is 3 years old: Culross, Bruce South, Ontario, Census of Canada, 1871, rg31-c-1, Statistics Canada Fonds, Reel c-9934, 3, Family No. 9, lac. • In the Canadian Census, 1881, Mary is 13: Teeswater, Bruce South, Ontario, Census of Canada, 1881, rg31-c-1, Statistics Canada Fonds, Reel c-13274, 36, Family No. 175, lac. • She is 21 on 17 July 1889; see Certificate of Marriage for Mary Matilda Riter and Charles Watson Hamilton, Registrations of Marriages, 1869–1928, Series ms392, Reel 64, ao. • In the Canadian Census, April 1891, Mary is 23: Port Arthur South, Algoma, Ontario. Census of Canada, 1891, rg31-c-1, Statistics Canada Fonds, Reel t-6324, Family No. 88, lac. All of these listings are fully consistent with the 7 September 1867 birthdate. The reason there is great inconsistency after 1900 is that mrh was beginning to reinvent herself in official documents, as she was building a second career as an artist. This led to vastly fluctuating birthdates, none of them consistent with the next. She first fudged her age in the 1901 census, the year she would make major changes in her life, travelling overseas to study art. • In the 1901 Census, when she is 33 years old, she is incorrectly listed as 29 years old: “May M. Hamilton,” birthdate 7 September “1871”; boarding with John F. Howard, she is listed as an “Artist.” The 7 September birthdate clearly matches the dates listed on her death certificate. The census was conducted between 12–19 April 1901: Winnipeg (Ward 2), Manitoba. Census of Canada, 1901, rg31-c-1, Statistics Canada Fonds, Reel t-6428 to t-6556, Family No. 107, 13, lac. • Likewise, in the 1906 Census, when she 39 years old, she is incorrectly listed as 26 years old (this is the year she is on sabbatical from Paris living in Winnipeg with her sixty-eight-year-old mother): the Census of the Northwest Provinces, 1906: Ward 2, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Census of the Northwest Territories, 1906, rg31, Statistics Canada Fonds, Reel t-18356, 90, Family No. 538, lac.

Notes to pages 12–13

6

7

8 9 10

11

12 13

14

15

• In 1919, at the age of 51, she would claim to be 35 years old on her passport (details below in chapter 3, n57). Stewart, All Our Yesterdays, 82. Stewart’s massive book is a superb historical source on Teeswater; Jim Whytock of the Bruce County Historical Society has also been an excellent source of information. John Saul Riter (b. August–September 1831; d. 2 December 1890) and Charity Zimmerman (b. 5 November 1837; d. 19 September 1915) married in Kincardine, Bruce County, on 9 July 1859; John Riter and Charity Zimmerman Marriage Registry, 9 July 1859, Bruce County, Ontario, County Marriage Registers, 1858–1869, vol. 3, image 6, ao. John Saul Riter’s birthdate is gleaned from his obituary (“Deaths: Riter,” 8), the Marriage Registry, and the 1861 Census (Culross, Bruce, Canada West, Census of Canada, 1861, c-1010-1011, 45, line 48, lac). This discussion corrects and expands Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 161–2n12, who provide a hypothetical birthdate for John Riter of ca. 1833. Stewart, All Our Yesterdays, 28. The 1860 US Census temporarily places the Coryell family in Michigan. John Riter (1800–?) and Maria Reed (1808–1878). John’s birth year is gleaned from the 1861 census, which states on his next birthday he will be sixty-one years old; Esquesing, Halton, Canada West, Census Return of 1861, 1861, Reel c-1030-1031, 131, lac. Maria’s dates are gleaned from her tombstone via Find a Grave: https://www. findagrave.com/memorial/143312003. John Zimmerman (1799–1876) and Esther Stafford (1803–1868); via Find a Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/147971701 and https://www.findagrave.com/ memorial/147971921/esther-zimmerman. They settled in Acton as farmers in the 1830s and had at least thirteen children. Erin, Wellington, Canada West, Census of Canada, 1861, c-1082-1083, 9, line 19, lac. During the early 1930s, a series of conversations with mrh were recorded by her friend Fanny Huntley who shared her notes with Major J.S. Matthews, who collected and archived them as “Notes from interviews with mrh,” 1952, Box 504-d-4, Folder 46, Vancouver City Archives. John Zimmerman’s father was Matthias Zimmerman (1754–1840), who was born in Philadelphia to immigrant parents who hailed from Gründlingen, Baden, in the Black Forest area. Matthias married Maria Snyder (1764–1847) in Philadelphia, before they immigrated to Canada in 1803, purchasing 200 acres of land in the Niagara region. “Obituary: Joseph Zimmerman,” 3. Stewart, All Our Yesterdays, 79. Concession 9, lot 24 N 1/2 (51 ac.). By 1861, John was able to indicate an impressive 500 acres of land in the agricultural census covering the year 1860; Culross, Bruce County, Canada West, Census Returns of 1861, 1861, Reel c-1011, 47, lac.

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Notes to pages 13–18

16 Stewart, All Our Yesterdays, 99 and 81. In 1869, Charity Riter purchased a property in the village of Teeswater, Plan 16, Lot 53, 5 Brownlee N., and sold it again in 1870 to purchase Concession 10, N ½ Lot 16 (51 ac.). 17 “Kaustic Komment,” 3. 18 Lawson, “Canadian Artist,” 8. Based on an interview with mrh in March 1916, Maria Lawson’s article provides granular detail about her childhood. 19 “Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J. S. Matthews. 20 Lawson, “Canadian Artist,” 8. 21 Ibid. 22 At least three of Charity’s sisters moved west: • Susan Green (1845–1921) settled in Virden, mb (census 1911), and passed away in New Westminster, bc (British Columbia, Canada, Death Index, 1872–1990, British Columbia Vital Statistics Agency). • Eliza Hacking (1850–1919) settled in Solsgirth, mb, before moving to Ohio. • Margaret Coryell (1836–1910) settled in Grand Forks, bc; see “Obituary: Joseph Zimmerman,” 3. 23 Lorna Stevens (e-mail to author 9 December 2018), a descendant of Charity’s sister Eliza Jane (Jenny) Hacking, née Zimmerman, relays how the Hacking branch of the family, who farmed in Solsgirth, about 285 kilometres from Miami, lost their home to fire and were taken in by Indigenous peoples wintering in their teepees. In turn, the Hacking family protected Indigenous burial grounds, ensuring these grounds were never farmed. 24 mrh, Nakoda Stoney Mother and Child, pastel, Lorna Stevens Collection, Winnipeg. Likewise, a photograph taken outside her mother’s home depicts Hamilton drawing the portrait of an Indigenous man, who sits for her in profile; the drawing looks realistic, eschewing the idealistic Western stereotypes seen in famous works such as Benjamin West’s The Death of General Wolfe (1770). Reproduced in Foster, “Coals,” 33; and, more recently, in Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 69, though it remains undiscussed in either study. 25 Lawson, “Canadian Artist,” 8. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 “Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J.S. Matthews. 29 See, for example, Humphreys, “Artists’ Views,” 58, and Harrison, “Notes on Dress,” 58–9. 30 Mary A. Traynor (b. 1 September 1838 in Ontario) adopted Ethel M. Traynor (b. 4 February 1883 in Manitoba) around 1883 and around this time relocated to Port Arthur; by 1886, Traynor was able to afford the price of advertisements with regular announcements in The Thunder Bay Daily Sentinel.

Notes to pages 18–22

31 32 33 34

35

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48

“Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J.S. Matthews. Ibid. Ibid. “Local Brevities,” The Thunder Bay Daily Sentinel, 4 May 1887, Microfilm, n370, Reel 13, ao. This corrects and expands Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 15, who misinterpret Mary’s arrival, failing to realize that she comes and goes. Charles Watson Hamilton (b. 4 February 1863 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is the son of Quebec-born Alexander Hamilton and Ireland-born May Warnock. See “Mr Hamilton’s Death,” The Thunder Bay Daily Sentinel, 15 December 1893, 1, Microfilm, Thunder Bay Public Library, Thunder Bay, on. The discussion of Charles’s family revises Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, who assume Charles grew up with his biological brothers, failing to note that he comes from a complex fractured family set-up. See St James Ward, Toronto East, Ontario, Census of Canada, 1871, rg31-c-1, Statistics Canada Fonds, c-9972, 67–8, Family No. 245, lac. Lawson, “Canadian Artist,” 8. My thanks to Cameron MacDonald for locating a copy of the same photograph with a handwritten inscription at the ao, revealing also James Inglis as the photographer. “The Prize List,” The Thunder Bay Daily Sentinel, 6 October 1888, Microfilm, n370, Reel 14, ao. “Our Annual Fair,” The Thunder Bay Daily Sentinel, 5 October 1888, Microfilm, n370, Reel 14, ao. “Topics of the Town,” The Thunder Bay Daily Sentinel, 4 March 1889, 1, Microfilm, n370, Reel 15, ao. “Topics of the Town,” TThe Thunder Bay Daily Sentinel, 13 July 1889, Microfilm, n370, Reel 15, ao. This corrects Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 15, who state that they married in the Presbyterian church. “Local Church Chimes,” The Clinton New Era, 19 July 1889, 1, Microfilm, n352, vol. 24, Reel 7, n.p. [unnumbered frames], ao. The same issue features an official marriage announcement. “Topics of the Town,” The Thunder Bay Daily Sentinel, 22 July 1889, Microfilm, n370, Reel 15, ao. See Census for Porter Arthur South, Algoma Ontario district, Census of Canada, 1891, rg31-c-1, Statistics Canada Fonds, Reel t-6324, Family No. 88, lac. “A New Firm,” Thunder Bay Daily Sentinel, 30 November 1889, Microfilm, n370, Reel 15, ao. After completing their studies in Philadelphia and Europe, George Agnew Reid (1860–1947) and his wife Mary Hiester Reid (1854–1921) settled in Toronto in 1885 with a studio on King Street East, and around 1888, relocated to the Arcade building on Yonge Street, with intermittent travels to Europe. Around 1907, they

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Notes to pages 22–4

49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58

59 60

61 62 63

64

joined Toronto’s Wychwood Park artists co-operative. Foss, “Hiester, Mary Augusta Catharine (Reid),” 477–8. William Colgate quoted in Terry, Mary Hiester Reid, 8. Mary Hiester Reid, A Harmony in Grey and Yellow, 1897, oil on canvas, 34.3 × 90.2 cm. Government of Ontario Art Collection, Toronto. “Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J.S. Matthews. Lawson, “Canadian Artist,” 8. Earlier biographies, including Young and McKinnon’s, discuss the death of Mary’s husband and child, but entirely ignore the sustained family tragedies that mark both Mary’s and Charles’s lives. Cor[oner], Manitou Mercury, 2. Ibid. Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, make no mention of this tragedy, while their index (271) mixes up Hamilton’s sister Etta with her niece Etta. John Saul Riter died on 2 December 1890; “Deaths: Riter,” 8. “Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J.S. Matthews. “Still Born Son of C.W. Hamilton,” 29 August 1892, Thunder Bay District, Ontario, Canada Births, 1869–1911, Series MS929, Reel 108, AO. The father is listed as C.W. Hamilton and the mother as Mary Mathilda Wrighter [sic]; the gender of the baby is “male.” The attending physician, Dr Geoffrey Strange Beck, a practicing doctor in Port Arthur, had impressive credentials, having received his M.B. at Trinity College of the University of Toronto and pursued graduate studies in England. “Mr Hamilton’s Death,” 1. “Charles Watson Hamilton,” Death Registered 14 December 1893, No. 001169, Thunder Bay District, Ontario, Canada Births, 1869–1911, ao. Although the certificate indicates that Charles Hamilton died on 14 December 1893, a date also cited in Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 16, this date seems to have been conflated with the date that the death certificate was officially registered; The Thunder Bay Daily Sentinel provides the most reliable dating information, walking the reader through the week’s chronology, with his death occurring on Tuesday, 12 December, followed by the funeral on 13 December. “Mr Hamilton’s Death,” 1. “Locals and Summaries,” The Thunder Bay Daily Sentinel, 15 December 1893, 5, Microfilm, Thunder Bay Public Library, Thunder Bay, Ontario. “For Sale by Tender,” 4. For details regarding the Hamiltons’ will, see Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 17–8; the Hamiltons owned no real estate and the sale of the remaining inventory, valued at $12,700 (over $334,000 today), covered what the couple owed. E. Berry, “Hurricane Katrina Hair,” 1–44.

Notes to pages 24–7

65 66 67 68 69 70

71 72

73 74 75 76

77 78

79 80

Philippe Ariès quoted in E. Berry, “Hurricane Katrina Hair,” 6. Helen Sheumaker quoted in E. Berry, “Hurricane Katrina Hair,” 9. Blanchard, Winnipeg 1912, 5 and 7. See V. Berry, Taming the Frontier, 24; and mrh’s later auction evidences that she owned a kiln. “Painting on China,” 4. “Found Dead in Bed,” 1. Joseph W. Riter (b. 19 July 1862; d. 17 July 1897) was just two days short of his thirty-fifth birthday. This event, too, remains unreported in Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land. “Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J.S. Matthews. Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 66, date the photograph as “ca. 1912,” which is unconvincing as mrh’s 1912 style is more artistic with sleek and narrow sleeves. All three women exhibit puffs in their sleeves, the distinctive style for the late 1890s, when Hamilton was living in Winnipeg. Ingrid Mida, an expert in dating photos through fashion, whom I asked to examine the photo concurs: “I would date this image to 1895–1901 with a high degree of certainty. The sleeves of the woman in the middle are very distinctive with enormous sleeve heads and were highly fashionable in 1895–1898. The older woman’s bodice and the young girl’s dress also have smaller but still wide sleeve heads of that decade.” Ingrid Mida e-mail to author, 30 January 2020. “Coming and Going,” 3. “iode to Hold Exhibition,” 8. “Mrs Robt. Rogers Succumbs,” 1. Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 32, write that Adina Falconer was “the chaperone”; yet Adina herself was not much older than her cousin, and the fact that Adina herself was a trained musician and both women performed solos in Winnipeg in 1904 upon their return suggests they were both serious students, and the role of chaperone was more likely thirty-three-year-old Hamilton who had the right age and may have benefited from free accommodation. Pulford, “[Notice of Public Auction],” 2. See Huneault, “Professionalism as Critical Concept,” 3–52. Huneault provides a helpful critical context for Hamilton’s work, discussing china painting as a popular domestic choice for women trying to make a living through art but also undervalued and often abandoned by women later in their careers. Pulford, “[Notice of Public Auction],” 2. “Personal,” 4: “Mrs Hamilton of 196 Kennedy street, accompanied by Miss Jean Culver and Miss [Falconer], left yesterday for Europe. [In] Toronto the party will be joined by Mrs Bertam and son.”

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Notes to pages 28–31

Chapter Two 1 2 3 4 5

6 7

8 9 10 11

12

13 14

15

16 17

Quoted in “Mary Riter Hamilton: A Canadian Artist,” 53. Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” 148. Quoted in Medina, “Toward a Foucaultian Epistemology,” 11. Ibid. The New Opera Glass: Containing the Plots of the Most Popular Operas and a Short Biography of the Composers, annotated by mrh, and with the address of the stamped address of the Buchhandlung, Lorna Stevens Private Collection, Winnipeg. This source was first referenced in Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 36 and 174n14. King, Defiant Spirits, 29. This identification corrects Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 28, where this photo is erroneously (and without sourcing) identified as depicting “Art School in Toronto, 1890s … E. Wyly Grier in the background.” In fact, the original photograph, which is uncaptioned, unequivocally represents Franz Skarbina (compare figures 2.1 and 2.2). L.M.W., “Canada’s First Woman Artist,” 14. Brown, “Art Topics,” 30 December 1911, 45. See Howarth, “This Column,” 4 March 1948, 21. mrh, The Russian Student, n.d. [1903–11], oil on canvas, 45.72 × 38.1 cm, Westbridge’s Fine Art Auction House, http://westbridge-fineart.com/site/item_big_past_auctions. php?lotID=617&auctionID=104&artistID=172. mrh, • Rent Day, n.d., oil, Private Collection, Vancouver Island, bc • Mission of Charity, n.d. [ca. 1905–11], oil on canvas, 59.7 × 48.5 cm, aggv • Les Pauvres, ca. 1906–09, oil on canvas, 60.0 × 45.5 cm, Museum of Vancouver Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 6. This corrects Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 45, who suggest that many Canadian artists, including Cullen, Pemberton, George Reid, and A. Curtis Williamson, “were in Paris at the same time” as mrh. “Canadian Artists in Paris,” 5. In 1907, the author of this article counts thirty paintings by Canadians at leading Paris exhibitions, singling out “Mrs May R. Hamilton, of Winnipeg, an exceptionally clever colorist.” The New Opera Glass. Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 46, discuss the Paris Salon as a place where “Aesthetic emotion is rarely aroused,” erroneously attributing a lengthy Sisley Huddleston quotation to mrh, even though Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 18n12, from whose study they cull this quotation, lists the correct source. The high frequency of such errors is most unfortunate as it makes this book unreliable as a scholarly source.

Notes to pages 31–5

18 mrh, An Impression of Venice, 1904, oil, purchased by the Duchess of Connaught in 1912; current location unknown. 19 This undated photograph, reproduced in Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 71–2, is used to illustrate mrh’s arrival in Victoria, bc, yet there is no evidence for this implicit and erroneous dating. 20 Lears, No Place of Grace, xii. The main thinkers of the Arts and Crafts movement included British art critic John Ruskin and designer William Morris; the movement celebrated nature, beauty, and work, while critiquing industrial capitalism. The movement also validated multimodality in art. 21 mrh, • Sister M– , n.d. [pre-1912], collection of Peter Wright, bc • The Father Confessor, n.d. [1905–11], oil on canvas, 101 × 81.3 cm, Heffel Fine Art Auction House • Cathedral Interior, n.d. [1905–11], oil on canvas, 50.5 × 36 cm, aggv 22 Although she indicated her religion as Presbyterian, her great-grandfather Matthias Zimmermann was said to have been Catholic; Lorna Stevens (Zimmermann descendant) e-mail to author, 2018. 23 This approximate date corrects the credit line provided by the Winnipeg Art Gallery that indicates “ca. 1900,” yet mrh did not arrive in Europe until the fall of 1901 and did not work in France until several years later; the work was first exhibited in Winnipeg in June 1906. 24 There is a colourized period postcard of a Brittany girl wearing the exact same apron posing for the camera, a consumable local-colour representation for tourists. 25 In mrh’s 1912 exhibition catalogue (Winnipeg Industrial Bureau), 9, this oil painting is listed as “46. Palm Sunday, La Petite Penitente, Brittany.” My reading builds on Tippett, By a Lady, 47, who writes that Hamilton’s work “celebrates a French peasant girl’s closeness to the land (her clogs and nosegay), and her commitment to religion (the rosary and prayer book), and tradition (her native dress, on the one hand, and the elaborate column on the other).” See also Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 6. 26 mrh, • Portrait Study of Madame X; listed in Exhibition of Paintings, Water-Colors, Pastels and Drawings, 11 • Portrait of Madame X, ca. 1905, oil on canvas, Glenbow Museum, Calgary 27 This corrects Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 49–50, who repeatedly reference the work as “Les sacrifices” [sic] without the distinctive feminization of the original title as printed in Lectures pour tous. While the authors provide a different interpretation, theirs is drawn almost verbatim from a sentimental description first provided by Deacon, “Art of Mary Riter Hamilton,” 563. Entirely ignoring the title, Les sacrifiées, this interpretation misreads the melancholy girl’s mood, which in

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Notes to pages 36–40

28 29

30 31

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

fact shows none of the “excitement of holiday expectancy” claimed by Deacon and repeated by Young and McKinnon. Hélène, “À Travers les Ruines,” 191. mrh, Interior Arras Cathedral, showing statue of Virgin that escaped injury (1919); title cited in “Victoria Artist’s Work Much Praised,” 14. The work was reproduced under the title Ruins of the Beautiful Cathedral Arras War 1914–1918, 1919, oil on paper, in The Gold Stripe, vol. 3 (December 1919). Bruce, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” 22–3. Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 46, cite a listing in L’Affaire from 1906; 179n62. For Tudor-Hart as a camouflage artist, see “Percyval Tudor-Hart | Canadian Camouflage Artist,” Camoupedia, blog written 2 May 2019, http://camoupedia. blogspot.com/2019/05/percyval-tudor-hart-canadian-camouflage.html. mrh, A Spanish Fishing Village, Fontarabia, ca. 1905–11, reproduced in mrh, Exhibition of Paintings, Water-Colors, Pastels and Drawings, 8. “Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J.S. Matthews. mrh, Market Scene, Giverney [sic], 1907, oil on canvas, 38.1 × 45.7 cm, Private Collection, Paris; reproduced in Prakash, Independent Spirit, 133. Prakash, Independent Spirit, 132. Ibid. mrh, Dutch Woman Knitting, 1904, watercolour, 39.4 × 33 cm, via mutualart.com. mrh, Knitting, ca. 1910, oil on board, 27.9 × 23 cm, private collection, Alberta; reproduced in Prakash, Independent Spirit, 233. Mary Cassatt, Maternity, 1890, pastel on paper, 68.6 x 44.4 cm, private collection. For discussions of Maternity, see Huneault, I’m Not Myself, 221–2. See also Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 47–8; they assert that both Maternity and Les Pauvres were painted at the same time, but then date one 1906 and the other ca. 1909. In fact, Les Pauvres was painted in her first studio on Rue de la Grande Chaumière, suggesting an earlier composition date. Her friend Foster, “Les Pauvres,” 66, reports: “Les Pauvres,” which was painted in the artist’s studio in Rue de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris, is from the same model used for her picture “Maternity.” The model had been coming for several days to sit for the latter picture, when one rainy day she and her baby came in, and, while waiting for the artist to begin work, stood beside the stove in exactly the same attitude as in “Les Pauvres.” Seeing them thus, Mrs. Hamilton felt the artistic quality of the pose and at once set to work on a new picture. The dull day was such a contrast to the bright ones during which she had worked on “Maternity” that she decided it would be better to work on one in keeping with the weather, so “Les Pauvres” was begun. While the picture was still unfinished a Boston artist of her acquaintance chanced to visit the studio, and, noticing it, at once advised that it be finished, as it had value as an exhibition piece.

Notes to pages 40–50

41 mrh, Exhibition of Paintings, Water-Colors, Pastels and Drawings, 9, 11, 13 and 15. 42 She also lists “36. Les Pauvres. (Hung in Paris Salon, 1909),” a mother infant scene; ibid., 9; this ca. 1909 oil is at the Museum of Vancouver today. 43 mrh, The Artist’s Studio, undated, oil, reproduced in mrh, Exhibition of Paintings, Water-Colors, Pastels and Drawings, 29. 44 In this figuring of mother and infant in terms of a Pietà sculpture, one is reminded of the more haunting mothers in Victorian post-mortem child photography who stage infants on their laps, making them look alive. 45 Pollock, Vision & Difference, 66. 46 Adele (Fanny) Watson (1873–1947) painted anthropomorphized landscapes; in her later paintings of the California coast, idealized humans merge into the rocky landscape revealing a unity of humanity and nature. 47 “Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J.S. Matthews. Internal evidence suggests that this particular recollection was recorded in 1932, one year after Gibran’s death. 48 Ibid. 49 See Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 7, for a first account of this cross-Canada tour. 50 In the fall, her exhibit arrived in Calgary with a Canadian-style delay, “owing to the fact that the car containing the pictures is on a side track someplace west of Moosejaw,” Calgary News Telegram, 4 December 1912; quoted in Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 7. 51 Deacon, “Art of Mary Riter Hamilton,” 561. 52 “Mary Riter Hamilton: A Canadian Artist,” 53. 53 bew quoted in Foster, “Coals,” 49. 54 Eric Brown to bew, 24 January 1912, ngc Archives. 55 Francis John Shepherd to bew, 24 February 1912, bew Papers, M.S. Coll. 1, Box 10, tfrbl. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Brown, “Art Topics,” 14 December 1912, 1. 59 bew to Francis Shepherd, 26 February 1912, M.S. Coll. 1, Box 22, tfrbl.

Chapter Three 1 2 3 4 5

Quoted in “Mary Riter Hamilton: A Canadian Artist,” 53. Lang, “Handicaps Don’t Stop Her,” 24. Brown, “Art Topics,” 30 December 1911, 45. Ann Davis, “Study in Modernism,” 113. E.C., “Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton,” The Ladies Review, supplement to The Week (Victoria), 6 December 1913, lac. 6 “Art Gallery Will Be Opened,” 11.

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Notes to pages 51–8

7 “Oil Stove Exploded,” 6. 8 Ibid. 9 mrh, Sawdust Burner, n.d. [ca. 1914–18], oil on canvas, 21.59 x 19.5 cm, Private collection, Vancouver Island. 10 Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 21. 11 Macbeth, “One of Our Last War Workers,” 22. 12 mrh, portrait of Muggins the Red Cross Spitz (not extant), referenced in “Muggins’ Career Ended by Pneumonia,” 7. 13 Photograph verso, rtrc. 14 Listed and reproduced in Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, x; see colour plates 10 and 11. 15 All of these portraits are held at J.A.V. David Museum in Killarney, mb, and are the gift of Harry and Elizabeth Elliott from Vancouver (donated in 1981). My thanks to Joyce Dietrich and Betty Sorenson for taking photographs, and to Ingrid Mida for providing me with her expertise in dating the clothing styles; for more on this method, see Mida, Reading Fashion in Art. 16 Hamilton’s portraits hung in Government House in Victoria until April 1956, when the house was completely gutted by fire and the paintings were presumably destroyed, sparking more recent speculation that the series was never painted in full. However, the records show that mrh did complete the series by 29 September 1918, Victoria’s The Daily Colonist reporting that mrh was leaving Victoria where she had been a guest of Sir Frank and Lady Bernhard for ten days, “having finished the portrait of His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor which was required to complete the series to be hung at Government House”; “Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton, The Canadian Artist,” 14. See also Macbeth, “One of Our Last War Workers,” 22; Howarth, “This Column,” 21; and Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 75–7. 17 Tippett, Art, 7. 18 For more, see Tippett, Art, 10–13. 19 mrh, The Entrance to Rappahannock, Victoria, bc, 1915, pastel, chalk, 49.4 × 64.9 cm, aggv, Gift of George and Lola Kidd. 20 [mrh], Victoria Garden, n.d., oil on board, 20.32 x 25.4 cm, sold at auction by Maxsold, Victoria, bc; unsigned but verbally verified by fine art auction house and owners who were friends of the artist. 21 “Riter Family,” 569. Charity had gone back to live on the farm after the death of Maria Simpson Riter, the wife of her eldest son, left five motherless children. Charity helped raise them, but lived by herself in a small hut at the edge of her son’s property. 22 Lawson, “Canadian Artist,” 8. 23 mrh to Aurelia Rogers, 26 March 1926, 1, typed letter, rg37-a, lac. 24 Tippett, Art, 23. 25 Ibid., 13. Official war artists were given sketching permits, and during the war,

Notes to pages 58–65

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38

39 40 41

42 43

44 45 46 47

“the official time allotted them at the front ranged from three weeks to about two months,” ibid., 55. See also Tippett, Art, 36–9. Colonel Henry Appleton to Sir Robert Borden, 9 January 1917, handwritten letter, 1–2. ngc Archives. Appleton to Borden, 2. “Canadians Take Ridge of Vimy,” 1–2. mrh to bew, 15 April 1917, ngc Archives. bew to mrh, 9 May 1917, typed letter, ngc Archives. J.H. Watkins [Beaverbrook’s secretary] to bew, 31 January 1918, bew Collection, ms1, tfrbl. bew to Beaverbrook, 18 March 1918, typed letter, ngc Archives. bew to Beaverbrook, 11 April 1918, typed letter, bew Collection, ms1, tfrbl. bew even recommended to Beaverbrook his protégé’s brother, painter Arnesby Brown, “who happens to be a brother of Director of the National Gallery of Art at Ottawa, Mr Eric Brown”; bew to Beaverbrook, 6 May 1918, bew Collection, ms1, tfrbl. E. Wyly Grier to bew, 26 April 1918, typed letter, bew Collection, ms1, tfrbl. Major W.B. Shaw to Beaverbrook, 28 November 1918, bew Collection, ms1, tfrbl. Nursing Sister Matilda Ethel Green (b. 14 August 1886; d. 9 October 1918) had served with the 7th Canadian General Hospital and was buried in the Étables Military Cemetery. See “Nursing Sister,” Veterans Affairs Canada. “Cost of Canada’s War,” cwm. “The World’s Window,” 4. Paton (1884–1946) suffered a shrapnel wound to the leg but there is no evidence that he was “an amputee,” as asserted with no sourcing in Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 78. Tippett, Art, 8. This both corrects and expands Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 94, who erroneously discuss The Return Home as “either the Olympic or Aquitania,” not realizing this painting is the same subject as the Empress of Asia. In fact, mrh painted several versions of this same ship, with each showing the same scene, as follows: • The Empress of Asia (Alternative title: The Asia), 1919, oil on canvas, rtrc • The Return Home, n.d. [1919], oil canvas, 80.5 × 49.5 cm, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (on a canvas stamped by Paul Foinet Fils, 21 Rue Brea) • The Empress of Asia, 1919, pastel, private collection, Vancouver Island, bc For more on this style in relation to the Group of Seven, see King, Defiant Spirits, 39. Perry, “Artists and Their Doings,” 4. Ibid., 9. For details, see Malone, “The Art of Remembrance,” 1–23.

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Notes to pages 65–70

48 Perry, “Artists and Their Doings,” 9. 49 “List of Manifest or Alien Passengers Applying for Admission,” 26 March 1919, Port of Montreal, Sheet No. 34, Line 26. Manifests of Passengers Arriving at St Albans, vt, District through Canadian Pacific and Atlantic Ports, 1895–1954, Record Group no. 85, Series no. m1464, Roll no. 366, National Archives at Washington, dc 50 “The World’s Window,” 4. 51 Margaret Janet Hart, née McPhee (1867–1941) hailed from Baddeck, Nova Scotia; for more, see “Our Web of Life,” ms-2-333, sf Box 37, Folder 9, Dalhousie Archives, Halifax, Nova Scotia. 52 Margaret Hart to Unknown, “In the early spring of 1919,” n.d. [1929–30], 1; one-page handwritten (ink) statement on the back of Women’s Canadian Club stationery, mjhc. 53 Ibid. 54 “Social and Personal,” Montreal Gazette, 27 March 1919, 3. 55 J.A. Paton to Hart, 17 March 1919, 1; one-page typed letter with The Gold Stripe letterhead, mjhc. 56 mrh to Hart, 25 March 1919, 1–2, 5, and 8; eight-page handwritten (ink) letter on Chateau Laurier letterhead, mjhc. 57 “List of Manifest or Alien Passengers Applying for Admission,” 26 March 1919, Port of Montreal, Sheet No. 34, Line 26. Manifests of Passengers Arriving at St Albans, vt, District through Canadian Pacific and Atlantic Ports, 1895–1954, Record Group no. 85, Series no. m1464, Roll no. 366, National Archives at Washington, dc 58 mrh to Hart, 25 March 1919, 4.

Chapter Four 1 2 3 4 5 6

Quoted in Hopper, “Forgotten Ruthlessness.” mrh quoted in “Mary Riter Hamilton: An Artist Impressionist,” 11–12. Speck, Beyond the Battlefield, 59. Ibid., 60. Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. See Richard Jack’s painting The Second Battle of Ypres, 22 April to 25 May 1915, 1917, 371.5 × 589 cm, cwm, which commemorates the Canadian efforts in Flanders. 7 This approach was rooted in the outdoor or plein air painting tradition practised by Monet and others, including the Group of Seven, though Hamilton’s immersion in the outdoors of the former battlefield and destroyed cities was more radically immersive than the often brief sketching trips made by other war artists; this was the result of both choice and necessity. 8 Chute, Disaster Drawn, 31.

Notes to pages 70–9

9 Lt.-Col. Cyrus Wesley Peck to Lt.-Col. G. Grassie Archibald, 24 March 1919, onepage typed letter, MRH Fonds, P4896/3, Archives of Manitoba. This information corrects Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 80, 270, who reference Cyrus Peck as “Peek,” obscuring his identity. 10 Ibid. 11 “Visages de Paris,” 1. 12 mrh drew a beggar in a military overcoat; mrh, The Blind Beggar, n.d., pastel, rtrc. Inscribed “Paris” on recto. 13 Philippe Roy [Commissioner General for Canada in France], 15 April 1919, typed letter, MRH Fonds, P4896/3, Archives of Manitoba. Contrary to assertions made in Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, mrh did not rent a studio but was embarked on a nomadic life, using first her friend Lucien Lefebvre-Foinet’s store as her address, then the bank, having her mail forwarded to Arras. 14 See “Our Home at Camblain-l’Abbé” in Scott, The Great War, 149–50. 15 mrh to Rosalind Young, 9 June 1919, 2, Mary W. Higgins collection, Victoria, bc. 16 Weather reports here and throughout this book are gleaned from two main sources: L’Ouest-Éclair; journal républicain quotidien (Rennes, France), bnf, online; and the Canadian War Graves Detachment diaries, 1919, lac online. 17 Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. 18 “Mary Riter Hamilton: An Artist Impressionist,” 12. 19 Douglass and Vogler, “Introduction,” 44. 20 Ibid., 10. 21 Quoted in Toadvine, “Maurice Merleau-Ponty.” 22 Saunders quoted in Speck, Beyond the Battlefield, 90 and 250n21. 23 Saunders, “Culture, Conflict and Materiality,” 79. 24 mrh quoted in “Mary Riter Hamilton: An Artist Impressionist,” 11. 25 mrh quoted in Perry, 9. 26 Pedley, Only This, 203–4. 27 The vag Annual Report (1977) for Acquisitions (Peggy Thorburn Collection, mlcrc) indicates that the verso is inscribed: “Arras – Interior Rocklingcourt,/Sacristy.” However, the actual inscription on the backside reads: “Arras – Interior Demoycourt/ Sacristy.” 28 mrh quoted in Macbeth, “One of Our Last War Workers,” 22. 29 Maurice Galbraith Cullen, Villers au Bois, 1918, oil on panel, 24.8 × 35.8 cm, # 19950104-012, Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Ottawa, cwm. See also David Milne’s Canadian Rest Camp at Villers-au-Bois, 2 June 1919, watercolour over graphite on paper, 35.5 × 25.3 cm, # 8444, ngc. David Milne’s puts a sliver of the church tower to the left, with the cemetery entirely removed from the painting; the centre and right foreground show the Canadian rest camp, while the sky and a few white clouds occupy three-quarters of the painting.

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Notes to pages 79–88

30 mrh, Vancouver Camp, Chateau de la Hai [sic], 1919, oil on canvas, physical location unknown, reproduced in The Gold Stripe, vol. 3 (December 1919), 15. 31 A.Y. Jackson, Camouflaged Huts, Villers-au-Bois, 1917, oil on canvas, 87.5 x 112 cm, CWM. 32 Many pages of the Michelin guides feature a touring car on the war-damaged roads; e.g., Michelin, Ypres and the Battles of Ypres, 57, 58, 59, 61, and 65. 33 Lt.-Col. Wilfrid Bovey to Maj. Sydney Booth, 9 May 1919, lac, Box rg 9111, vol. 2119. File m-5-24, vol. 5. 34 Ibid. 35 McIntyre explained that he had been left without food, whereas Hamilton told a different story of McIntyre “protest[ing] to her and laugh[ing] at the idea of having to stay with the car, stating that it was quite unnecessary and was never done.” Maj. Sydney Booth to Lt.-Col.. Wilfrid Bovey, “Car supplied Mrs Hamilton,” 11 May 1919, lac, Box rg 9111, vol. 2119. File m-5-24, vol. 5. Camblain-l’Abbé’s Commander Sydney Booth was furious and faulted McIntyre: “I feel very strongly in this matter as it was direc[t] disobedience of orders”; ibid. 36 On 15 May 1919, the Canadian War Graves Detachment (cwgd) was formed from Canadian burial parties and volunteers; Major W.W. Piper, dso, was appointed to command the Detachment; Wilfrid Bovey to A.D. omfc, 15 May 1919, 1, Canadian Section ghq 1st Echelon, lac. The cwgd consisted primarily of “volunteers obtained from those men who were enlisted under the Military Service Act of Canada now in this country [England], but who have had no Overseas Service”; P.E. Thacker to Secretary of the War Office, 15 May 1919, 1, lac. 37 Winter, Sites of Memory, 27. Winter argues that in response to the war, and in efforts of coping with the loss of 10 million people, artists and writers from both Allied and German cultures returned to traditional structures of mourning. 38 These scrimmages were part of the German counterattacks that followed in the aftermath of the Canadian Vimy Ridge victory. The regimental history of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada, published in a 1920 book, neglects the incident altogether, its focus being on patriotic victory: “The capture of Vimy Ridge was a thing accomplished.” McEvoy and Finlay, History of the 72nd Canadian Infantry Battalion, 54. 39 Dafoe, Over the Canadian Battlefields, 36. 40 mrh, Street in Lens, 1919, oil on wove paper, 16.2 × 21.8 cm, lac 174. Artist’s inscription in pencil, verso. A second work, Interior, House at Lens (Destroyed 1914–1918), is lost today but listed in her shipment to The Gold Stripe; see mrh, “Impressions of the Battlefield by Mary Riter Hamilton 1919” (Sent to the ‘Gold Stripe’, Vancouver), two-page typed list (of sixty-six numbered paintings), mjhc. This list confirms that by early September 1919, Hamilton had completed sixty-four works, and had received two works by Castelucho. 41 mrh to Young, 9 June 1919. 42 “Victoria Artist’s Work Much Praised,” 14. 43 James Kerr-Lawson, Arras, the Dead City, 1919, oil on canvas, 278 × 369 cm, cwm.

Notes to pages 90–3

44 mrh, • Interior of Ruined Cathedral, Arras, 1919, oil on pressed board, 34.9 × 26.8 cm, lac 169 • Ruins of the Beautiful Cathedral of Arras War 1914 to 1918, 1919, oil on paper, physical location unknown; reproduced in The Gold Stripe, vol. 3, December 1919, colour plate facing, 145, mlcrc 45 mrh, Closing of Canadian Camp, Camblain l’Abbé, 1919, oil on plywood, 45.9 × 58.9 cm, lac 161; this work is marred by paper stuck on it and could not be reproduced. 46 Frances Booth had spent the war years in Britain and joined her husband after the war. This identification corrects Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 92, who confusingly reference “the lady of the Château in Arras,” as if referencing an aristocratic Frenchwoman. 47 The age and gender correspond to the two children of Frances Booth (1882–1966): Betty, age five (born in January 1914), and Philip, age three (born in the summer of 1916). Census reports show that Frances Booth hailed from Victoria, bc, and came from a wealthy family, her father a bank manager; the Victoria connection further explains why the two women were friendly. 48 On 31 May, Commander Booth requested an extension of the military car assigned to the camp, and did so in a succinct, if rather disjointed, telegram: “Permission requested keep Ford Car 59659 have to move around country order to sell equipment impossible to work otherwise car also used take Mrs Hamilton artist to work.” Sydney Booth to Wilfrid Bovey, 31 May 1919, Canadian Section ghq 1st Echelon, lac. 49 mrh, Prince Arthur of Connaught’s Room at Camblain l’Abbée [sic], 1919, oil on plywood, 59.3 × 46.0 cm, lac 170. 50 “The club”: Camblain-l’Abbé headquarters was nicknamed Saskatoon Club, using a Canadian reference, as it was customary for soldiers on both sides to nickname places with references to their own country. 51 mrh to Hart, 4 June 1919, four-page letter, MJHC. She used stationery replete with official army service markers of the Canadian Forces Chaplain, the visible emblems of her role as a war artist, reflecting her ambivalent role as an unofficial war artist who received partial (non-monetary) support from the Canadian government through the military attachment; that she uses the Chaplain’s stationery reveals her humanitarian and spiritual agenda. This transcription corrects Young and McKinnon who quote small excerpts transcribing “blanket” as “flannel.” 52 mrh to Margaret Hart, 29 July 1919, four-page handwritten (ink) letter, 4, MJHC (her inquiry about receipt of these objects clarifies the contents of her June package); and mrh to Hart, 4 June 1919, 1. 53 See Silcox, Painting Place, 101. 54 “Street Corners,” 15. 55 Osborne, “Warscapes,” 316 and 317.

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Notes to pages 93–8

56 Even though Silcox, Painting Place, 115–16, argues that Milne “easily could have done as many oil paintings in the same time,” Speck, Beyond the Battlefield, 81, describes watercolour as “an expedient medium” on the battlefield. 57 Silcox, Painting Place, 115. Ibid., 112, writes about Milne’s evolving style: “Initially he retreated to the security of trusted formulas, using rich colour, high contrasts, dramatic dazzle spots, and the usual bands of near, middle, and far ground”; however, once realizing that he was painting dead objects, Milne began to abandon formula, creating “dazzle areas in reverse, where the eye is drawn to a restricted space of rich detail.” Silcox notes the importance of war work to Milne’s artistic development, whose war work was largely ignored (116). 58 David Milne, Entrance to Cellar Shelter in Monchy-le-Preux, 1919, watercolour, 35.4 × 50.4 cm, ngc. 59 “Some Fine Paintings,” 4; two of her paintings are listed in mrh, “Impressions of the Battlefield by Mary Riter Hamilton 1919”: 12. Cellar (Used by Boche as Dug-Out) Monchy le Preux 16. Tank near Monchy le Preux 60 The entry of 24 May 1919 reads: “The Detachment will move from Etaples to the Vimy Ridge Area on 24 May 1919. On arrival at the Vimy Ridge Area, Headquarters will be at Hill’s Camp, Neuville St Vaast. No. 1 Company will camp at Bully Grensy and No. 2 Company at Écurie.” War diaries – Headquarters, ccwg, France, lac Online mikan no. 2034179. 61 David Brown Milne, “Autobiography ‘War Records’” – First Draft, 1947, Box 5, file 20, David Brown Milne Fonds, E.P. Taylor Reference Library, ago. 62 For more on official war artists, see Tippett, Art, 54–5. Official war artists were allotted three weeks to two months at the front, where “they had little opportunity to make more than a cursory pencil or charcoal sketch.” Ibid., 55. 63 mrh to Lt.-Col.. Wilfrid Bovey, 5 June 1919, two-page handwritten letter, Box rg 9111, vol. 2107. File a-4-24, vol. 2. lac. 64 mrh to R.F. Taylor, 7 June 1919, 1–2, two-page typed letter, mjhc. One assumes that Taylor had mrh’s letters typed to share copies with Hart. 65 Ibid., 2, postscript. 66 Years later mrh would report to Hart that she owned a “lot in Wpg [Winnipeg], which seems quite as hopeless,” suggesting that her efforts to sell the “St James” property through Aurelia Rogers were unsuccessful; mrh to Hart, 28 July 1923, 8, mjhc. 67 “Paintings [advertisement for mrh],” The Gold Stripe, vol. 2, May 1919, xxviii (opposite back endpaper). 68 On 19 July 1919, Major Sydney Booth inquired about the “possibility of my being able to obtain a passage back to Victoria, bc for myself, wife and two children”; Sydney Booth to Canadian Overseas Minister of Militia, 19 July 1919, Canadian Section ghq, 1st Echelon, lac.

Notes to pages 98–105

69 On Sunday, 8 June 1919, Milne painted and dated Canadian Corps Headquarters, the Château, Camblain-l’Abbé, 8 June 1919, watercolour, 35.3 × 50.7 cm, ngc. This freed up his car for mrh to use. 70 “The Canadian Artist,” Western Woman’s Weekly. 71 “Street Corners,” 15.

Chapter Five 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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Whitman, “When Lilacs Last,” 7. Quoted in Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. Winter, Remembering War, 1. Medina, “Toward a Foucaultian Epistemology,” 15. Annette Becker and Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau quoted in Siebrecht, “Imagining the Absent Dead,” 207. mrh to R.F. Taylor, 29 July 1919, typed one-page letter, mjhc. Interior Military Stone Huts built by Canadians 1914–1918 (1919) is lost today but cited in “Some Fine Paintings,” 4. mrh, Nissen Hut (In Peace Time), 1919, oil on board, 44.5 × 57.0 cm, The War Amps of Canada; on permanent loan to mrwr. mrh, Tree Converted into an O.P., Arras-Bethune Road, 1919, charcoal on paper, 30.5 × 22.8 cm, lac 193. An important war artery, the Arras-Bethune road was also known simply as the Arras road. mrh, • Observation Post on the Menin Road, n.d., charcoal with white chalk on brown cardboard, 28.6 × 37 cm, lac 218 • Observation Post on the Menin Road, n.d., black, brown, and white chalk on paper, 36.5 × 28.5 cm, lac 215 The committee chose Vimy because “there it was that the Canadian Corps first fought as a unit,” quoted in Vance, Death So Noble, 66, a plan supported by Cyrus Peck. See also Brandon, Art or Memorial, 7–14, for a discussion of the “Sculpting a New Canada at Vimy.” Pedley, Only This, 35. The number of variant paintings alone reveals the importance of this theme to mrh: • Ruined Cathedral of Saint Nazaire, 1919, oil on plywood, 58.42 x 45.72 cm, The War Amps of Canada National Headquarters, Ottawa. The verso of this painting reads: “No. 6. Ruined Cathedral of Ablain St Nazaire, South Ridge,” which corresponds with no. 6 on the list of paintings mrh sent to The Gold Stripe, which reads: “6. Ruins of the Church, Ablain St Nazaire. (Showing Lorette Ridge)”

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Notes to pages 105–10

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• Cathedral Ablaine [sic] St Nazaire, 1919, oil on board [cracking of surface], 44.3 × 57 cm, The War Amps of Canada; on permanent loan to the mrwr • Vimy Ridge – Taken by Canadians, April 1917, 1919, oil on canvas, 50.3 × 65.3 cm, lac 90 • Vimy Ridge, 1919, oil, Private Collection, Vancouver Island, bc; reproduced in Finlay, “A Woman’s Place,” 33 “Hamilton’s time on the former battlefield was very much a pilgrimage impelled by a wider mood of patriotism”; Speck, Beyond the Battlefield, 98. Caption for “Frontispiece – Vimy Ridge” from a painting by Mary Riter Hamilton; “Index,” The Gold Stripe, vol. 3, December 1919, 178. For opposing arguments on Vimy’s importance in relation to nation building, see Tim Cook’s Vimy: The Battle and the Legend; McKay and Swift, The Vimy Trap; and Vance, Death So Noble, 8–11. mrh, Ruined Cathedral of Saint Nazaire, 1919, oil on plywood, 58.42 × 45.72 cm, The War Amps of Canada National Headquarters, Ottawa. Thank you to Diane Presley, War Amps, for sharing the “Before and After” photographs of the painting. In 1920, Peck protested the title of Eric Kennington’s oil The Victims in which some of the kilted infantrymen of the 16th Battalion led by Peck appeared as skeletons, leading Kennington to rename the work The Conquerors. Compare with David Milne’s Location Sketch of Kinmel Park Camp from the Hills about Dyserth, watercolour, 29 × 45 cm, ngc 8515, reproduced in Tippett, Art, fig. 44; Tippett, ibid., 74, notes that Milne “annotated the drawing with place names as though following a military guide to field sketching.” Hamilton, in contrast, distorts perspective engaging the conventions experimentally and with some degree of irony. mrh, Ruined Cathedral of Ablaine [sic] St Nazaire, 1919, oil on plywood, 45.0 × 57.8 cm, lac 86. Siebrecht, “Imagining the Absent Dead,” 218. Siebrecht’s archival research located thirty professional women artists in Germany who used art to reimagine funerary rites often in expressionistic forms in a response to the disruptions of the war. Whitman, “When Lilacs Last,” 4. mrh, British Cemetery, Zouave Valley, Vimy Ridge, n.d. [ca. 1919], oil on commercial canvas board, 21.8 × 26.9 cm, lac 102. At mid-distance to the right, the flank of the Vimy Ridge is rendered in darkest brown, a startling wound left from a succession of craters. A period photograph of the scene reveals the dark (though vaguely defined) pathway in the painting to be the entrance to the Tottenham Tunnel, which led into the Vimy Ridge’s underground and from which soldiers of the 4th Canadian Division had emerged on the morning of the battle. Only vaguely alluding to the painstaking military strategy, the painting’s true focus is the cemetery.

Notes to pages 110–18

26 Mae Riter Pankiw, Miami, mb, inherited this painting from her father, Charles Riter, one of Hamilton’s nephews. 27 Whitman, “When Lilacs Last,” 5. 28 Frederick Varley, For What?, ca. 1918, oil on canvas, 147.4 × 182.8 cm, Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, cwm. See Tippett, Stormy Weather, 108–9. 29 Laub, “Bearing Witness,” 70. 30 Lt.-Col. Wilfrid Bovey to Secretary omfc, 5 June 1919, 1, lac. 31 Janssen, Chessa, and Murre, “Memory for Time,” 143. The so-called “telescoping effect” refers to humans’ perception of temporally distant events as being close (known as forward telescoping) and recent events as being more remote (known as backward telescoping). 32 Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. 33 See Pedley, Only This, 256. 34 Lt.-Col. Bovey to mrh, 18 June 1919, 1, lac. 35 mrh to Rosalind Young, 9 June 1919, handwritten four-page letter on Canadian Service Chaplain stationery, Mary W. Higgins collection, Victoria, bc. 36 Jones, Violence against Prisoners of War, 259. 37 Although the location of these works remains unknown at the time of writing, these works are listed in mrh, “Impressions of the Battlefield by Mary Riter Hamilton 1919” (Sent to the ‘Gold Stripe,’ Vancouver), 2. Oppy Wood was located in the Southern district of the Vimy Ridge district, near Arras, and one assumes she was painting this one earlier, during her stay at Camblain-l’Abbé. 38 For propagandistic titles, see, for example, William Rider-Rider, Hun prisoners and wounded captured by Canadians, 1917, photograph, Imperial War Museum; reproduced in Malvern, Modern Art, 102. Prisoners were exploited by both sides as a spectacle both during and after the war, their images reproduced on lucrative postcards and in popular forums such as London’s Pictorial Newspaper Co. Ltd. The images depicted dejected-looking prisoners behind barbed wire or took pains to show that prisoners were treated well in order to assert one’s own “civilized” status in a brutal, inhumane war; see “wwi Prisoners of War” for further detail. 39 See for example, mrh to Young, 9 June 1919; reproduced in chapter 4 of this book. 40 Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. 41 mrh’s etching Military Kitchen would be among the works the National Gallery of Canada expressed an interest in purchasing, though Hamilton donated it to the Public Archives of Canada; see chapter 13 in this book. 42 “Displays Pictures at Press Club,” 8. 43 Rembrandt, The Three Crosses, 1653, etching and drypoint, 39.4 × 45.6 cm, Museum of Fine Art, Boston.

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Notes to pages 119–28

44 Both works are listed in mrh, “Impressions of the Battlefield by Mary Riter Hamilton 1919” (Sent to the ‘Gold Stripe,’ Vancouver), 2, as follows: Awaiting the signing of the Peace on Lorrette [sic] Ridge 1919 Awaiting the signing of Peace 45 War diaries for June and July 1919. War diaries – Headquarters, cwgd, France, Online mikan no. 2034179. 46 mrh, Dedication of a War Monument at Hooghe, 1919, oil on wove paper laid down onto pressed board, 19.1 × 24.0 cm, lac 81. 47 mrh, First Celebration at Zillebeke after the War, 1920, oil on paper, 20.1 × 25.9 cm, lac 57. 48 Canadian Section ghq, “Demobilization,” R611-432-7-E, vol. 355, lac. 49 mrh to Taylor, 29 July 1919. 50 This point becomes clear in her letter to Hart; see mrh to Hart, 5 April 1921, below. 51 mrh to Hart, 5 April 1921, 3–4, mjhc. 52 mrh to Hart, postmarked 29 July 1919, handwritten four-page letter on Commissioner General of Canada’s embossed stationery, mjhc. 53 Colonel Edward C. Hart commanded the No. 5 Canadian General Hospital in Europe. 54 Taylor acknowledged receipt of $225 from Hart to be sent to Hamilton overseas; R.F. Taylor to Hart, 18 August 1919, 1, one-page typed letter, mjhc. 55 “Social and Personal,” Daily Colonist, 3 May 1919, 11. 56 “Big Audience Hears Address,” 8.

Chapter Six 1 Helmers, “Visual Rhetoric,” 89. 2 mrh, Ecurie Wood, 1919, oil on commercial canvas board, 23.9 × 32.9 cm, lac 112. Artist’s inscription on verso: “Écurie Woods/destroyed by shells/War 1914–18.” 3 Albert Louis Jarché was responsible for photographing the graves of Canadian soldiers and the memorials commemorating Canadian regiments; he also took portraits of the officers and men of many of the units and staffs of the corps; see Robertson, “Canadian Photojournalism,” 47. 4 The verso is inscribed by H.R. Gunning and dated January 1920. One assumes this is Henry Ross Gunning (1879–1951), who had served with the Winnipeg Fort Garry Horse as a captain, before enlisting in September 1914; he was demobilized 19 October 1919 but stayed on travel. “Captain Henry Ross Gunning,” Canadian Great War Project, http://canadiangreatwarproject.com/searches/soldierDetail. asp?ID=168369. 5 One assumes she borrowed the camera from the war grave workers. Claude Monet made a 1920 shadow photograph self-portrait that portrays him at his beloved lily pond, his hat showing at the bottom of the photograph. Claude Monet, “Shadow on a

Notes to pages 128–42

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Lily Pond,” photograph self-portrait, 1920; reproduced in Middlehurst, “The History of the Shadow Self-Portrait.” For more on this topic, see also Stoichita, Short History of the Shadow, passim. See, for example, mrh, Ruins of Sugar Refinery and Nissen Hut at Ecurie, 1919, oil on paper, 27.7 × 35.6 cm, lac 61. Canadian War Graves Detachment, report for the half month ending 30 April 1920, 5, lac. mrh to Aurelia Rogers, 26 March 1926, 1, typed letter, RG37-A, LAC. Stewart, “Discandied.” Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. Quoted in Chute, Disaster Drawn, 28. “Arras Road Cemetery,” Veterans Affairs of Canada, https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/ remembrance/memorials/overseas/first-world-war/france/arras. Quoted in Chute, Disaster Drawn, 18. Milroy, “David Milne and the First World War.” Chute, Disaster Drawn, 60. Chute’s point is illustrated in MRH, Remains of the Church at Neuville St Vaast, n.d., oil on wove paper, 26.6 x 34.4 cm, LAC 92. M.A.I., “Art Exhibits Attract Attention,” 26. mrh, French Trenches, Ecurie, Graveyard of Many Heroes, 1920, oil on wove paper laid down onto cardboard, 26.4 × 34.0 cm, lac 2. Paul Gough, “The Avenue of War,” 78–90. See also variant mrh, The Cross Roads, Vimy Ridge, 1919, oil on canvas, 46.1 × 55.0 cm, lac 163. The work paid tribute to the original wooden soldier-made cross, composed of “odd pieces of wood, old boxes,” that stood here but would be demolished and kept as a relic near St Luke’s Church in Winnipeg. Page, “Jubilee Gift,” 79. Although Library and Archives Canada provides ca. 1920 as the estimated composition date, the more likely date of composition is 1919, given the fall scene depicted and given the artist’s documented (walkable) proximity to the cemetery from early August 1919 to at least January 1920. “The appetite for atrocity stories was … very nearly insatiable,” writes Tippett, documenting their pervasive influence on the making of official war art, as seen in Derwent Wood’s Canada’s Golgotha (1918; cwm), a bronze sculpture depicting a crucified Canadian soldier; Tippett, Art, 81. See also her critical dismantling of some of these stories, 81–7. Poet Robert Service reiterated the story in “Jean Desprez,” wherein the German major commands, “Go nail him to the big church door: he shall be crucified”; Service, “Jean Desprez,” 88. “Canadian Crucified,” 3. See Gessell, “What Did Mary Hamilton Really See?,” b1–b2. Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 88.

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Notes to pages 144–9

26 Goya’s series of eighty-two prints is titled Los desastres de la Guerra [The Disasters of War], 1810–1820, prints, Museo del Prado, Madrid. Angela Davis, “The Battlefield Paintings,” 24, was the first to note that Hamilton’s Tragedy of War “demonstrates the same anger against the war as that to be seen in Goya’s Disasters of War.” The second part of the title, to the contrary, is a variant on a war propaganda cliché found as late as 1919 in popular sheet music; see, for example, J.J. Mahoney, Dear Old France! Uncle Sam – He Hears You Calling (Boston: Liberty Music Publishing, 24 December 1917), Library of Congress. 27 Alison Sinclair, quoted in Chute, Disaster Drawn, 54. 28 For a detailed discussion of commemorative violence, see Jakob, Abu Ghraib. 29 Lily E.F. Barry (1864–1955) to mrh, 5 January 1926, Archives of Manitoba. MRH Fonds, P4896/5. 30 Tippett, Stormy Weather, 117–19. 31 Brandon, “Double Exposure,” 19. 32 Ibid., 14. 33 mrh, Among the Ruins, Arras, 1919, oil on plywood, 27.0 × 35.3 cm, lac 156. This title corrects Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, xi, colour plate 22; and 93 (photo caption); the authors erroneously list the title of this painting (and the matching photograph) as “Gun Location, Farbus Wood, Vimy Ridge” (based on an earlier error on the lac website). However, the correct title is found on the original painting’s verso. 34 Chute, Disaster Drawn, 60. 35 mrh, • A French Soldier (Zouave), Rocklin Court, 1919, pastel on paper, 29.4 × 20.0 cm, lac 178 • Kasen Havildat [sic], Troop in France, 1919, pastel on brown paper, 50.8 × 30.48 cm, rtrc • French Colonial Officer (French Soldier), 1919, oil on canvas, rtrc 36 mrh, A British Soldier, Ecurie, France, 1919, pastel on paper, 51.4 × 34.9 cm, lac 179. 37 Two works by Castelucho are listed in the exhibition catalogue: iode, Exhibit of Oil Paintings [by mrh], 9–15 April 1920, Navy League Institute, Vancouver: The Belgian Flag [Le Drapeau Belge, 14 July 1918]; b/w plate reproduced in The Gold Stripe, vol. 3, December 1919, opposite 112; mrh kept the original Le Drapeau Belge Big Bertha [captured long-range German gun] Today, the location of both paintings is unknown. 38 Hamilton later found that the Paris branch of the Royal Bank confirmed a transfer intended for her, but since she did not have an account with them, they were unable to remit the funds without her address; mrh to Margaret Hart, 14 May 1920, 5, mjhc. 39 Falla, “Dauntless,” 14.

Notes to pages 149–52

40 Department of Commerce Bureau, 239, Table 167. 41 “Le temps qu’il fait,” L’Ouest-Éclair: Journal Républicain Quotidien, 1–31 October 1919, 3. 42 “Mary Riter Hamilton: An Artist Impressionist,” 12. 43 Zhang and Zhang, Over There, 52. 44 Ibid., 74. 45 David Milne to Clarke, 27 July 1919, Box 16, Folder 10, David P. Silcox Fonds, ago. 46 W.G.M. Fortune to W.L. Mackenzie King, ca. 1929, LAC. Fortune talked about the great physical strain and the even greater nervous strain, implying the latter was caused by isolation and fear. 47 Dendooven, Asia in Flanders Fields, 203. Dendooven’s doctoral study shows that there were as many as 140,000 Chinese labourers at the Western Front, some 96,000 employed in the British Service from 1917 to 1919. Although indispensable as war and postwar labourers, the Chinese workers were marginalized; Dendooven even cites instances of French children throwing stones at Chinese workers travelling on lorries. 48 Ibid., 207. 49 Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. 50 Ibid. 51 mrh, Bleeding France, War: 1914–1918, 1919, oil on board, 52.5 × 78.2 cm, lac 225. 52 mrh, The First Crop After the War, 1919, oil on cardboard, 29.9 × 42.5 cm, lac 36. 53 Wells, From Montreal to Vimy Ridge, 305. 54 mrh, Nine Elms, France, 1919, oil on commercial canvas board, 32.8 × 40.6 cm, lac 85. The verso is inscribed: “The nine Elms showing … British Cemetery/on the Arrass[sic]-Lens road/war 1914–1917 – /This sketch is taken/from the battle field/between the [Bethune]-Arrass [sic] road and the Lens-Arrass [sic] road.” My transcription of the “[Bethune]-Arrass [sic] road” corrects the lac website transcription as “Belgians [?] Arrass [sic] road,” their uncertainty indicated by a question mark. According to cwgc, over 400 soldiers killed on 9 April 1917 were buried in the Nine Elms cemetery; the cemetery was later expanded to nearly 700 graves, of which 430 of the 537 identified casualties are Canadian; https://www.cwgc.org/find-acemetery/cemetery/30201/Nine%20Elms%20Military%20Cemetery,%20Thelus. 55 mrh, Nine Elms British Camp, France, 1919, oil on paper, 26.2 × 33.5 cm, lac 11. Later, she would identify her hut in this painting: “At the extreme left is the shack which was Mrs Hamilton’s ‘home’ in the war area”; M.A.I., “Art Exhibits Attract Attention,” 26. 56 Headquarter “B” Group, Cemetery Caretaker Branch, D.G.R & E., No. 1 District, “Menu for Christmas Dinner, France, 1919”; this item is missing from the donation of letters made to mlcrc, but is transcribed in Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 96.

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Notes to pages 152–6

57 Vance, Death So Noble, 74; see also 77. 58 The Gold Stripe, vol. 3, December 1919, reproduced the paintings as follows (listed also in the index, 178–9, adding extensive captions for the first three): • mrh, Frontispiece – Vimy Ridge • mrh, Trench, Vimy Ridge, facing 17. • mrh, Villiers [sic] au Bois, facing 49 • mrh, Ruins, Arras Cathedral, facing 145 • mrh, Sugar Refinery at Ecurie, b/w, facing 33 • Castelucho, The Belgian Colours (Le Drapeau Belge), facing 113 Not listed in the Index: • mrh, Nissen Huts, Vancouver Camp, Chateau de la Hai, b/w, 15 • [mrh], Untitled [Small shelter, detail], facing 33 • mrh, Souchez Corner (b/w), 92 • [mrh], Untitled [Tent with telescope, detail], facing 113 59 “Fine Exhibits at Royal City,” 2. 60 “Victoria Artist’s Work Much Praised,” 14. “No. 25 – Study for large canvas showing Vimy Ridge (No. 1),” appears to be the same as “No. 1 – Entrance to Canadian Observation Post on Lorrett [sic].” 61 “Mary Riter Hamilton: An Artist Impressionist,” 11. 62 Ibid. 63 mrh, Untitled, [Tent with telescope, detail], facing 113. 64 mrh quoted in “Mary Riter Hamilton: An Artist Impressionist,” 12.

Chapter Seven 1 mrh to Ellen Hart, 7 May 1920, handwritten (pencil) letter; envelope postmarked 14 May 1920, mjhc. 2 Osborne, “In the Shadows of Monuments,” 66. 3 Ibid., 61. 4 mrh quoted in Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. 5 Osborne, “Warscapes,” 313. 6 Angela Davis, “The Battlefield Paintings,” 24. 7 Although Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, follow Davis’s central argument, their analysis of reconstruction work is absent. 8 Speck, Beyond the Battlefield, 90. 9 All of her etchings are dated 1919 or are undated. • Military Kitchen, Guarding the German Prison Camp, 1919, etching with drypoint, 24.1 × 30.8 cm, lac 216 • German Dugout at Blangy, 1919, black and white etching, 25.9 × 30.2 cm, inscribed on verso: “Interior of German Pill Box,” # 72241, cwm

Notes to pages 156–67

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21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

• Interior German Pill Box Blanchy, n.d., coloured etching on cardboard, 12.6 × 17.8 cm × 21.6 cm, lac 219 • The Lens-Arras Road, 1919, coloured aquatint on paper, cardboard?, 16.8 × 23.3 cm, lac 221 mrh, Arras 1919, 1919, oil on canvas laid down on board, 26 × 33.5 cm, Strauss & Co; viewable on Artsy: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/mary-riter-hamilton-arras-1919. mrh, Panorama of Arras, n.d. [ca. 1919], hand-coloured aquatint on cardboard, 26.9 × 33.8 cm, lac 222. Boym, “Ruinophilia,” 42–7. mrh to Ellen Hart, 7 May 1920, handwritten (pencil) letter; envelope postmarked 14 May 1920, mjhc. This transcription corrects Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 90–1. “Mary Riter Hamilton: An Artist Impressionist,” 12. “Food and eating are central to our subjectivity, or sense of self, and our experience of embodiment, or the ways that we live through our bodies”; Lupton, Food, the Body, and the Self, 1. See catalogue reference to her studio interior in Arras; one hopes that this lost painting may still be located. mrh, Old Street in Arras, 1919, oil on commercial canvas board, 26.8 × 22.1 cm, lac 168. mrh, • Old Spanish Architecture in Ruins, Arras, 1920, oil on wood panel, 22.0 × 13.6 cm, lac 139 • Ruins of Arras, n.d., oil on wove paper laid down onto cardboard, 25.7 × 33.0 cm, lac 130 Boym, “Ruinophilia,” 45. mrh, La Petite Place – Arras, 1919, oil on plywood, 59.1 × 46.1 cm, lac 18. This early market scene depicts a tiny group of women who use quotidian umbrellas to mark their stands. mrh, Petite Place, Arras – Market Day, 1920, oil on plywood, 45.7 × 58.5 cm, lac 136. mrh, First Boat to Arrive at Arras after the Armistice, 1920, oil over charcoal on paper, 27.0 × 35.1 cm, lac 4. Although reproduced in colour in Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, following p. 32, plate 30, it is not discussed. “War Has Developed New Style,” 8. See also “iode To Hold Exhibition,” 8. The article encouraged the British Columbia government to support the unfunded artist. “Showing Paintings at Private View,” 9. “Pictures of Vimy,” 16. Ibid. “War Has Developed New Style,” 8. Ibid.

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Notes to pages 168–79

29 30 31 32 33 34

35

36 37 38

W.G.M. Fortune to Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King, 6 May 1929, lac. Ibid. “Canadian Artist Tells of Work for Red Cross,” 8. mrh is referencing the same Paris trip she described in her earlier letter to Ellen Hart, when she received the package with the cake. mrh to Margaret Hart, 14 May 1920, 1–10, handwritten (pencil) letter, MJHC. A formal agreement between Hamilton and Hart would not be drawn up until much later, within a very different post-expedition context as outlined herein in later chapters. While Hamilton indeed filled out cards to receive payments, which is how Hart also kept track of funding remitted, the funding agreement was much less clear than suggested in Young and McKinnon’s book. mrh to Margaret Hart, 26 February 1929, handwritten [ink] letter, mjhc. This and other letters give a different account to the one provided in Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 95, who write with no scholarly support or sourcing: “Before departing, Hamilton had asked Hart to help manage her money” and “once in Paris, if she needed money, Hart was to sell one or more paintings and to deposit the funds received into the artist’s Victoria bank account.” In fact, the authors appear to confuse the timeline of events as Hamilton relied on Taylor to send funds, and the “cards” she acknowledges having filled out (in her 29 July 1919 letter to Hart) confirm her acceptance of Hart’s money transfers to her. Only much later, in her post-battlefield life in Paris, did Hamilton request that Hart sell the paintings hanging in her townhouse; see chapter 12 in this book. Regehr, Goldberg, and Hughes, “Exposure to Human Tragedy,” 510. Ibid., 505–6. W.G.M. Fortune to W.L. Mackenzie King, 6 May 1929, lac.

Chapter Eight 1 2 3 4 5 6

Willson, From Quebec to Piccadilly, 309. Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism, 112. Winter, Sites of Memory, 322–3; see also Gough, “Fault Lines,” 39–48. mrh, Evening –Ypres, n.d., charcoal, 29.3 × 38.1 cm, lac 205. Willson, Ypres: The Holy Ground, xii and xiii. Ibid., xiii. For more on Willson’s role in Ypres, see Dendooven, Menin Gate & Last Post, 28–32; for more on Ypres as a British outpost, see Elliott and Fox, The Children, 5–83. 7 The Ramparts Cemetery has 190 men buried there, 10 of whom are Canadian. All of the Canadians died in June, September, or October 1917, which concurs with the Battles of Messines and the Third Battle of Ypres. Nine of the 10 men were attached to the 2nd and 3rd Tunnelling corps and three of the men – Cpl. G.E Lock, Spr W.A. Martin, and Spr A. Borthwick – were killed on the Ypres-Menin road when they

Notes to pages 179–88

8

9 10

11 12 13 14 15

16

17

were “caught by a shell” while boring “holes to find suitable ground for dugouts”; No. 3 Tunnelling Company, Canadian Engineers, War Diary, October 1917, handwritten entry, rg 9 iii-d-3, vol. 5003, folder 686, lac. “No 1 and 2 Coys and hq were at infantry barracks ypres. hq was in ramparts. The relief was satisfactory”; Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, War Diary entry, 19 August 1916, transcribed by Canadian Great War Project, http://www. canadiangreatwarproject.com/WarDiaries/diaryDetail.asp?ID=11754. “Dugouts near Barracks, Hdqrs. Ramparts, Casualties – Nil.”; 58th Battalion of the Canadian Infantry, War Diary, 26 July 1916, transcribed by Canadian Great War Project, http://www.canadiangreatwarproject.com/WarDiaries/diaryDetail. asp?ID=409. Derrida, Archive Fever, 17. mrh, • Menin Gate, Ypres, 1920, oil on plywood, 45.8 x 58.4 cm, lac 166 • The Menin Gate, 1920, charcoal on cardboard, 37.2 × 28.5 cm, lac 220 Dendooven, Menin Gate & Last Post, 9. Sassoon, “On Passing the New Menin Gate,” 153. mrh, The Shattered Ramparts of Ypres, 1920, oil on plywood, 46.0 × 59.2 cm, lac 157. Eliot, Waste Land, 38. The Cloth Hall appears centrally in the following (oil works unless otherwise indicated) by mrh: • lac 10: Ruins of the Cloth Hall, Stormy Day, 1919 • lac 23: Market among the Ruins of Ypres, 1920 • lac 42: Ruins at Ypres, Cloth Hall, [ca.] 1919 • lac 48: Ypres Honours the Acting Mayor of 1914, 1920 • lac 55: Ypres, 1920 • lac 162: Cloth Hall, Ypres – Market Day, 1920 • lac 187: Rear view of the Cloth-hall, Ypres, n.d. charcoal and white chalk on paper • lac 196: Ruins of Ypres, 1920, charcoal on wove paper • lac 207: Ypres en fete, 1921, charcoal • lac 210: Cloth Hall, 1920, charcoal • Uno Langmann Gallery: Ypres, Early Morning, 1920 In the following, the Cloth Hall is still a strong feature on the horizon line. • lac 39: A Street in Ruined Ypres, 1920 • lac 166: Menin Gate, 1920 • lac 183: The Ramparts and Menin gate, Ypres, with the Cloth-hall in the background, 1920, charcoal • lac 220: The Menin Gate, 1920, charcoal on cardboard “Ypres Honoured,” 14.

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Notes to pages 188–96

18 Claude Monet, La rue Montorgueil à Paris, Fête du 30 Juin 1878 (1878), oil on canvas, 81 × 50 cm, rmn-Grand Palais, Musée d’Orsay. 19 mrh, Ypres, 1920, oil on cardboard, 29.7 x 23.2 cm, lac 55. 20 The exhibition ran 15–30 April 1922; “Concours et Expositions,” 56. 21 mrh, The Cloth Hall at Ypres, n.d., oil on board, 45.7 × 55.9 cm, Vancouver, Courtesy Heffel Fine Art Auction House. 22 mrh, Market among the Ruins of Ypres, 1920, oil on plywood, 45.6 × 56.0 cm, lac 23. Reference to “Exposition Versaillaise. –1924” on verso. 23 Olive Mudie-Cooke to Agnes Conway, 14 May 1920, Imperial War Museum. 24 See table in Palmer, Women War Artists, 84; the table derived from Malvern, Modern Art, 181–6. 25 Olive Mudie-Cooke, Hooge Crater Cemetery, Sanctuary Wood, Kemmel, Mount Royal, n.d. [1920], watercolour on paper, 24.1 × 30.4 cm, Imperial War Museum. Speck, Beyond the Battlefield, 94, notes the autobiographical underpinnings in the work of Mudie-Cooke, who had worked as a vad during the war, a thematic reflected in her watercolours. 26 “Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J.S. Matthews. 27 mrh, Menin Road, British Cemetery, ca. 1920, oil on paper, 27.0 × 35.0 cm, lac 110. 28 Osborne, “In the Shadows of Monuments,” 66. 29 The previous year, she had painted two variant works, both showing the same congregation of people: mrh, • Dedication of a War Monument at Hooghe, 1919, oil on wove paper laid down onto pressed board, 19.1 × 24.0 cm, lac 81 • Mine Crater (Hooghe), n.d. [1919], oil on cardboard, 22.2 × 27.3 cm, lac 43 30 mrh, Mine Crater – Hooghe, n.d., oil on plywood, 45.8 × 58.3 cm, lac 17. 31 A hand-annotated (by mrh) exhibition catalogue, mrh, “Impressions of the Battlefield,” 1, indicates that mrh was aware of the de Vinck family. Baron Gaston de Vinck (1855–1927), the long-time mayor of Zillebeke, was an active figure in reconstruction, as documented by the de Vinck family archive, which is on display on the former grounds today. 32 mrh, Shrapnel Corner, Flanders, 1920, oil on wove paper, 26.9 x 33.5 cm, lac 116. 33 Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 108. 34 Two large tree remnants on the left throw prominent shadows across the middle to the right, as if alluding to the violent and shocking deaths of the two Canadian commanders, Maj-Gen. Malcolm Mercer of the 3rd Canadian Division and Lt.-Col. Herbert Cecil Buller of the Patricias, reported as front-page news in the Victoria Chronicle from 2 to 13 June 1916. Compare with mrh, Sanctuary Wood Cemetery, 1920, oil on wove paper, 25.0 x 30.7 cm, lac 134; here, the foreground is likewise blocked with war debris and water-filled shell holes, with crosses and signage appearing close to the horizon line.

Notes to pages 196–205

35 Quoted in Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. 36 El Greco, Fifth’s Seal of the Apocalypse, 1608–14, 222.3 × 193 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 37 Saunders, “Bodies of Metal,” 43. 38 Irene Elizabeth Slade to Isabella Stewart Gardner, 6 July 1920, 4–5, handwritten letter from Paris, Gardner Museum. 39 “Canadian Art,” 4. 40 “Society: Members of the Winnipeg Branch,” 8. 41 mrh quoted in Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. 42 Ibid.

Chapter Nine 1 John Masefield, 28 April 1917, quoted in Dyer, Missing of the Somme, 126. 2 Fussell, Great War and Modern Memory, 69–70. 3 mrh to Hart, 9 June 1919, is among several letters confirming the end-of-July shipment from Paris; mrh to Rogers, 26 March 1926, 1, confirms the September trip to Paris. 4 For entries, refer to War diaries – No. 2 Company, cwgd, France; and War diaries – Headquarters, Canadian War Graves Detachment, France, rg9-iii-d-3, vol. 5053, no. 944, t-10945, lac. 5 mrh to Aurelia Rogers, 26 March 1926, 1, rg37-a, lac. 6 Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. 7 Dublin-born William Orpen famously painted Dead Germans in a Trench (1917, iwm) in the deserted Somme battlefield. 8 mrh, Street in Ruined Albert, 1919, oil on wove paper laid down on cardboard, 14.1 × 17.7 cm, lac 78. 9 McEvoy and Finlay, History of the 72nd Canadian Infantry Battalion, 29. 10 mrh to Hart, 28 July 1923, 6, handwritten letter, mjhc. 11 “Society: Members of the Winnipeg Branch,” 8. 12 Masefield, Old Front Line, 17–18 and 18. He writes: “The road leaves Albert in a street of dingy and rather broken red-brick houses,” a scene painted in mrh, Street in Ruined Albert (1919). As the Route de Bapaume continues, the ridge on the left is called Usna Hill; on the right, where “the chalk of the old communication trenches [is] still white and clean, it is called Tara Hill. Far away on the left, along the line of the Usna Hill, one can see the Aveluy Wood.” 13 See Maurice Cullen’s No Man’s Land, 1920, oil on canvas, cwm; David Milne, Entrance to a German Dug-out in Oppy Wood, 31 May 1919, watercolour, ngc; and John Singer Sargent, Dugout, 1918, watercolour, Metropolitan Museum of Art. 14 “Story of the 22nd Battalion,” 51. This document is held at the Canadian War

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Notes to pages 207–21

Museum among the George Metcalf Archival Collection, which includes original materials related to the 22nd Battalion’s role in the Battle of Courcelette. 15 Robertson, “Canadian Photojournalism,” 42. 16 mrh, Interior of the Sugar Refinery, Courcelette, n.d., oil on wove paper, 19.4 × 23.9 cm, lac 120. 17 In Chute, Disaster Drawn, 25. 18 A good example is seen on blank-faced soldier shown in Fussell’s Great War and Modern Memory, cover image. 19 Reid, Broken Men, 8. 20 Tracy, With the Witnesses, 8. 21 Fussell, Great War and Modern Memory, 70. 22 mrh, British Cemetery at Avioli [sic], Somme (1919), oil on commercial canvas board, 18.7 × 23.7 cm, lac 111. 23 Prestidge, “Forêt de Guerre,” 20. 24 Ibid., 24 and 25. 25 Ibid., 23. 26 Quoted in Chute, Disaster Drawn, 30. 27 Fehrenbach, “Der oszillierende Blick,” 522–44. 28 Helmers, “Visual Rhetoric,” 91. 29 Ibid. 30 Quoted in Chute, Disaster Drawn, 25. 31 “Society: Members of the Winnipeg Branch,” 8. 32 See the essays collected in Delaney and Durflinger, eds., Capturing Hill 70. 33 mrh, Loos from the Crater, Hill 70, n.d., oil on wove paper, 28.4 × 36.9 cm, lac 99. 34 A second work is made from the lip of the crater: this painting overlooks the valley, painted in vivid flashes of colour with the clouds drifting white across an otherwise blue horizon. 35 See Helmers, “Visual Rhetoric,” 87. 36 Other works painted here include: mrh, • Duke of Wellington Cemetery near Cambrai, n.d., charcoal and white chalk on paper, 28.3 × 37.0 cm, lac 186 • Porte de Paris, Cambrai, n.d., charcoal on paper, 24.0 × 28.5 cm, lac 192 37 Granatstein, Greatest Victory, 126. 38 Some 234 Canadians are buried in the Bourlon Wood cemetery; “Bourlon Wood Cemetery,” Commonwealth War Graves Commission. 39 mrh, Entrance to Bourlon Wood (British Cemetery), n.d. [1920], oil on wood panel, 22.0 × 26.4 cm, lac 107. 40 mrh, Interior of a Cellar used by Refugees (Bourlon, near Cambrai), 1920, oil on plywood, 26.8 × 33.9 cm, lac 28. 41 Photograph of plaque commemorating the Canadian liberation of Mons, 11 November

Notes to pages 221–7

42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49

1918; via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mons_ plaque.JPG. Macbeth, “One of Our Last War Workers,” 22. Ibid. mrh, Mons, ca. 1920, oil on thin cardboard, 24.5 × 32.2 cm, lac 45. Maurice, Last Four Months, 160. “Brucie” was the nickname of J. Ethel Mary Bruce (1881–1968), a feminist supporter of Hamilton and an honorary member of the Canadian Women’s Club in Victoria, bc. In her role as an editorial writer for Victoria’s The Daily Colonist from 1917 to 1941, she wrote about Hamilton’s work, signing her columns J.E.M.; this corrects Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 55, who erroneously refer to her as a man. See obituary for details: “Everyone Liked Brucie,” 12. mrh to Hart, 2 September 1920 (postmarked on envelope), handwritten [ink] letter, mjhc. Royal Bank to Hart, 23 November 1920, mjhc. mrh to Hart, 2 September 1920, 1.

Chapter Ten 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Van der Kolk, “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” 135. Winter, Remembering War, 7. Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. Watkins, “Desiring Recognition,” 269. MacCurdy, Structure of Morale, 2. Ibid. Ibid., 12. Ibid. Ibid. “Mary Riter Hamilton: An Artist Impressionist,” 12. MacCurdy, Structure of Morale, 13. Ibid., 12. MacCurdy, Structure of Morale, 14. Ibid., 15–16. Tippett, Art, 59 and 62. mrh, Tank Cemetery at Zillebeke, n.d., oil on plywood, 45.7 x 58.1 cm, lac 1. “Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J.S. Matthews. Hamilton actually references Hill 70 for this event, which cannot be correct since Hill 70 is in France, not Belgium; in fact, her description matches the vicinity of Hill 62 (Sanctuary Wood), famous for its tank cemetery and where she made many paintings and sketches of tanks. She will repeat this same error in several other paintings listed as Hill 70.

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Notes to pages 227–37

18 Ibid. 19 See also mrh, Road to St Julien, 1920, charcoal and white chalk on paper, 22.9 x 30.4 cm, lac 185. 20 Macbeth, “One of Our Last War Workers,” 22. 21 mrh, Dumping Place for Unexploded Munitions, 1920, oil on paper, 34.0 × 42.1 cm, lac 65. 22 Watkins, “Desiring Recognition,” 279. 23 Macbeth, “One of Our Last War Workers,” 22. 24 mrh, Hollebecke [sic], Flanders, n.d., oil on light card laid down onto cardboard, 22.5 × 29.0 cm, lac 12. 25 In comparison, the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used by Americans (the 2017 Massive Ordnance Air Blast in Afghanistan, informally known as moab, or Mother of all Bombs) set off a similar explosion but was only a fraction of the size with 22,000 pounds (or 11 tons) of ammunition, compared with the 460 tons of ammonal in 19 mines set at Hill 60. 26 mrh, verso inscription, Shell Holes in Flanders near Ypres, No Man’s Land, 1919, oil on wove paper, 20.4 × 25.3 cm, lac 59. 27 mrh, Hill 60 Mine Crater, Flanders, 1920, oil on canvas, 30.4 × 40.8 cm, lac 35. 28 Eliot, Four Quartets, 145. 29 mrh, Dickebusch Lake, Flanders showing the Reconstruction, 1920, oil on wove paper, 27.0 × 36.1 cm, lac 119. 30 As the 107th New York Infantry war diary reports, it was in Heuvelland, “while lying under the observation of Mont Kemmel and the enemy’s accurate artillery fire in July and early August, [that] the American divisions rapidly became veteranized and ready for any work”; Jacobson, comp., History of the 107th Infantry, 128. 31 Macbeth, “One of Our Last War Workers,” 22. 32 mrh, Cross Roads Kemmel and Dickebusch, 1920, oil on wove paper laid down onto pressed board, 25.0 × 33.4 cm, lac 95. 33 mrh, La Toilette, n.d. [1905–11], watercolour, 68. 3 × 45.7 cm, Private Collection, Vancouver Island, bc. 34 Macbeth, “One of Our Last War Workers,” 22. 35 mrh, • British Cemetery (Poityze [sic]), 1919, oil on plywood, 45.9 × 59.5 cm, lac 25 • Chateau Grounds, Poityse [sic], n.d., charcoal, 37.4 × 39.0 cm, lac 190 36 mrh, Flanders Field, n.d., oil on board, 18.42 x 24.13 cm, Uno Langmann Limited Fine Art, Vancouver, BC. 37 Woolf, Room of One’s Own, 97. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., 75. 40 mrh to Hart, 5 April 1921, 5, seven-page handwritten (ink) letter, mjhc.

Notes to pages 238–42

Chapter Eleven 1 mrh quoted in “Canadian Artist Tells of Work for Red Cross,” 8. 2 “Canadian Artist Tells of Work for Red Cross,” 8. 3 According to the annual report for the Quebec Provincial Division of Canadian Red Cross, they sent $133.50 worth of apples, equivalent to almost $2,000 worth of apples today. The entry simply read: “Apples for Arras Children,” Quebec Provincial Division of Canadian Red Cross Annual Report 1921, 6. 4 mrh shared the story of the apples with family, friends, and journalists alike; see, for example, mrh to Hart, 15 February 1921 (reproduced in this chapter); Falla, “Dauntless,” 14; “Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton Has Collection,” 10; Foster, “Les Pauvres,” 67. 5 “Canadian Artist Tells of Work for Red Cross,” 8. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Hamilton owned small lots in Victoria that she was hoping to sell; she also held eight shares in Canadian Pacific Railway stock; as of March 1921, the stock was worth $113½ per share (Vancouver Daily World, 3 March 1921, 27); thus, Hamilton’s shares were worth $908 (or $12,079 in 2020). Comparatively, the stock was at $162½ per share when Hamilton left British Columbia (Vancouver Daily World, 15 March 1919, 21), which corresponds to a total of $1,300 (or $17,295 in 2020), representing about a 30 per cent loss in value. 11 mrh to Hart, 15 February [1921], 1–12, handwritten [ink] letter, mjhc. My dating of this letter is based on mrh’s stay at the Ypriana Hotel, dated as beginning 15 January 1921 in the Police des Étrangers registration book, entry of 28 January 1921; also, mrh is concerned with her cpr shares in 1921, not in 1920. This corrects Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 99–100, 203n83, who erroneously (and without evidence) date the letter 1920. 12 Ahmed, “Happy Objects,” 38–9. 13 “Mrs Hamilton in Ypres,” 6. 14 Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 21. 15 “Mary Riter Hamilton,” 28 January 1921, two-page entry, Police Des Étrangers (Dienst Vreemdeling), Belgium: Ypres City Archive. 16 Saunders, “Crucifix,” 7 and 10. 17 I was able to identify this cemetery with the help of a period photograph by Ivan L. Bawtree who recorded the war graves units in Flanders in 1917; reproduced in Gordon-Smith, Photographing the Fallen, 63. 18 McCrae, “In Flanders Fields,” 468. 19 Gordon-Smith, Photographing the Fallen, 63.

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Notes to pages 243–55

20 My transcription of the title Duhallow corrects the 2020 spelling provided by Library and Archives Canada, Dunhallow British Cemetery, with an additional letter n; the name is, in fact, correctly spelled Duhallow on the front left corner of the painting and should be transcribed without the n. 21 Saunders, “Crucifix,” 9. 22 mrh, British Cemetery at Tuileries Zillebeke, 1921, oil on plywood, 46.2 × 59.1 cm, lac 68. Inscribed on verso: “‘The’ Tuileries British Cemetery’/a much disputed spot during the war.” 23 “Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J.S. Matthews. 24 Ibid. 25 mrh, Overlooking the Battlefields from Hill 70 [sic], 1921, oil on plywood, 24.5 × 45.8 cm, lac 149. 26 I have been able to identify a number of paintings featured in the photograph, including two works from 1920, corroborating that the photo was made in 1920: • lac # 61: Ruins of Sugar Refinery and Nissen Hut at Ecurie (1919) • lac # 66: St Julien, First Gas Attack Launched Here (1920; see figure 10.2) • lac # 116: Shrapnel Corner, Flanders (1920) 27 Yeats, “Lake Isle of Innisfree,” 39; my thanks to the anonymous mqup peer-review reader for this suggestion. 28 mrh to Hart, 5 April 1921, 1–7, handwritten (ink) letter, mjhc. 29 mrh among the crosses, undated photograph, rtrc. 30 mrh to Hart, 5 April 1921, 5. 31 Reid, Broken Men, 4. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., 5. 34 Ibid. 35 See also mrh, Camouflaged German Observation Post (Dummy Monument) at Terhand Village, Zillebeke, 1921, oil on wood panel, 15.8 × 22.0 cm, lac 135. Showing its colossal size with a cylindrical tower pushing into the sky, the monument stands as a fantasy structure, an architectural parable for the inflatedness of the war itself. 36 Matt. 27:45, kjv. The same gloom and triple plumes are found in another painting: MRH, Clearing Houthulst’s Forest of Gas Shells, n.d. [ca. 1921], oil on canvas, 26.2 x 29.3 cm, LAC 98. 37 Bertie Bryson Currie to mrh, n.d. [1921], 1–2, mrh Fonds, p4896/4, Archives of Manitoba. A secretary to a Calgary barrister, thirty-six-year-old Bertie Bryson Currie (1885–1970) lived on her own; she had helped raise her half-siblings after Hamilton’s sister Clara died in 1910, leaving behind five children. 38 Bertie Currie insisted that she would safeguard Hamilton’s letters. In 1928, she married Raymond Children, and after living as a farmer’s wife in rural Alberta, returned to Calgary in 1964 after her husband’s death. She had no direct descendants

Notes to pages 255–65

and searches among her sibling’s descendants have not yielded any results. 39 Bertie Currie to mrh, n.d. [late summer 1921], mrh Fonds, p4896/4, Archives of Manitoba. 40 Bertie Currie to mrh, 29 August 1921, 1, two-page typed letter, mrh Fonds, p4896/4, Archives of Manitoba. 41 Ibid., 2. 42 Ibid., 1. 43 W.G.M. Fortune to Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King, 6 May 1929, lac. 44 Gaston de Vinck (1855–1927) and his wife, Florence (1873–1958), had five children: Marguerite (Daisy) (1895–1964), Yves (1899–1979), Louise (1901–1977), Elisabeth (Betty) (1902–1992), and Gaston-Noël (1906–1966). 45 mrh, Bleeding France, War: 1914–1918, 1919, oil on board, 52.5 × 78.2 cm, lac 225. 46 Louise de Vinck, Tank Anglais dans la “Zouave Wood” La Hooghe (près Ypres), 1920, watercolour on paper, 16 × 24 cm. My thanks to Danielle Van Wagner for drawing this work to my attention. 47 William A. Hamilton to mrh, 5 November 1921, typed letter (with letterhead of W.A. Hamilton’s shoe factory in Toronto), mrh Fonds, p4896/4, Archives of Manitoba. 48 This corrects Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 104. They write: “He [William] noted that, although he had not heard from her in years, he would do as she asked and try to find Maternity, which had been stored in Mr Townsend’s parlour since her 1911 exhibition. Undoubtedly, Hamilton hoped to sell the painting, if it could be found.” In fact, this distorts the meaning of William’s letter; moreover, the authors confuse “Mother and Child” with Maternity, yet mrh’s 1912 exhibition catalogue lists Mother and Child separately, in addition to listing three works entitled Maternity. 49 mrh, Sunrise on Passchendaele Ridge, 1919, pastel on paper, 24.0 x 32.1 cm, lac 180. 50 mrh, The Grave of an Unknown British Soldier, Passchendaele Road, 1920, oil on wove paper, 41.1 × 33.2 cm, lac 121. 51 The environment was still chaotic, and information passed through local stories was not always reliable. The same error of attribution was made by a seasoned veteran and journalist who had visited the grave in 1919 and described it as “the grave of Pte. C.C. Hughes, of Australia, the fighting son of a fighting premier”; Fay, “Found Many a Canadian Mother,” 20. 52 mrh, Menin Road – Hell Fire Corner, 1921, [charcoal] drawing, 30.8 × 40.1 cm, lac 203. 53 See also mrh, The Lille Gate, n.d., charcoal, 34.9 × 48.1 cm, lac 217. 54 There is a slight confusion of dates; she says she left Ypres in October, when in most records she indicates November 1921. 55 mrh to Hart, 7 February 1923, 1–6, eight-page handwritten (ink) letter, mjhc. 56 Ibid., 2–3.

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Notes to pages 266–9

Chapter Twelve 1 mrh to Aurelia Rogers, 26 March 1926, 1, rg37-a, lac. 2 For details, I am grateful to Esther Berry (mlcrc) and her correspondence with Olivier de Solan (Musée de Picardie), 7 June 2013. The 10 June event was discussed in numerous national periodicals: L’Illustration, 10 Juin 1922; “Le Panthéon Interallié de la Somme,” La Presse, 10 June 1922, 1; “Le Panthéon Interallié de la Victoire,” Le Progrès de la Somme, 10 June 1922, n.p., Somme Archives, Amiens. 3 The ambitious Somme Memorial project was abandoned in 1925 and never built; Olivier de Solan (Musée de Picardie) to Esther Berry (mlcrc), 7 June 2013. Even Louis Duthoit’s model is no longer extant. This is similar to Beaverbrook’s ambitious architectural plans for housing the official war art of Canada, which never materialized as conceived but eventually became, in more modest form, the Canadian War Museum. 4 Macbeth, “One of Our Last War Workers,” 22. See also Nède, “Le Panthéon interallié,” 1. A recent Canadian recipient is Maïr Verthuy, co-founder of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University, Canada’s first women’s studies program. 5 L.M.W., “Canada’s First Woman Artist,” 14. The article provides a biographical summary noting her keen interest in painting the Banff mountains. 6 Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. 7 “Le Panthéon Interallié de la Somme,” Le Progrès de la Somme, 18 July 1922, n.p., Somme Archives, Amiens. 8 That year, Walker and Brown had an impressive $50,000 spending budget, yet only $5,000 was put aside for buying Canadian art. Both Walker and Brown, the uncontested powerhouses of the Canadian art world, spent the lion’s share of the budget acquiring art in Europe, even in the face of pressures at home and the exceedingly high customs fee of 6 per cent of the total value purchased abroad. Perhaps to appease their detractors, and despite their shared dislike of modern art, they entered an increasingly symbiotic relationship with the Group of Seven, whose works were privileged in the domestic acquisitions of the National Gallery. In exchange, the Group of Seven offered a much-needed public defence of the gallery. 9 “Canadian Art,” 4. 10 Annie May Hamilton Strong to bew, 4 March 1923, ngc Archives. 11 mrh to Hart, 20 June 1922, 1–4, handwritten (ink) letter, mjhc. 12 Falla, “Dauntless,” 14. 13 Ibid. 14 mrh to Hart, n.d. [December 1922], 3–4, handwritten (ink) letter, mjhc. 15 mrh to Ellen Hart, postcard postdated 12 September 1922, mjhc.

Notes to pages 270–5

16 “With the Artists,” newspaper clipping [newspaper unknown], 17 September 1922, mrh Fonds, p4896/8, Archives of Manitoba. The same gallery at the same time featured work by Rosa Bonheur, who was among the most renowned women painters of the Victorian era, known to wear men’s clothing and paint animals. The exhibition was also listed in Le Rappel: “Les Arts: Les Expositions,” 3. 17 “With the Artists,” 17 September 1922. 18 The American heiress was likely Pasadena socialite Mary Eleanor Bissell (1873–1963), who purchased a painting of “the ruined belfry of Ypres” to present it “to the museum in course of construction at Pasadena, California”; Johnston, “Fine Exhibition,” 27. The Watson sisters were travelling together with Bissell and two other friends. . 19 mrh to Hart, 20 June 1922, 3–4. 20 mrh to Hart, 3 February 1923, 1–7, seven-page handwritten (ink) letter, mjhc. Page 3 of this letter is missing. 21 mrh, In Aid of the Allied Somme Battlefield Memorial: Paintings by Mary Riter Hamilton 1919 – 1920 – 1921, catalogue brochure printed on cardstock and folded (Paris: 1923), mlcrc, Toronto. This catalogue is informative as it lists 125 works (including 89 oil paintings, 4 pastel drawings, and 31 charcoal-and-chalk drawings and etchings). 22 Comparison of the 1920 Vancouver exhibition catalogue with that of the 1923 Surrey House Exhibition reveals that Paton sent the following paintings for inclusion: 1. Entrance to Canadian Observation Post on Lorette Ridge (lac 89) 2. Vimy Ridge – Taken by Canadians, April 1917 (lac 90) 3. Ruined Cathedral of Ablaine [sic] St Nazaire (lac 86) 4. Mt St Eloi (lac 53) 5. Part of the Ruines [sic], the Beautiful Cathedrale [sic] of Arras, 1914–1918 (Uno Langmann) 6. Villers au Bois (lac 94) 7. Ruins of Sugar Refinery and Nissen Hut at Ecurie (lac 61) 8. A Shell Hole – Misty Morning (lac 26) 23 mrh to Hart, n.d. [ca. 25 June 1923], 1–2 and 6, six-page handwritten (ink) letter, mjhc. 24 George Brewer, Diary, 12 July 1923, 33–4, 51–3, George Brewer Papers, lac. 25 mrh to Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 12 July 1923, handwritten letter, Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, Stefansson Mss-196 Fonds, Box 10, Folder 29. She was flattered by the Arctic explorer’s attentions but did not trust him with her work; she never forgot that two of her paintings had sunk on a ship he led into disaster in the Arctic in 1914. 26 mrh to Hart, 28 July 1923, 7, handwritten letter, mjhc. 27 Ibid., 8–9. 28 Ibid., 5–6.

365

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Notes to pages 275–87

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52

Joseph Coudurier de Chassaigne to mrh, 19 October 1923, 1, typed letter, mjhc. Ibid., 2. Katharine C. Watson to Margaret Hart, 29 November 1923, 1–2, typed letter, mjhc. Katharine C. Watson to Margaret Hart, 1 February 1924, 2–4, handwritten (ink) letter, mjhc. See Dodman, Shell Shock, Memory, and the Novel, 9–10. mrh to Hart, 21 December 1923, postcard, mjhc. “Canadian Art,” 4. mrh to Rosalind Young, card with chalk drawing of colonnade with human figures and a pool, one-page letter, on verso dated 13 May 1924, Mary W. Higgins collection. Agreement between Mary Riter Hamilton and Margaret Janet Hart, 22 March 1924, mjhc. Hart added a note: All the correspondence in connection with this was carried on by Mrs H.E. Young, 1208 Oliver St. Oak Bay, chairman of the Committee of the University Women’s Club of Victoria to try to assist their Honourary member, Mrs Hamilton, in Paris. As the club realized the gravity of her case, and the pictures were hanging in my house, I was asked to allow my name to be put in the power of athy so that pictures if sold c’d be delivered at once M.H. Thomas, Women of Influence, 34. “Dr Tolmie Asked to Appeal,” 5. Quoted in F.A. Robertson [British Columbia Returned Soldier Commission] to Margaret Hart, 1 April 1924, 1, typed letter, mjhc. mrh to Hart, 12 July 1924, envelope postmarked 15 July 1924, 8, handwritten (ink) letter, mjhc. “Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J.S. Matthews. Société des Amis des Arts, 15. mrh to Hart, 12 July 1924, 1. Macbeth, “One of Our Last War Workers,” 22. mrh to Hart, 12 July 1924, 5–6. Ibid., 3. “Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J.S. Matthews. Richard W. Wallace to mrh, n.d. [January 1926], Vancouver City Archives. Ibid. Camille, “The Social World,” 4. The article states that her paintings had been exhibited in Paris at the Opera House, and subsequently in Surrey House, London, though it’s more likely that the London exhibition existed as a catalogue only. Macbeth, “One of Our Last War Workers,” 22.

Notes to pages 288–94

Chapter Thirteen 1 mrh to Arthur George Doughty (Dominion Archivist), 27 July 1926, one-page typed letter. lac. 2 Richard W. Wallace to mrh, n.d. [January 1926], Box 504-d-4, Folder 46, Vancouver City Archives. 3 The “Calling or Occupation” is listed as “House wife,” and her last permanent residence is listed as “London, England”; her eyes are “Brown,” whereas the 1919 List of Manifest Aliens stated blue; her final destination is to “Mrs W.A. Weir, 54 Wardlow, Fort Rouge, Winnipeg”; “List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States Immigration Officer at Port of Arrival,” 8 December 1925, New York, ny, Page no. 144, Line 8, Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1897–1957, Record Group no. 36, Microfilm serial t715, Roll no. 3769, National Archives at Washington, dc. 4 mrh to Hart, n.d. [7 December 1925], 1–6, handwritten on stationery of ss Minnekahda, mjhc. 5 “Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J.S. Matthews. 6 “Battle Areas of France Depicted,” 10. Young and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 118, cite this article as their source for numerous erroneous conclusions (e.g., that mrh’s return was funded by the Amputation Club) that are not borne out by the article. 7 “Notes from interviews with mrh,” compiled by Major J.S. Matthews. 8 Adina Falconer to Margaret Hart, n.d., 3, six-page handwritten letter with a postscript by mrh, mjhc. 9 mrh postscript in Falconer to Hart, n.d. 10 “Society: Members of the Winnipeg Branch,” 8. 11 Macbeth, “One of Our Last War Workers,” 22. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Even the Beaverbrook Collection was neglected; see Brandon, Art or Memorial; Robertson, Terrible Beauty; and Tippett, Art. The centenary commemorations have revitalized discussions with exhibitions and new studies such as Grace, Landscapes of War and Memory. 17 They suggested the bulk of the collection be preserved in the west, once more relegating mrh’s work to a Western Canadian niche. 18 Board of Trustees, “Minutes of the thirty-eighth meeting of the National Gallery’s Board of Trustees,” 14 April 1926, ngc Archives. 19 Eric Brown to mrh, 15 April 1926, lac; and Eric Brown to Hon. James Horace King, 15 April 1926, lac.

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Notes to pages 294–9

20 Nor did the trustees examine the full collection, their quick decision based exclusively on the small sample received. 21 M.A.I. “Art Exhibits Attract Attention,” 26. 22 mrh to Aurelia Rogers, 10 May 1926, 1, rg37-a, lac. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Aurelia Rogers to Arthur George Doughty, 13 May 1926, 1, one-page handwritten letter (on Chateau Laurier stationery), lac. 26 mrh to Rogers, 10 May 1926, 1 and 2. 27 Of the 66 paintings mrh had shipped to the Amputation Club, • 8 paintings were returned to mrh in Paris in 1923 (see Robertson to Hart, 1 April 1924) • 43 paintings and drawings were returned to her at her request on 22 October 1932 • 11 stayed with the Amputation Club (on permanent loan at New Westminster) • 1 stayed with the Amputation Club in Ottawa • 3 paintings of the original 66, including the 2 Castelucho paintings, remain unaccounted for 28 Harry Orr McCurry to Eric Brown, 28 May 1926, 1, typed letter, Eric Brown Fonds, ngc. 29 mrh to Doughty, 22 July 1926, telegram, lac. 30 mrh to Arthur George Doughty, 27 July 1926, 1, typed letter, lac. 31 Arthur George Doughty to mrh, 3 August 1926, typed letter, mjhc. 32 Hamilton shipped 109 works on 27 May 1926 and 110 works on 22 July 1926, while an additional 7 works were sent to the Public Archives of Canada from the National Gallery of Canada per Hamilton’s request to Eric Brown on 23 May 1926, for a total of 226 works. However, Doughty’s official report on “Paintings, Drawings and Prints” dated 1927 states: “Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton: 227 paintings and drawings of the battle-fields of Europe immediately after the Armistice”; Doughty, Report of the Public Archives, 25. To date, the one missing painting remains a mystery. 33 Winter, Remembering War, 32. 34 Joy Parks (Canada Post) to author, 4 September 2019.

Epilogue 1 2 3 4 5

mrh to Hart, 4 July 1928, 3, eight-page handwritten letter, mjhc. Ibid. mrh, Untitled, oil, 1927, Lorna Stevens Collection, Winnipeg. Quoted in Page, “Jubilee Gift,” 10. Hart to mrh, 7 January 1929, two-page handwritten (ink) letter, mjhc.

Notes to pages 299–306

6 Jean R. Bruce (née Currie) (1903–1996); after her husband’s death, she married Peter Sanderson. 7 Jean R. Bruce to Hart, 2 April 1929, 1–2, mjhc. 8 Mrs W.H. Coy owned six pastels of “Rappahannock”; see mrh, “Incomplete list of Mrs Hamilton’s pictures,” Vancouver City Archives file. 9 mrh to Hart, 18 April 1929. mjhc. 10 Margaret Janet Hart, Statement, n.d. [post–28 August 1929], two-page handwritten letter, mjhc. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Margaret Janet Hart, Statement, 31 December 1929, one-page handwritten in ink, mjhc. 14 Ibid. 15 Lavinia Green to Margaret Janet Hart, 21 March [1929?], four-page handwritten [pencil] letter, mjhc. 16 Rosalind Watson Young to mrh, 30 May 1941, 2, four-page handwritten letter, Mary W. Higgins Collection. The envelope addressed to mrh was stamped “Return to Sender” and “Not in Directory,” the invalid address being “1504 W. 14th, Vancouver, bc.” 17 Ibid., 4. 18 Howarth, “This Column,” 4 March 1948, 21. 19 Howarth, “This Column,” 26 June 1948, 25. One assumes that it was during this time that Hamilton replaced her left eye with a glass eye. 20 “Cross Country: British Columbia,” 61. See also “Mailbag,” 55. 21 Lang, “Handicaps Don’t Stop Her,” 24. 22 mrh quoted in Lang, “Handicaps Don’t Stop Her,” 24. 23 Maj. James Skitt Matthews, Tribute for mrh, 4 March 1952, Box 504-d-4, Folder 46, Vancouver City Archives. 24 Ibid. 25 mrh, Informal Last Will, two-page handwritten and unsigned on recycled “Proxy” vote to be held on 27 March 1953, rtrc. On 30 August 1954, the Supreme Court of bc confirmed Frank Riter as the administrator of her estate; Vancouver Registry #54909; rtrc. In a letter, Frank Riter confirms that there was no formal will and that there are eleven next of kin; Frank Riter to Kaye Lamb (Dominion Archivist), 1 March 1955, typed one-page letter, rtrc. 26 Mrs J. Tillman, cited as a witness in Morris Gorkin, M.D.’s Medical Certificate dated 2 April 1954, Essondale Hospital Patient File for Mary Riter Hamilton, Accession 93-5683, Box 1028, Chart #34, 142, British Columbia Archives. 27 Dr N.L. Richardson, cited in “Provincial Mental Health Services Ward Notes,” 6 April 1954, Essondale Hospital Patient File for Mary Riter Hamilton, Accession 93-5683, Box 1028, Chart #34, 142, British Columbia Archives.

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Notes to page 308

28 As late as 1948, Maternity was the painting Hamilton valued highest at $1,500; “Revised list for display of Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton’s Pictures,” 25 June 1948, rtrc. 29 “Funeral Service of the Late Mary Riter Hamilton,” printed leaflet dated Monday, 12 April 1954, Chapel of Chimes, Harron Bros Ltd, Vancouver, Lorna Stevens private collection, Winnipeg, mb. 30 Frank Riter to Bertie Bryson, 5 November 1954, typed one-page letter, rtrc. Frank confirms that mrh’s ashes were interred in the grave of C.W. Hamilton on 20 October 1954. Frank Riter asked Mrs Norm MacClennan of Port Arthur “if she would check on the plot sometime and advise me as to the condition[.] I thought if, after the gifts are tak[en] care of, should there be an opportunity to sell any of the remaining pictures the money could go to have a proper marker put on the grave and the necessary things done to the plot. Would this be ok with you?” In 2004, Thunder Bay historian David Nicholson, who gave tours of the Riverside Cemetery, found Hamilton’s grave without a marker. With the help of Nicholson, collector Fred Johnson, the Thunder Bay Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society, and the Kakabeka Falls Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion, a marker was placed on the plot in the spring of 2008, followed by a dedication ceremony in the summer of 2008; the plot is owned by Lorna Stevens, Winnipeg. The cross is a simple military-style cross, and the grave is decorated with poppies. David Nicholson to Irene Gammel, 9 August 2014, e-mail; and Nicholson, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” 5 January 2018.

Bibliography

Mary Riter Hamilton’s War Art: Paintings, Sketches, Drawings, and Prints Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario (Mary Riter Hamilton Collection, r5966-0-5-e: 230 paintings, drawings, sketches, and prints – about a third of these works are accessible online on the Library and Archives Canada bilingual website). Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, British Columbia (10 oils, 5 pastels, 2 drawings). Royal Westminster Regimental Museum, New Westminster, British Columbia (11 oils). Uno Langmann Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia (10 oils). The Gold Stripe, Vancouver, British Columbia (reproductions of artworks including 4 oils and 4 drawings no longer extant or not yet found). Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (1 oil). Canadian War Museum (1 etching). Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Arras (1 oil). Vancouver Art Gallery (1 oil). Many other works are held in private collections such as: • descendants of Margaret Janet Hart Private Collection, British Columbia • Fred Johnson Private Collection, Thunder Bay, Ontario • Lorna Stevens Private Collection, Winnipeg, Manitoba • Mae Riter Pankiw Private Collection, Miami, Manitoba • Theresa Thomas, Logan Lake, bc • other private collectors across Canada, the United States, and South Africa

Archival Materials Mary Riter Hamilton’s Letters and Related Artefacts Archive of the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre, Ryerson University, Toronto (Margaret Janet Hart Collection: includes battlefield letters, telegrams, article clippings, and notes from Mary Riter Hamilton sent to Mrs Margaret Janet Hart, her patron in Victoria; comprising 133 items in total, this is by far the largest holding of materials written by Hamilton; Mary Riter Hamilton Collection: comprises 1,061 analogue and digitized items, including a full run of The Gold Stripe, ephemera related to the First World War that includes postcards and photographs featuring

372

Bibliography

sites painted and sketched by Mary Riter Hamilton; Peggy Thorburn Collection: includes artefacts by Mary Riter Hamilton such as a china plate and a scarf painted by Hamilton, who gave a scarf to each of her nieces as a gift, and other ephemera, including reproductions of family photographs, such as a ca. 1882 bust photograph of Mary Riter Hamilton). Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg (Mary Riter Hamilton fonds: 5 letters discussing the portraits of bc governors; 13 letters of support for the artist’s expedition dated 1918–1919; 9 family letters to Mary Riter Hamilton from Bertie Currie and William Hamilton, 4 letters discussing an exhibition with iode, and typed lists of Mary Riter Hamilton’s paintings; Virginia G. Berry fonds: on china painting). Archives of Ontario, Toronto (Registrations of Marriages, 1869–1928; Thunder Bay District, Ontario, Canada Births, 1869–1911; and microfilms for The Thunder Bay Daily Sentinel and The Clinton New Era). British Columbia Archives, Victoria, British Columbia (Essondale Hospital patient files: Mary Riter Hamilton). John and Bruce Riter Private Collection, Miami, Manitoba (family photographs including tintypes made in Teeswater, Ontario, dating to ca. 1882, as well as a portrait photograph of Mary Riter Hamilton at her easel signed and dated 1905). Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario (“Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton – Gift of her Paintings,” rg37-a, vol. 300: correspondence relating to Hamilton’s donation includes letters by archivist Dr Arthur Doughty and Aurelia Rogers, and clippings). Lorna Stevens Private Collection, Winnipeg, Manitoba (early photos of Mary Riter Hamilton, ca. 1890s, ephemera from her Berlin years; the funeral service leaflet). Mary W. Higgins Private Collection, Victoria, British Columbia (Mary Riter Hamilton’s 4 letters to Rosalind Young; other ephemera relating to the artist’s work in Victoria). Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire (Mary Riter Hamilton correspondence with Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 1895–1962). Ronald T. Riter Collection, Vancouver, British Columbia (extensive ephemera including numerous family photographs and photographs showing Hamilton painting overseas, clippings, and many letters relating to Mary Riter Hamilton’s informal last will and distribution of paintings amongst relatives). Ronald Riter is the executor of the Mary Riter Hamilton Estate. Interviews with Mary Riter Hamilton City of Vancouver Archives, Vancouver, British Columbia (Major Matthews Collection, am54-s17-m3958: includes materials compiled by Major Matthews, comprising typed notes relating to reminiscences by Mary Riter Hamilton during the 1930s, when she was in her sixties, about her life including her battlefield adventures, as recorded by

Bibliography

Hamilton’s friend Fanny K. Huntley; news clippings related to her; and a typescript of Major Matthews’s address on the occasion of her 1952 exhibition). Other Archival Sources Canadian War Museum, Ottawa, Ontario (Beaverbrook Collection of War Art; George Metcalf Archival Collection on the Battle of Courcelette). Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Maidenhead, uk (cemeteries across the battlefields). E.P. Taylor Reference Library, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (David Brown Milne fonds; Mary Riter Hamilton fonds with ephemera covering the pre-war era). Imperial War Museum, England, uk (Rider-Rider William Collection; and war photography and art). In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres (Antony d’Ypres Collection of war photography). Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario (Census of Canada data; George Brewer Papers; Soldiers of the First World War, 1914–18; War Diaries of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, rg9-d-iii-3; Canadian War Graves Commission). Library of Congress, Washington, dc (Prints and Photographs Division; and Historic Sheet Music Collection, 1800 to 1922 for contextual documents and artifacts). Met Office, Exeter, uk (Monthly Weather Reports). National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, dc (Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787–2004). National Gallery of Canada Archives, Ottawa, Ontario (Eric and Maud Brown fonds; Sir Edmund Walker Correspondence). Red Cross Archives (crcs Quebec Division Annual Reports 1920–24). Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library, University of Toronto (Sir Edmund Walker Papers; exhibition records). Thunder Bay Public Library, Thunder Bay, Ontario (The Thunder Bay Daily Sentinel newspaper articles). The War Amps of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario (clippings).

Websites “Hamilton, Mary Riter.” Canadian Women Artists History Initiative. Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec. http://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist.php?ID_ artist=23. “In Her Own Words.” Mary Riter Hamilton: Traces of War. National Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-worldwar/mary-riter-hamilton/Pages/introduction.aspx/050804_e.html.

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Books, Articles, and Other Sources Ahmed, Sara. “Happy Objects.” In The Affect Theory Reader, eds. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, 29–51. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Amos, Robert. Mary Riter Hamilton 1873 [sic]–1954. Exhibition catalogue [with research essay and list of thirty-five paintings]. Victoria: Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1978. “An Art Exhibit: A Beautiful Display Made by Mrs Hamilton and Her Pupils.” Manitoba Morning Free Press, 5 December 1898, 6. “Arras Road Cemetery.” Veterans Affairs of Canada, 14 February 2019. https://www. veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/memorials/overseas/first-world-war/france/arras. “Art Gallery Will Be Opened Today.” Manitoba Free Press, 19 June 1914, 11. “Battle Areas of France Depicted: Mrs Mary Riter Hamilton Has Collection Portraying Post-War Scenes.” The Montreal Gazette, 21 December 1925, 10. Berry, Esther R. “Hurricane Katrina Hair: Rereading Nineteenth-Century Commemorative Hair Forms and Fragments through the ‘Mourning Portraits’ of Loren Schwerd.” Fashion Studies 2, no. 1 (2019): 1–44. Berry, Virginia G. Taming the Frontier: Art and Women in the Canadian West 1880–1920. Calgary: Bayeux; Winnipeg, mb: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2005. “Big Audience Hears Address: Women’s Canadian Club Present in Numbers at Col. Bovey’s Lecture.” The Daily Colonist (Victoria), 3 December 1930, 8. Blanchard, Jim. Winnipeg 1912. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2005. Boym, Svetlana. “Ruinophilia.” In The Off-Modern, 42–7. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017. Brandon, Laura. Art or Memorial?: The Forgotten History of Canada’s War Art. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2006. – “Double Exposure: Photography and the Great War Paintings of Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, and Frederick Varley.” Revue d’art canadienne/Canadian Art Review 39, no. 2 (2014): 14–28. Brown, Vandyke. “Art Topics.” Manitoba Free Press, 30 December 1911, 45. – “Art Topics.” Winnipeg Free Press, 14 December 1912, 1. Bruce, J.E.M. “Mary Riter Hamilton.” The Gold Stripe, vol. 2, May 1919, 22–3. Camille. “The Social World: Mary Riter Hamilton.” The Chicago Tribune and the Daily News New York (European Edition), 3 November 1925, 4. “Canadian Art.” The Daily Colonist (Victoria), 3 February 1924, 4. “The Canadian Artist Mary Riter Hamilton.” Western Woman’s Weekly, vol. 2, no. 52, 6 December 1919. “Canadian Artist Tells of Work for Red Cross.” Vancouver Daily Province, 3 March 1921, 8. “Canadian Artists in Paris.” Saturday Night, vol. 21, no. 9, 14 December 1907, 5. “Canadian Crucified by Brutal Germans.” The Daily Colonist (Victoria), 31 August 1919, 3. “Canadians Take Ridge of Vimy.” The Daily Colonist (Victoria), 10 April 1917, 1–2.

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“Captain Henry Ross Gunning.” Canadian Great War Project, 16 July 2010. http:// canadiangreatwarproject.com/searches/soldierDetail.asp?ID=168369. Chute, Hillary L. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Cambridge, ma: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016. “Coming and Going.” Acton Free Press, 3 August 1899, 3. “Concours et Expositions,” La chronique des arts et de la curiosité, no. 7, 15 April 1922, 56. Cook, Tim. Vimy: The Battle and the Legend. Toronto: Penguin, 2018. Cor[oner]. Manitou Mercury, 21 June 1890, 2, col. 2. “The Cost of Canada’s War.” Canadian War Museum, 20 June 2008. https://www. warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/after-the-war/legacy/?anchor=475. “Cross Country: British Columbia.” Maclean’s, 15 December 1948, 61. Dafoe, John W. Over the Canadian Battlefields: Notes of a Little Journey in France in March, 1919. Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1919. Davis, Angela. “The Artist.” In No Man’s Land: The Battlefield Paintings of Mary Riter Hamilton 1919–1922, exhibition catalogue, 7–21. Winnipeg: The University of Winnipeg, 1992. – “The Battlefield Paintings.” In No Man’s Land: The Battlefield Paintings of Mary Rite Hamilton 1919–1922, exhibition cat., 22–4. Winnipeg: The University of Winnipeg, 1992. Davis, Ann. “A Study in Modernism: The Group of Seven as an Unexpectedly Typical Case.” Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes 33, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 108–20. Deacon, Florence E. “The Art of Mary Riter Hamilton.” Canadian Magazine, vol. 39, no. 6, October 1912, 557–64. “Deaths: Riter [Obituary for John Saul Riter].” Winnipeg Free Press, 20 December 1890, 8, col. 3. Delaney, Douglas E., and Serge M. Durflinger, eds. Capturing Hill 70: Canada’s Forgotten Battle of the First World War. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017. Dendooven, Dominiek. Asia in Flanders Fields: A Transnational History of Indians and Chinese on the Western Front, 1914–1920. PhD diss., University of Antwerp and University of Kent, 2018. – Menin Gate & Last Post. Koksijde, Belgium: De Klaproos Editions, 2001. Department of Commerce Bureau of the [United States] Census: Abstract of the Census of Manufactures 1919. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1923. Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Directory of the County of Bruce, Canada West, 1867. Montreal: J.W. Rooklidge, 1867. “Displays Pictures at Press Club Meeting.” Manitoba Free Press, 29 January 1926, 8. Dodman, Trevor. Shell Shock, Memory, and the Novel in the Wake of World War I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

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Donne, John. Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959. Doughty, Arthur G. Report of the Public Archives for the year 1926. Ottawa: F.A. Acland, 1927. Douglass, Ana, and Thomas A. Volger. “Introduction.” In Witness and Memory: The Discourse of Trauma, eds. Ana Douglass and Thomas A. Volger, 1–54. New York: Routledge, 2003. “Dr Tolmie Asked to Appeal at Ottawa: University Women Urge National Gallery Committee [to] Preserve Canadian Artist’s War Pictures.” The Daily Colonist (Victoria), 17 February 1924, 5. Dyer, Geoff. The Missing of the Somme. Toronto: Penguin, 1994. Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets, 1941. In T.S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays 1909–1950, 115–45. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1980 [1952]. – The Waste Land, 1922. In T.S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays 1909–1950, 37–55. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1980 [1952]. Elliott, Sue, and James Fox. The Children Who Fought Hitler: A British Outpost in Europe. London: John Murray, 2009. Falla, Frederick G. “Dauntless Canadian Woman Tells of Grim Experience while Painting the Nightmare Land of the Somme.” The Charlotte Observer, 22 October 1922, 14. For release by The McClure Newspaper Syndicate on 10 September 1922. Fay, Sydney R. “Found Many a Canadian Mother Searching for Her Son’s Grave.” Vancouver Daily World, 20 December 1919, 20. Fehrenbach, Frank. “Der oszillierende Blick: Sfumato und die Optik des späten Leonardo.” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 65, no. 4 (2002): 522–44. “Fine Exhibits at Royal City: Art Gallery Worth Seeing.” Vancouver Daily World, 29 September 1919, 2. Finlay, Karen, ed. “A Woman’s Place”: Art and the Role of Women in the Cultural Formation of Victoria, bc, 1850s–1920s. Victoria, bc: Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery, 2004. “For Sale by Tender [Auction notice for M.R. Hamilton].” Manitoba Morning Free Press, 22 January 1894, 4. Foss, Brian. “Hiester, Mary Augusta Catharine (Reid),” 477–8. Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15. Toronto: University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2005. Foster, W. Garland. “Coals to Newcastle: Art Another Canadian Product – Mary Riter Hamilton.” Western Home Monthly, May 1930, 33 and 49. – “‘Les Pauvres’ and Its Artist.” Museum and Art Notes iv, no. 2 (June 1929): 65–9. Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” 1971. In Foucault, Language, CounterMemory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, 139–64. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977.

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Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Mary Riter Hamilton De Spaey, Johanna. De Eenzaamheid Van Het Westen [The Loneliness of the West]. Amsterdam: De Geus, 2010. A novel inspired by Mary Riter Hamilton. Prior, Michael. “Mary Riter Hamilton Remembers Ypres.” The Antigonish Review, no. 171, September 2012, 55–6. A poem about Mary Riter Hamilton. Watt, Alison. Dazzle Patterns. A Novel. Calgary, ab: Freehand Books, 2017. This novel includes a fictional rendering of Mary Riter Hamilton.

383

Index

Maps, paintings, photographs, and other illustrations indicated by page numbers in italics. The abbreviation mrh refers to Mary Riter Hamilton.

Ablain-Saint-Nazaire: conditions in, 102–3, 114, 117, 120, 124, 126; move to, 96–7, 98, 99, 101–2; paintings from, 103, 105–10, 113, 119; prisoner-ofwar camp near, 114–18 absence, themes of, 42, 85, 109–10, 188, 208 Aesthetic movement, 22 Ahmed, Sara, 11 Albert, xiv, 201 Allward, Walter, 88, 107 Amos, Robert, 9, 31, 51, 241, 334n17 Amputation Club of British Columbia: about, 62; commercial opportunities and, 155; mrh’s motivation and, 291; mrh’s paintings held by, 295, 297, 368n27; photograph, 63; sponsorship for mrh, 62–3, 168, 198; War Amps and, 304. See also Gold Stripe, The (magazine) androgynous ideal, 237 antimodernism, 32–5 Antony, Maurice and Robert, 174 Antony d’Ypres, 258 Appleton, Henry, 58 apple venture, 238–9, 361n3 archive, 179 Ariès, Philippe, 24 Armington, Caroline, 31 Armington, Frank, 31 Arras: apple venture, 238–9, 361n3; artwork from, 36, 75, 156, 158, 160, 164, 166–7; attic studio in, 160–1, 162; background, 74; maps, xiv, 71; move to and return visits, 124, 155, 238

Arras-Bethune road, 345n9 Arras-Cambrai road, 94 Art Amateur, The (magazine), 16–17 Arthur of Connaught, Prince, 90–1 Art Institute of Chicago, 26 Art Nouveau, 193, 237 Arts and Crafts movement, 17, 25, 31, 32, 65, 335n20 Australian soldiers, 229–30 Australian War Memorial, 261, 326n7 Aveluye [Avioli], 209, 212 Banff National Park, 49 barbed wire, 82, 156, 215 batik scarves, 282–3, 284–5, 286–7 Battle of Courcelette, 199, 203, 205. See also Courcelette Battle of Hill 70, 214. See also Hill 70 Battle of Mount Sorrel, 195 Battle of Passchendaele, 172. See also Passchendaele Battle of the Somme, 201, 203. See also Somme Battle of Vimy Ridge, 59, 74. See also Vimy Ridge Battles of Messines (Messines Ridge), 229–30, 354n7 Bawtree, Ivan, 242, 361n17 Beatty, J.W., 61, 149 Beaverbrook, Max Aitken, Baron, 57–8, 60, 61, 147, 178, 267, 364n3 Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, 293, 367n16 Beck, Geoffrey Strange, 332n58 Belgian Front, 134, 307. See also Flanders; Ypres Bellan, Gilbert-Louis, 168–9 Bérard, Léon, 267

386

Index

Berlin, 29–30 Berry, Esther, 24 Bissell, Mary Eleanor, 365n18 Blanche, Jacques-Émile, 28, 31 Blangy [Blanchy], 156 Boesinghe, 242 Bonheur, Rosa, 365n16 Booth, Frances (Lady of the Chateau), 90, 91, 92, 98, 343nn46–7 Booth, Sydney (Major Booth), 90, 91, 92, 98, 342n35, 343n48, 344n68 Borden, Robert, 44, 58, 59, 147 Bourlon, 220 Bourlon Wood, 220 Bourlon Wood Cemetery (Ontario Cemetery), 220, 358n38 Bovey, Wilfrid, 82, 96, 113, 114, 124, 126 Boym, Svetlana, 88, 160 Brandon, Laura, 145–6, 326n12 Brewer, George, 273 Brooding Soldier, The (Ypres memorial), 227 Brown, Arnesby, 339n35 Brown, Eric: acquisitions for National Gallery, 364n8; National Gallery’s attempted acquisition of mrh’s work and, 293, 294, 295; Public Archives mrh’s collection and, 368n32; rejection of mrh, 44, 47; war artists selection and, 58, 59, 61, 192 Brown, Walter E., 261 Bruce, Jean R. (mrh’s niece), 299–300, 369n6 Bruce, J. Ethel Mary (Brucie), 221, 279, 359n46 Bruegel, Pieter, the Elder, 30; Tower of Babel (1563), 252 Brutalist architecture, 212 Bryson, George David (mrh’s brother-in-law), 18 bunkers, 227. See also pillboxes burials. See cemeteries and gravesites Calgary Herald (newspaper), 267 Camblain-l’Abbé: arrival at, 71–2; closing of military camp, 90; conditions at, 75, 88, 91–2, 343n48; paintings from, 79, 82, 90–1, 92–3, 98–9; as Saskatoon Club, 343n50 Cambrai, xiv, 61, 215, 239

camouflage, theme of, 103 Canada Post, 203, 298 Canadian landscape paintings, 48–50, 54–7, 294 Canadian Magazine, 44 Canadian National Vimy Memorial, 58, 88, 105, 345n11 Canadian War Graves Detachment (cwgd), 94–5, 113, 114, 127–8, 129, 131, 344n60. See also cemeteries and gravesites Canadian War Memorials exhibition (1919), 61 Canadian War Memorials Fund (cwmf), 7–8, 57, 61, 226, 233. See also war artists Canadian War Museum, 61, 156, 305, 364n3 Canadian Women’s Press Club, 168, 203, 214, 292 Canal du Nord, 215 cardiac arrhythmia (heart palpitation), 170–1 Carr, Emily, 7, 31, 299, 302 Cassatt, Mary: Maternity (1890), 39 Castelucho, Claudio, 37, 149, 342n40, 350n37, 368n27 Castle, Ivor, 205, 207; The Battle of Flers Courcelette 15–22 September: The ruins of the Sugar Refinery in Courcelette, October 1916, 207, 208 cemeteries and gravesites: Bourlon Wood Cemetery (Ontario Cemetery), 220, 358n38; Cabaret Rouge Cemetery, 110; Canadian War Graves Detachment, 94–5, 113, 114, 129, 131, 344n60; Cemetery of the 7th Battalion (Arras Road Cemetery), 132; commemorative industry and, 100; Courcelette au Bois Cemetery, 208–9; Duhallow A.D.S. Cemetery, 243; Essex Farm Cemetery, 242, 361n17; isolated graves, 87, 156, 307; makeshift burials and reburials, 84–5, 87, 113; Maple Copse Cemetery, 243; Nine Elms cemetery, 151; official cemeteries, 242; paintings of and significance for mrh, 110, 113, 209; paintings of Écurie gravediggers, 127–8; Ramparts Cemetery (Ypres), 179, 354n7; SainteCatherine graveyard, 142, 144; soldier-made crosses, 241–3, 249; at Somme, 113, 201; Tuileries cemetery, 243; at Voormezelle, 249, 250; Zouave Valley Cemetery, 225 ceramic painting (china painting), 16, 25, 333n78 Cézanne, Paul, 40 Chapman, Evelyn, 326n3

Index

Chassaigne, Joseph Coudurier de, 275 Chateau de la Haie, 79, 98 Chateau Hooghe, 258, 259 Chicago Tribune and the Daily News New York, The (newspaper), 287 china painting (ceramic painting), 16, 25, 333n78 Chinese war workers, 95, 148, 149–50, 193–4, 351n47 Chute, Hillary, 8, 70, 135, 146; Disaster Drawn, 70 colonialism, 148 colours (pigments), 131–2, 184, 188 commemoration: mrh on, 65; purpose of, 154, 298; stages of, 177; tourism and, 100, 175, 177, 178–9. See also cemeteries and gravesites; memorials; war artists compassion, 209 Connaught, Arthur, Duke of, 44, 90–1 Connaught, Louise Margaret, Duchess of, 37, 44, 335n18 Coryell, Elijah (mrh’s uncle), 12, 329n9 Coryell, Margaret (née Zimmerman; mrh’s aunt), 12, 330n22 Courcelette, 199, 201, 203, 205, 207–9 covid-19, 192, 220 Coy, Mrs W.H., 300, 369n8 creative salvaging, 88, 90, 193–6 crosses, 132, 134, 241–3, 249 crossroads, 138, 233 crucifixion legend, 142, 349n22 cruciform shapes, 209, 212 Cullen, Maurice, 20, 31, 61, 79, 149, 203; Villers au Bois (1918), 79 Culver, Jean Isabel, 26–7, 27, 29, 30 Currie, Arthur, 72, 91, 147 Currie, Bertha (Bertie) Bryson (mrh’s niece), 18, 24, 254–6, 299–300, 362nn37–8 Currie, Clara (mrh’s sister), 16, 18, 24, 43, 215, 254 Currie, Hardie (mrh’s nephew), 24, 61, 215 Da Costa, J.M., 170–1 Dafoe, John W., 87 Daily Colonist, The (newspaper), 51, 126, 142, 152–3, 167, 278, 281

387

Daily Province, The (newspaper), 238, 239 Davis, Angela, 9, 155 Davis, Ann, 48 Deacon, Florence E., 44, 335n27 Dendooven, Dominiek, 150, 182, 351n47 Der Blaue Reiter, 53, 131 Derrida, Jacques, 179 destruction-reconstruction duality, 9, 42, 154–5, 177, 182, 184, 220, 352n7 Deutsches Historisches Museum, 326n7 devastation and destruction: cities and towns, 154, 156, 158, 162, 164, 172; craters, 192, 193, 215; forests, 195, 209, 212; interiors, 75, 76, 158; refineries, 207–8; ruins, 75, 88, 90, 107, 135, 160, 164, 166, 172, 182–8, 191; shell holes, 113, 194, 230, 242; streets, 94, 162, 201; streets (destroyed) as commemorative roads, 156, 231, 233; war debris, 82–3, 205, 207 Dickebusch Lake, 230 Dix, Otto, 54 Dixmude, xiv, 270 documentation, 132, 134, 56 domestic scenes, 75, 220, 233–4 Donne, John, 194 Doughty, Arthur George, 295, 297, 368n32 Douglas Lodge (Vancouver), 299 Douglass, Ana, 72 Drummond, Julia, 145, 238 dugout paintings, 179, 203–5, 229 Duhallow, 243 Duthoit, Louis, 266, 364n3 Echo Bay (bc), internment camps, 55–7 Écurie: conditions in, 130, 149, 150–1; “Labyrinth” under, 128, 131; move to, 126, 127; paintings from, 127–8, 131–2, 134–5, 142, 146–8, 151 Église Saint Géry d’Arras, 158, 160 El Greco, 30; Fifth Seal of the Apocalypse (1608–14), 196 Eliot, T.S., 94, 182; Four Quartets, 230 Elliott, Harry and Elizabeth, 338n15 Emerson (mb), 18 empathy, 209

388

Index

Empress of Asia, The (troop carrier), 62–3 Endell, August, 25 environmental disaster, 209, 212 episodic paintings, 135, 138 Essex Farm Cemetery, 242, 361n17 Essondale (Provincial Mental Hospital), 303, 306–7 etchings, 25, 117–18, 155–6 Expressionism, 109 Falconer, Adina, 26, 29, 30, 292, 306, 333n76 Falla, Frederick, 113, 117, 149, 150–1, 201, 223, 268–9 Farbus Wood, 138 Fauvism, 103 Fehrenbach, Frank, 212–13 fires, 13, 24, 50–1 First World War: art making disrupted by, 52–4; art postwar, 120; Chinese war workers, 95, 148, 149–50, 193–4, 351n47; civilian sufferings, 75, 79; commemoration of, 65, 100, 175, 177, 178–9, 298; crucifixion legend, 142, 349n22; demobilization, 70; mobilization in Canada, 51; mrh’s paintings during, 51–2, 53, 338n16; racialized servicemen, 146, 148; Treaty of Versailles, 119, 120; vermin, 278; women nurses, 60–1. See also cemeteries and gravesites; war artists Flanders: at crossroads in, 233–4; floral motifs, 234–5, 237; future orientation in paintings from, 230–1, 233; tank paintings, 225–7; unexploded ordnance and other perils, 227–9, 252–4. See also Ypres floral motifs, 22, 234–5, 237, 282, 286–7 food, 149, 162, 239, 275, 276, 353n15 forests, 209, 212 Fort Garry Hotel exhibition (1926), 292, 294–5 Fortune, W.G.M., 168, 257, 302, 351n46 Foster, W. Garland, 336n40 Foucault, Michel, 28–9, 44 fourth wall, breaking, 42 Foyer du Soldat, 239 Fraser River, 57 Freemasons (Shuniah Lodge), 23, 280–1 French, John Denton Pinkstone, Earl of Ypres, 188

Fussell, Paul, 199; Great War and Modern Memory, 358n18 Futurism, 53, 120 Galeries Simonson (Paris), 270, 365n16 Gauguin, Paul, 34–5; Breton Girls Dancing, Pont-Aven (1888), 34–5 gender, 5, 135, 153. See also women genealogy, 28–9, 44 Gervais, Paul Jean, 28, 31 Gibran, Kahlil, 43, 290–1 Gitelman, Lisa, 134 Gold Stripe, The (magazine): about, 62; advertisement in support of mrh, 98; delivery of paintings to, 119, 124; mrh’s poster proposal, 155; reproduction of mrh’s paintings, 90, 105–6, 115, 152–3, 352n58; sponsorship for mrh, 62, 65, 168, 170. See also Amputation Club of British Columbia Gough, Paul, 138 Government House (Victoria, bc), portraits for, 53, 338n16 Goya, Francisco, 146, 155; The Disasters of War (series), 144, 145, 350n26 gravesites. See cemeteries and gravesites Green, Lavinia, 169, 170, 222, 240, 302 Green, Matilda (Tildi) E. (mrh’s niece), 59, 61, 131, 339n38 Green, Susan (née Zimmerman; mrh’s aunt), 330n22 grenades, 255 Grier, E. Wyly, 26, 61 Group of Seven, 53, 326n12, 364n8 Gunning, Henry Ross, 348n4 Hacking, Eliza Jane (née Zimmerman; mrh’s aunt), 330n22 hair, and mourning, 24 Hamilton, Almira (mrh’s aunt-in-law), 19 Hamilton, Charles Watson (mrh’s husband): background, 19, 331n35; death, 23, 332n60; First World War and, 131; marriage and life in Port Arthur, 21–2, 331n43; mrh’s burial with, 308; pension from, 280–1; photographs, 19–20, 20

Index

Hamilton, Mary Riter: about, 5–8, 10, 307; accolades received by, 266–8, 286, 287, 299; antimodernism and, 32–5; archival record and research, 7, 8–9, 326n7; art training and development, 16–17, 22, 26, 29–31, 37, 39, 43–4; biographical element in paintings, 41–3, 233–4; birthdate and age, 11, 68, 241, 327nn2–4, 328n5; Canadian landscape paintings, 48–50, 54–7, 294; childhood, 13–14; china painting, 16, 25; contemporary recognition, 305; death and burial, 306–7, 308, 370n30; early career, 17–18, 18–19, 20–1; estate wishes, 305–6, 369n25; family and personal tragedies, 22–4, 26, 43, 57, 332n53, 332n58; family background, 12–13; First World War, during, 51–2, 53, 338n16; glass eye, 306, 369n19; Hart, rift with, 289–90, 292, 299–302, 306; life upon return to Canada, 283, 286–7, 299, 302–3, 303–4; Macbeth’s tribute to, 292–3; marriage and life in Port Arthur, 21–2, 331n43, 332n63; maternity themes, 39–41; multimodality and, 25, 293, 335n20; name, 11–12; National Gallery, exclusion from, 44–6, 47; in Paris pre-war, 30, 30–2, 32, 37, 43, 334n15; pension from Sheniah Lodge, 280–1; photographs pre-war, 6, 17, 19, 27, 30, 31, 45, 55; prairie context, 14–16; relationships with younger men, 43, 62; religious roots, 12, 21, 119–20, 256, 291, 335n22; sale of art, 270, 273–4, 280, 290; scholarship on, 9–10; travel to Berlin, 26–7, 27, 333n76; in Victoria, 46, 46–7, 50–1; war collection, finding home for, 293–6, 296–8, 368n32; widowhood, 24; in Winnipeg, 25, 292, 294, 299. See also Hamilton, Mary Riter, artwork; Hamilton, Mary Riter, exhibitions; Hamilton, Mary Riter, locations visited and painted; Hamilton, Mary Riter, war artist period Hamilton, Mary Riter, artwork: Abazia [sic] di St Gregorio (n.d., oil), 31; Albert (Somme) Route d’Amiens (1920, oil), 201–3, 202; Among the Ruins, Arras (1919, oil), 146, 350n33; Apple Blossoms (n.d., oil), 54, 54–5; Arras 1919 (1919, oil), 9, 156, 326n13; The Artist’s Studio (n.d., oil), 41–2, 337n44; The Asia (1919, oil), 63, 339n43; Awaiting

389

the signing of Peace (1919, crayon), 119; Awaiting the signing of Peace on Lorrette [sic] Ridge (1919, oil), 119; Battlefields (1919, oil), 83, 84, 225; Battlefields from Vimy Ridge, Lens-Arras Road (1919, oil), 132–4, 133; The Bend, Bow River, Forty Mile Creek, Rainy Day (1912, oil), 49, 49; Bleeding France, War: 1914–1918 (1919, oil), 151, 258; The Blind Beggar (n.d., pastel), 341n12; Boesinghe (1921, oil), 51, 242, 244–5; Breakfast Time, Paris (ca. 1911, watercolour), 40, 40–1; British Cemetery (Poityze) (1919, oil), 234; British Cemetery, Ramparts Ypres (n.d., oil), 179, 180; British Cemetery, Zouave Valley, Vimy Ridge (n.d., oil), 110, 225, 346n25; British Cemetery at Avioli [sic], Somme (1919, oil), 209, 212; British Cemetery at Tuileries Zillebeke (1921, oil), 243, 362n22; A British Soldier, Ecurie, France (1919, pastel), 148; Cabaret Rouge Cemetery (1919, oil), 110, 111, 307, 347n26; Camblain l’Abbé (1919, oil), 72, 73; Camouflaged German Observation Post (Dummy Monument) at Terhand Village, Zillebeke (1921, oil), 362n35; Camp St Lawrence at Chateau de la Hai, War 1914–1918 (1919, oil), 79, 80–1; Canadian Monument, Passchendaele Ridge (ca. 1920, oil), 196, 197, 261; Canadian Rockies Sketch (1912, oil), 49, 50, 297; Canadian War Graves Detachment – A 2 Group H[ead]quarter (1919, oil), 127, 129; Canal, Cambrai (1920, oil), 215, 218–19; Cathedral Ablaine [sic] St Nazaire (1919, oil), 345n13; Cathedral Interior (n.d., oil), 33; Cellar (Used by Boche as Dug-Out) Monchy le Preux (n.d., oil), 344n59; Cemetery of the 7th Battalion, British Columbia, Canada (1919, oil), 132, 132, 167; Chateau Grounds, Poityse [sic] (n.d., charcoal), 234; Clearing Houthulst’s Forest of Gas Shells (n.d., oil), 254; Clearing the Battlefields in Flanders (1921, oil), 252–4, 253; Closing of Canadian Camp, Camblain l’Abbé (1919, oil), 90, 343n45; Cloth Hall (1920, oil), 355n15; Cloth Hall, Ypres – Market Day (1920, oil), 190, 191, 355n15; The Cloth Hall at Ypres (n.d., oil), 191; Courcelette au Bois Cemetery (1919, oil), 206, 208–9; Cross

390

Index

Road of the Somme (1919, oil), 233; The Cross Roads, Vimy Ridge (1919, oil), 138, 139, 233; Cross Roads Kemmel and Dickebusch (1920, oil), 233; Dangerous Dugout (n.d., charcoal), 229; Dans la neige de décembre: Les sacrifiées [Goose Girl], 35, 36, 267, 335n27; Dedication of a War Monument at Hooghe (1919, oil), 119, 356n29; Derelict Tank of Hill 70 [sic] (1920, oil), 258, 259; Destroyed Forest on the Somme (n.d., oil), 209, 210, 212; Dickebusch Lake, Flanders showing the Reconstruction (1920, oil), 230; A “Dud” (n.d., oil), 82, 83, 225; Dug Out on the Somme (1919, oil), 203–5, 205, 242; Duhallow A.D.S., Ypres (British Cemetery) (1921, oil), 243, 246, 362n20; Duke of Wellington Cemetery near Cambrai (n.d., charcoal and white chalk), 358n36; Dumping Place for Unexploded Munitions (1920, oil), 228; A Dutch Interior, Laren (n.d., watercolour), 31; Dutch Woman Knitting (1904, watercolour), 37; Easter Morning, La Petite Pénitente, Brittany (ca. 1905, oil), 34, 34–5, 335nn23–5; Echo Bay, Nanaimo Evening, September 5th, 1915 (1915, oil), 55–6, 56; Echo Bay, Nanaimo Harbour, Early Morning, September 6th, 1915 (1915, oil), 55, 55, 56; Ecurie Wood (1919, oil), 127; Elderly Lady Sitting With Hands Clasped (n.d., oil), 52, 338n15; The Empress of Asia (1919, oil) [The Asia], 63, 339n43; The Empress of Asia (1919, pastel), 63, 339n43; End of Day, Stony [sic] Indian Reserve (1912, oil), 14, 15; Entrance to Bourlon Wood (British Cemetery) (ca. 1920, oil), 220; Entrance to Canadian Observation Post on Lorette Ridge (1919, oil), 3–4, 4, 103, 365n22; The Entrance to Rappahannock, Victoria, BC (1915, pastel and chalk), 54, 55; Evening on the Belgian Front (n.d., oil), 134, 307, 308; Evening – Ypres (ca. 1919, charcoal), 177–8; Father Confessor (n.d., oil), 33; Filling the Shell Holes in No Man’s Land (1920, oil), 193–4, 194, 254; First Boat to Arrive at Arras after the Armistice (1920, oil), 166–7, 353n22; First Celebration at Zillebeke after the War (1920, oil), 119; The First Crop After the War (1919, oil), 151; The First Pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Lorette

after the War of 1914–1918 (1920, oil), 119, 122–3; Flanders Field (n.d., oil), 237; Flower Market, France (n.d., oil), 42, 42–3; French Colonial Officer (French Soldier) (1919, oil), 146; A French Soldier (Zouave) (1919, pastel), 146; French Trenches, Ecurie, Graveyard of Many Heroes (1920, oil), 135; Front Line in France (Prisoner of War Camp) (1919, oil), 114, 115, 134; Grande Place, Arras (1919, oil), 164, 166; The Grand Place Arras (n.d., oil), 164, 165; The Grave of an Unknown British Soldier, Passchendaele Road (1920, oil), 261; Grave of the Son of Premier Hughes of Australia, Passchendaele Ridge (1921, oil), 261, 262; Guard Room, P.O.W. Camp (n.d.), 115, 347n37; Gun Emplacements, Farbus Wood, Vimy Ridge (1919, oil), 134, 138, 140; Hill 60 Mine Crater, Flanders (1920, oil), 230; Hollebecke [sic], Flanders (n.d., oil), 229; An Impression of Venice (1904, oil), 31, 335n18; Interior, House at Lens (Destroyed 1914-1918) (n.d., oil), 342n40; Interior Arras Cathedral, showing statue of Virgin that escaped injury (1919, oil), 36, 336n29; Interior German Pill Box Blanchy [sic] (n.d., etching), 156, 157; Interior Military Stone Huts built by Canadians 1914–1918 (1919, oil), 103, 345n7; Interior of a Cellar used by Refugees (Bourlon, near Cambrai) (1920, oil), 220; Interior of a Destroyed Church, Arras (1919, oil), 158–60, 159; Interior of a Pill Box, Flanders (1920, oil), 234, 235; Interior of Court Abazia [sic] di St Gregorio (n.d., oil), 31; Interior of Notre Dame (n.d., oil), 32; Interior of the Ruined Cathedral, Arras (1919, oil), 90; Interior of the Sugar Refinery, Courcelette (n.d., oil), 207–8; Inundated Territory, Avioli [sic], Somme (1919, oil), 209, 211; Irish Nunnery at Ypres (1919, charcoal), 182–4, 183; The Irish Nunnery at Ypres (1919, oil), 182–4, 183; Isolated Grave and Camouflage, Vimy Ridge (1919, oil), 85, 86; Kasen Havildat [sic], Troop in France (The Havildat [sic]) (1919, pastel), 146, 147; The Kemmel Road, Flanders (1920, oil), 231, 231, 233; Kitchen at Nine Elms Camp, Ecurie (n.d., oil), 151, 153; Knitting (ca. 1910, oil), 39; Lady in Hat (n.d.,

Index

oil), 52, 53, 338n15; Lady in Riding Habit (n.d., oil), 52, 338n15; Lake Louise (1912, oil), 49; La Petite Place – Arras (1919, oil), 166, 353n20; La Toilette (1905–11, watercolour), 234; The Lens-Arras Road (1919, aquatint), 134, 138, 156, 157, 231; Le Plateau de Notre Dame de Lorette (1919, oil), 119, 121; Les Pauvres (1906–09, oil), 31, 51, 336n40, 337n42; Les Tilleuil [sic] – Crossroads (1919, oil), 233; Lille Gate, Ypres, Looking Outwards (ca. 1921, oil), 263, 263; Looking Over Vimy Ridge From La Folie Farm (1919, oil), 107–8, 108; Loose [sic] Mine Crater, Hill 70, France (1920, oil), 134, 215, 216, 358n34; Loos from the Crater, Hill 70 (n.d., oil), 215; Low Tide White Rock Pier (n.d., oil), 301; Maple Copse British Cemetery, Zillebeke (1919, pastel), 243, 260; Le Marché dans les ruines, Ypres 1920 (n.d., oil), 283; Market among the Ruins of Ypres (1920, oil), 191–2, 355n15; The Market among the Ruins of Ypres (n.d., oil), 190, 191, 267; Market Scene, Giverney [sic] (1907, oil), 37; Maternity (1906, oil), 39, 39–41, 220, 307, 336n40, 363n48, 370n28; Memorial for the Second Canadian Division in a Mine Crater Near Neuville St Vaast (ca. 1920, oil), 132, 133, 134, 134; Menin Gate (1920, charcoal), 179, 355n10, 355n16; Menin Gate, Ypres (1920, oil), 179, 355n10, 355n16; Menin Road, British Cemetery (ca. 1920, oil), 193; Menin Road – Hell Fire Corner (1921, charcoal), 261–3; Military Armstrong Hut Built by Canadians in Ablain St Nazaire now Occupied by French Civilians (1919, oil), 103, 104; Military Kitchen, Guarding the German Prison Camp (1919, etching), 115, 117, 118, 156, 294, 295, 347n41; Mine Crater – Hooghe (n.d., oil), 193, 194, 294, 296, 356n29; Mission of Charity, (ca. 1905–11, oil), 31, 33, 33; A Misty Morning, the Ramparts of Ypres (1921, oil), 256–7, 257; Mons (ca. 1920, oil), 221; Mother and Child (n.d., watercolour), 41, 41, 260, 363n48; Mount Rundle, Banff (n.d., oil), 49, 49; Mt St Eloi (n.d., oil), 365n22; Nakoda Stoney Mother and Child (n.d., pastel), 14; The New Home (1920, oil), 232, 233–4; Nine Elms, France

391

(1919, oil), 151, 351n54; Nine Elms British Camp, France (1919, oil), 151, 351n55; Nissen Hut (In Peace Time) (1919, oil), 103; No Man’s Land (1920, oil), 235–7, 236; Notre Dame (n.d., watercolour), 32; Notre Dame de Lorette, Lorette Ridge (1919, oil), 119, 121; Notre-Dame de Lorette en 1919, la Chapelle (1919, oil), 283; Observation Post on the Menin Road (n.d., charcoal and chalk), 103; An Old Italian Wife (n.d., oil), 51; Old Spanish Architecture in Ruins, Arras (1920, oil), 164; Old Street in Arras (1919, oil), 162; On the Sand, White Rock, BC (n.d., oil), 301; Overlooking the Battlefields from Hill 70 [sic] (1921, oil), 243, 247; Overlooking Vimy Ridge from La Folie Farm (n.d., oil), 307; Panorama of Arras (n.d., aquatint), 156; Panorama of Arras (n.d., oil), 156, 158; Part of the Ruines [sic], the Beautiful Cathedrale [sic] of Arras, 1914–1918 (n.d., oil), 365n22; Pensive Lady (lady leaning on hand) (n.d., oil), 52, 53, 338n15; Petite Place, Arras – Market Day (1920, oil), 166; Petit Vimy and Vimy Village from the Lens-Arras Road (1919, oil), 138, 141, 349n20; Polish Prisoner of War Taken by French 1914–18 (n.d., pastel), 116, 116; Porte de Paris, Cambrai (n.d., charcoal), 358n36; Portrait of Madame X (n.d., oil), 35; Portrait Sketch of a Canadian Sergeant Still in Ecurie, France (n.d., pastel), 127, 129; Portrait Study of Madame X (n.d., oil), 35; postcard to Young (1924, chalk), 279; Prince Arthur of Connaught’s Room at Camblain-l’Abbée [sic] (1919, oil), 91; Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Cemetery, Voormezelle (1920, oil), 249, 250; Principal Street in St Julien (1920, oil), 227; Prisoner of War Camp (n.d.), 115, 347n37; Prisoners of War at Work (n.d.), 115, 347n37; Prisoners of War Camp (n.d.), 115, 347n37; Prisoners of War Salvaging on Oppy Front (n.d.), 115, 347n37; The Ramparts and Menin gate, Ypres, with the Cloth-hall in the background (1920, charcoal), 179, 181, 355n16; Ramparts of Ypres (1919, oil), 178, 178; Rear view of the Cloth-hall, Ypres (n.d., charcoal and white chalk), 355n15;

392

Index

Reconstruction of Ypres (1921, oil), 251–2, 252; Red Cross Knitter, A Letter, and The Visitation (n.d., pastel), 63, 66; Remains of a Camouflaged Aeroplane, Courcelette (1919, oil), 206, 207; Remains of the Church at Neuville St Vaast (n.d.; ca. 1919, oil), 135; Rent Day (n.d., oil), 31; The Return Home (1919, oil), 63, 64, 339n43; Ruined Cathedral of Ablaine [sic] St Nazaire (1919, oil), 108–10, 365n22; Ruined Cathedral of Saint Nazaire (1919, oil), 107, 345n13; A Ruined Interior, Arras (1919, oil), 75, 76, 225; Ruins at Arras (ca. 1919, oil), 75, 77, 341n27; Ruins at Ypres, Cloth Hall (n.d., oil), 184, 186–7, 188, 294, 295, 355n15; Ruins of Mt St Eloi 1914–1919 (1919, oil), 88, 89; Ruins of Sugar Refinery and Nissen Hut at Ecurie (1919, oil), 362n26, 365n22; Ruins of the Beautiful Cathedral of Arras War 1914 to 1918 (1919, oil), 90, 336n29; Ruins of the Cloth Hall, Stormy Day (1919, oil), 184, 355n15; Ruins of Ypres (1921, charcoal), 355n15; The Russian Student (n.d., oil), 31; The Sadness of the Somme (ca. 1920, oil), 212–13, 213, 231–3; St Julien, First Gas Attack Launched Here (1920, oil), 227, 228, 362n26; Sanctuary Wood, Flanders (1920, oil), 195, 195–6, 356n34; Sanctuary Wood Cemetery (1920, oil), 356n34; Sawdust Burner (n.d., oil), 51; Section of the North Arm Fraser River taken from 20th Street, September 16th, 1915 (1915, oil), 57, 57; The Shattered Ramparts of Ypres (1920, oil), 182; Shell Hole (1919, oil), 112, 113; Shell Hole (n.d., oil), 113; A Shell Hole – Misty Morning (n.d., oil), 113, 365n22; Shell Holes in Flanders near Ypres, No Man’s Land (1919, oil), 230; Shrapnel Corner, Flanders (1920, oil), 193, 362n26; silk batik scarf (n.d.), 284–5; Sister M– (n.d., oil), 33; Sitting Woman (n.d., oil), 52, 338n15; Souchez Corner (1919, drawing), 102, 102–3, 352n58; A Spanish Fishing Village (Fontarabia) (n.d., oil), 37; Street in Arras (1923, oil), 162, 163; Street in Lens (1919, oil), 85–7, 86; Street in Monchy-le-Preux (1919, oil), 94, 95; Street in Ruined Albert (1919, oil), 201; A Street in Ruined Ypres (1920, oil), 355n16; Strong Hold –

Dixmude (1921, oil), 294; Sugar Refinery at Écurie (1919, oil), 135, 136–7, 152, 352n58; Sunrise, Lake Louise (1912, oil), 49; Sunrise on Passchendaele Ridge (1919, pastel), 260–1, 261; The Supreme Sacrifice (ca. 1920, oil), 23, 242; Tank Cemetery at Zillebeke (n.d., oil), 226–7; Tank near Monchy le Preux (n.d., oil), 344n59; Tragedy of War in Dear Old Battered France (ca. 1919, oil), 142–5, 143, 349n21, 350n26; Trail, Lake Louise (1912, oil), 49; Tree Converted into an O.P., Arras-Bethune Road (1919, charcoal), 103; Trenches on the Somme (1919, oil), 203, 204; Trench on Vimy Ridge (n.d., oil), 152, 352n58; Untitled painting of a destroyed tank (1920, oil), 226, 226, 258; Untitled Painting of Church Ruins (Ablain St Nazaire) (n.d., oil), 108– 9, 109; Vancouver Camp, Chateau de La Hai (1919, oil), 79, 352n58; Victoria Garden (n.d., oil), 54, 338n20; Villiers-au-Bois [sic] (1919, oil), 78, 79, 107, 352n58, 365n22; Vimy Ridge (1919, oil), 345n13; Vimy Ridge – Taken by Canadians, April 1917 (1919, oil), 345n13, 365n22; Vimy Ridge Taken by Canadians April 1917 in War 1914–1918 (1919, oil), 105–6, 106, 107, 152, 352n58; War Material (1920, oil), 215, 217; Young Lady Seated by a Knitting Woman (n.d., oil), 37, 38; Ypres (1920, oil), 191, 355n15; Ypres, Belgium, 1920, Early Morning (1920, oil), 175, 176; Ypres, Early Morning (1920, oil), 355n15; Ypres Cathedral (1919, oil), 184, 185; Ypres en fete (1921, charcoal), 264, 264, 355n15; Ypres Honours the Acting Mayor of 1914 (Alternative Title: Ypres En Fete to Honor the Acting Mayor of 1914) (1920, oil), 188, 189, 264, 355n15 Hamilton, Mary Riter, exhibitions: Art Association Gallery, Montreal (1912), 44–5; Art Galleries of Mackenzie & Co., Toronto (1906), 311; Art Galleries of O.B. Graves Limited, London, on (1906), 311; Calgary Art Association (1912), 312; Canadian War Museum (2018–19), 305; Empress Hotel, Victoria (1913), 46–7, 312; Fort Garry Hotel (1926), 292, 294–5; Galeries Simonson (Paris, 1922), 270; Impressions of the Battlefield after the Armistice (Winnipeg, 1926), 31, 292; In Flanders

Index

Fields Museum (2020), 305; International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts (1925), 286, 287; Island Arts and Crafts Society (1920), 167; Library and Archives Canada (online), 9; Navy League Hall (Vancouver, 1920), 167; Penticton Art Gallery (2019), 305; Point Grey United Church manse (Vancouver), 304; Salon (1904, 1905, 1911), 28, 31; Salon (1922), 191, 356n20; Société des amis des arts de Seine-et-Oise (1924), 283; Surrey House Exhibition, London, UK, proposed (1923), 179, 272, 275, 289, 365nn21–2, 366n51; Théâtre National de l’Opéra (1922), 266–7, 273; Touring Club of Arras (1920), 168–9; Townsend Gallery, Toronto (1911), 44; transCanada (1911–13), 6, 44, 46, 91, 337n50; Vancouver (1919), 4–5; Vancouver (fundraiser for trip to France), 65; Vancouver Art Gallery (1952), 304, 305; Wilson Galleries, Ottawa (1912), 44; Winnipeg (1912), 40; Winnipeg School of Art (1914), 50; World’s Fair (1915), 51 Hamilton, Mary Riter, locations visited and painted: Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, 96–7, 98, 99, 101–3, 105–10, 113, 114, 117, 119, 120, 124, 126; Albert, xiv, 201; Arras, xiv, 36, 75, 155, 156, 158, 160–1, 162, 164, 166–7; Aveluye [Avioli], 209, 212; Belgian Front, 134, 307; Blangy [Blanchy], 156; Boesinghe, 242; Bourlon, 220; Camblain-l’Abbé, 71–2, 75, 79, 82, 90–3, 98–9, 343n48; Cambrai, xiv, 215, 239; Canal du Nord, 215; Chateau de la Haie, 79, 98; Courcelette, 207–9; Dickebusch Lake, 230; Dixmude, xiv, 270; Duhallow, 243; Écurie, 126, 127–8, 130, 131–2, 134–5, 142, 146–8, 149, 150–1; Farbus Wood, 138; Flanders, 225–31, 233–5, 237, 249, 252–4; Heuvelland, 230–1, 233; Hill 60 (Ypres), 230; Hill 70 (Loos), 214–15; Hollebeke, 229; Hooge, 193; Houthulst Forest, 254; Kemmel Road, 231, 233; La Folie Farm, 107; Lens, xiv, 85, 87; Lens-Arras road, 131–2, 134, 135, 138; Loos [Loose], xiv, 215; Lorette Ridge, 3, 105, 107, 119; Maple Copse, 243; Menin, 270; Monchy-le-Preux, 94, 99; Mons, xiv, 220–1; Mont-Saint-Éloi, 88, 98, 134; Neuville-Saint-Vaast, 131, 135; Nine Elms,

393

151–2; Oppy Wood, 115, 347n37; Passchendaele, 6, 193, 196, 260–1; Petit Vimy, 138; Potijze [Poityze], 234; prisoner-of-war camp, 114–18; SainteCatherine, 142, 144; St Julien, 227–9; Sanctuary Wood (Hill 62), 195–6; Scarpe River, 166; Somme, 199, 201, 203–5, 209, 212–14; Souchez Valley, 105, 107, 152; Villers-au-Bois, 87; Vimy Ridge, 72–4, 82–4, 85; Vimy Village, 138; Voormezelle, 249; Ypres, xiv, 171, 174, 174–5, 175, 177–8, 179, 182, 184, 188, 191–2, 193–6, 239, 241–3, 251–2, 256–7, 261, 263–4, 363n54; Zillebeke, 243, 247; Zonnebeke, 258, 260; Zouave Valley, 107, 110 Hamilton, Mary Riter, war artist period: absence themes, 42, 85, 109–10, 188, 208; ambivalent role of, 343n51; androgynous ideal, 237; application to be war artist, 57, 58–61; arrival and journey to Europe, 65, 67–8, 70–2; assistance from friends, 275–6, 280–1, 291, 366n37; attachment (military) record, 127, 128; batik scarves, 282–3, 286–7; biographical element in paintings, 233–4; camouflage theme, 103; car accident, 79, 82, 342n35; Chinese war workers and, 150; closure from, 281–2, 283; on commemoration, 65; comparison to official war artists, 95–6, 149, 214; composition method, 75, 145–6; counter-history, 100–1; creative salvaging, 88, 90, 193–6; cross paintings, 242–3; at crossroads, 233, 237; documentary approach, 132, 134–5; dog, 117–18, 127, 128, 130; episodic paintings, 135, 138; etchings, 155–6; financial challenges and support, 97–8, 149, 168–9, 170, 222, 240–1, 248, 249, 270, 272–3, 326n6, 344n66, 350n38, 354nn34–5, 361n10; floral motifs, 234–5, 237, 282, 286–7; health issues, recovery, 282–3; health issues and traumatic stress, 170–1, 197, 222, 223–5, 248, 249, 251, 254–8, 265, 269, 272, 273, 277–80, 299; home-front paintings, 62–3; home-front reception, 125–6, 152–3, 167–8; humanitarian efforts, 238–9; huts lived in, 128, 130, 247, 247–8; immersive modernism of, 37, 42, 90, 94, 134, 237; mediums and pigments, 93–4, 131–2, 182, 184, 188, 214; motivation and vision, 131, 198, 270, 291, 298;

394

Index

near misses, 227, 228–9; nomadic life, 341n13; paintings completed, 124, 148–9, 198, 237, 241, 270–1, 342n40; Paris visits, 70, 148–9, 197–8, 266–7, 269, 270, 354n32; personal side, 162, 240–1; phenomenological approach of, 69–70, 72–4, 79, 167–8; pilgrimage themes, 119–20, 346n14; portraiture, 91, 116, 146–8; poverty in Paris, 270, 274–5, 276–7; reconstructiondestruction duality, 9, 42, 154–5, 177, 182, 184, 220, 352n7; return to Canada, 287, 288–9, 290, 290–2, 367n3; telescoping effect, 107–8; transition theme, 164, 166–7; transnational perspective, 107, 260–1 Hamilton, May (née Warnock; mrh’s mother-in-law), 20, 20 Hamilton, Robert (business partner), 22 Hamilton, William A. (mrh’s cousin-in-law), 22, 258, 260, 291, 363n48 Hamilton, William B. (mrh’s uncle-in-law), 19, 22 Harris, Lawren, 37 Harrison, Charles: Generals Die in Bed, 91 Hart, Ellen, 10, 67–8, 160–2, 222, 248–9, 269, 273 Hart, Margaret Janet: assistance for mrh, 280, 281, 366n37; correspondence with Katharine Watson, 276–8; correspondence with mrh, 7, 91–2, 93, 97, 98, 124–5, 169–70, 221–2, 239–41, 248–9, 255, 264–5, 268, 271–3, 278, 279, 289, 290, 357n3; death, 302; as patron for mrh, 67, 125, 170, 348n54, 354nn34–5; photograph, 68; rift with, 289–90, 292, 299–302, 306; sale of mrh’s pre-war paintings, 273–8, 280, 290 hat making, 18 Havildar (havaldar), 146 headstones, 242, 249 heart palpitation (cardiac arrhythmia), 170–1 Hélène, Maxime, 35 Helmers, Marguerite, 9, 127, 213 Hertford British Hospital, 269 Heuvelland, 230–1, 233, 360n30 Higonnet, Margaret, 326n2 Hill 60 (Ypres), 229–30, 360n25 Hill 62 (Sanctuary Wood), 195–6, 227, 243, 359n17

Hill 70 (Loos), 214–15, 243, 359n17 Hindenburg Line, 74, 220 Hollebeke, 229 Hooge, 192, 193 Hotel Ypriana (Ypres), 239, 240, 240–1 Houthulst Forest, 254 Howarth, Jean, 303 Hughes, Claude Clark, 261, 262, 363n51 Humphreys, Mary Gay, 17 Hundred Days Offensive, 156, 215, 220 Huneault, Kristina, 333n78 Huntley, Fanny, 306, 329n13 huts, 72, 79, 103, 127, 164, 193 Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (iode), 145, 167, 353n23 Imperial War Museum, 192, 326n7 Impressionism, 29, 37, 39 Indian soldiers, 148 Indigenous peoples, 14, 49, 330nn23–4 In Flanders Fields Museum, 9, 174, 234, 258, 305, 326n7 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, 286, 287 internment camps (Nanaimo), 56–7 Island Arts and Crafts Society, 167 Jackson, A.Y., 31, 48, 54, 195, 233; Camouflage Huts, Villers-au-Bois (1917), 79; The Edge of the Maple Wood (1910), 48 Jakob, Joey Brooke, 144–5 Jarché, Albert Louis, 128, 129, 348n3 J.A.V. David Museum (Killarney, mb), 51–2, 338n15 Johnston, Frank, 146 Jones, Heather: Violence Against Prisoners of War in the First World War, 114 Jones, T. Edward, 142 Joyce, James: Ulysses, 286 Kemmel road, 231, 233 Kennington, Eric: The Conquerors (formerly The Victims), 346n19

Index

Kerr-Lawson, James: Arras, the Dead City (ca. 1919), 88 King, Ross, 29 Klee, Paul, 54 Kollwitz, Käthe, 29–30 Konody, Paul, 58 “Labyrinth” (Écurie), 128, 131 La Folie Farm, 107 landscape paintings, Canadian, 48–50, 54–7, 294 Lang, Naomi, 48 Langley, Edith, 37 Langmann, Uno, 8–9 Laub, Dori, 110 Lears, T.J. Jackson, 32 Lectures pour tous (magazine), 35–6, 90 Lefebvre-Foinet, Lucien, 341n13 Le Havre, 70 Lens, xiv, 85, 87, 342n38 Lens-Arras road (Rue des Artilleurs Canadiens), 131–2, 134, 135, 138 Leonardo da Vinci, 212 Les Archives du Pas-de-Calais, 326n7 Library and Archives Canada (lac), 3–4, 9, 119, 156, 191, 297, 326n7. See also Public Archives of Canada Lille Gate, 263 Lismer, Arthur, 61, 146; Convoy and Tugs (1918), 103 Lloyd, David W.: “‘Murder on Show’?,” 177 London Blitz, 224 London exhibition, proposed (1923), 179, 272, 275, 289, 365nn21–2, 366n51 London Illustrated Times, 188 Loos [Loose], xiv, 215; Hill 70, 214–15, 243, 359n17 Lorette Ridge, 3, 101, 101, 105, 107, 119 Loring, Frances, 58 Lupton, Deborah, 353n15 Lyall, Laura Muntz, 31 Macbeth, Madge, 51, 229, 233, 292–3 McCrae, John, 242 MacCurdy, John T.: The Structure of Morale, 224, 225 McCurry, Harry, 296

395

MacDonald, J.E.H., 61 McIntyre, Melville, 71, 82, 342n35 McKinnon, Sarah M. See No Man’s Land (Young and McKinnon) McLachlan, Sarah, 299 Manet, Éduoard: Olympia (1863), 26 Manitoba, 14–16 Maple Copse, 243 Marlborough Hotel (Winnipeg), 292 Masefield, John, 199, 357n12 Massey, Vincent, 293 maternity, 39–41, 220 Matthews, J.S., 304, 329n13 Maurice, Frederick, 221 Medina, José, 29, 100 memorials: The Brooding Soldier (Ypres), 227; Canadian National Vimy Memorial, 58, 88, 105, 345n11; “ebony Madonna,” 227–9; Menin Gate Memorial, 182, 263; by Nova Scotia Highlanders, 196; proposed Somme Memorial for the Dead, 266, 364n3; for Second Canadian Division, 132, 134; Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, 201; Virgin Mary shrine, 119. See also commemoration Memorial University of Newfoundland, 65 memory boom, 100, 175 Menin, 270 Menin Gate, 177, 179, 182, 263 Menin road, 193, 261, 263 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 72, 229; “Eye and Mind,” 72 Merson, Luc-Olivier, 28, 31, 32 Messines Ridge (Battles of Messines), 229–30, 354n7 Michelangelo, 30; Pietà, 41–2 Michelin guide, 79, 342n32 Mida, Ingrid, 333n72 military structures: field kitchens 117, 151, 156; huts (movable), 79, 105, 110, 128–30; huts used by civilians, 103, 232–5; huts used by mrh, 72, 128, 130, 247; observation posts, 3, 103, 242; shelters (bunkers, dugouts, and pillboxes), 156, 179, 193, 204–8, 212, 227, 229, 233, 234, 235; trenches, 83, 85, 203

396

Index

Milne, David: on Chinese war workers, 150; dugout scenes, 203; exhibitions, 233; medium and style, 94, 344nn56–7; mrh and, 91, 92, 93–4, 98, 346n20; war artist provisions, 95–6, 149; paintings: Canadian Corps Headquarters, the Château, Camblain-l’Abbé (1919), 345n69; Canadian Rest Camp at Villers-au-Bois (1919), 341n29; Entrance to Cellar Shelter in Monchy-le-Preux (1919), 94; Montreal Crater, Vimy Ridge (1919), 134 Milroy, Sarah, 134 mining warfare, 85, 131, 230 Modernism, 33, 37, 90, 94, 134, 237 Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre Gallery (Toronto), 287 Monchy-le-Preux, 94, 99 Monet, Claude, 30, 37, 63, 348n5; La rue Montorgueil à Paris, Fête du 30 Juin 1878 (1878), 188 Mons, xiv, 220–1 Montreal Gazette (newspaper), 291 Mont-Saint-Éloi, 88, 95, 98, 134 Morrice, James Wilson, 31, 299 Morris, William, 335n20 Mount Rundle (Banff), 49 mourning, 23, 24, 85, 100, 260–1. See also cemeteries and gravesites; commemoration Mudie-Cooke, Olive, 192, 193, 326n3, 356n25; Hooge Crater Cemetery (1920), 192 multimodality, 25, 293, 335n20 Munch, Edvard, 29 Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Arras, 119 Museum of the Royal Westminster Regiment, 9, 295 Nakoda Stoney people, 14 Nanaimo (bc), internment camps, 55–7 National Gallery: attempted acquisition of mrh’s war paintings, 293–4, 295–6, 367n17, 368n20; budget for new art, 267, 364n8; exclusion of mrh’s pre-war paintings, 43–6, 47, 283 Navy League Hall exhibition (1920), 167 Neuville-Saint-Vaast, 131, 135 Nevinson, Christopher: Paths of Glory (1917), 215 New York City, 290–1

Nicholson, David, 370n30 Nine Elms, 149, 151–2, 351n54 No Man’s Land (Young and McKinnon): about, 9–10, 334n17; on Among the Ruins, Arras (1919), 350n33; on Bruce, 359n46; on Canadian artists in Paris, 334n14; on Charles Hamilton’s family, 331n35; on crucifixion legend, 142; on Falconer, 333n76; on Frances Booth, 343n46; on Hart–mrh relationship, 170, 354nn34–5; on Les sacrifiées, 335n27; on Maternity (1906) and Les Pauvres (1906–09), 336n40; on mrh in Port Arthur, 331n34; on mrh photographs, 333n72, 334n7; on mrh’s birthdate, 11, 327n4; on mrh’s family tragedies, 332n53, 332n55, 333n70; on mrh’s life in France, 341n13; on mrh’s return to Canada, 367n6; on mrh’s wedding, 331n43; on Paris Salon, 334n17; on Peck, 341n9; reconstruction theme and, 352n7; on The Return Home (1919), 339n43; transcription errors in, 326n20; on William A. Hamilton’s letter, 363n48 Nova Scotia Highlanders, 196 observation posts, 103 Odlum, Victor, 167 oil (medium), 93–4 O’Keeffe, Georgia, 237, 286 Oliver, John, 167 Olympic Games (1924), 281 Oppy Wood, 115, 347n37 ordnance, unexploded, 82–3, 225, 227–9 Orpen, William: Dead Germans in a Trench (1917), 357n7 Osborne, Brian S., 9, 93, 154–5, 193; “In The Shadows of Monuments,” 154–5 Page, Gay, 299 pain, 208 Palmes académiques, Ordre des, 267, 364n4 Pankiw, Mae Riter, 307, 347n26 Paris: Canadian artists in, 31, 334n14; Olympic Games (1924), 281; postwar visits, 70, 148–9, 197–8, 266–7, 269, 270, 354n32; pre-war visit, 30, 30–2, 32, 37, 43, 334n15

Index

Passchendaele, 6, 172, 192, 193, 196, 260–1 Paton, James Alexander (Alex): about, 62; assistance finding mrh, 254; correspondence with, 153; death, 303; exhibitions of mrh’s paintings and, 167, 271, 272, 365n22; mrh’s paintings decoded by, 106; photograph, 63; on sale of mrh’s paintings, 281; sponsorship for mrh, 62, 67, 98, 168; war injury, 85, 339n41 Patricia of Connaught, Princess, 44 Peck, Cyrus W., 69, 70, 107, 341n9, 345n11, 346n19 Pedley, James H., 105 Pemberton, Sophie, 31 Penticton Art Gallery, 1, 305 Perry, Anne, 65, 291 Petit Vimy, 138 phenomenological approach, 69–70, 72–4, 79, 167–8 photography, 132, 145, 207, 348n5 Picasso, Pablo, 120 pigments (colours), 131–2, 184, 188 pilgrimage, 119–20, 346n14 pillboxes, 193, 212, 227, 233, 234 plein-air painting, 70, 340n7 Point Grey Library (Vancouver), 303 Pointillism, 114 Pollock, Griselda, 42 Pont-Aven (Brittany), 34–5 Port Arthur (on), 18–19, 21–2, 23–4, 40, 280–1, 307 portraiture, 14, 51–2, 53, 91, 116, 146–8 Post Impressionism, 37 post-traumatic stress (shell-shock), 62, 171, 208, 223–5, 251, 255 Potijze [Poityze], 234 prairies, 14–16 Prakash, Ash K., 40; Independent Spirit, 37 Prestidge, Orlando: “Forêt de Guerre,” 209 Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, 179 prisoners of war and pow camp, 114–18, 347n38 Provincial Mental Hospital (Essondale), 303, 306–7 Prussian Cur, The (film), 142 Public Archives of Canada, 295, 296–7, 298, 299, 368n32. See also Library and Archives Canada

397

racism, 148, 150 Rae, Isobel (Iso), 326n3 rampart paintings (Ypres), 177–8, 179, 182, 256 Ramparts Cemetery (Ypres), 179, 354n7 realism, postwar, 120 reconstruction: clearing battlefields, 193–4, 252–4; of markets and towns, 166–7, 188, 191–2, 251–2 reconstruction-destruction duality, 9, 42, 154–5, 177, 182, 184, 220, 352n7 Red Cross, 51, 238–9, 361n3 refugees, 70, 102–3, 164, 166–7, 220 Regehr, Cheryl, 171 Reid, Fiona: Broken Men, 208, 251 Reid, George Agnew, 22, 26, 31, 61, 331n48 Reid, Mary Hiester, 22, 26, 31, 235, 331n48; A Harmony in Grey and Yellow (1897), 22 religious themes, 33–5, 119–20, 142, 144, 227–9, 253 Remarque, Erich Maria: All Quiet on the Western Front, 278 Rembrandt, 30, 155, 212–13; The Three Crosses (1653), 118 Riis, Jacob, 132 Riter, Charity (née Zimmerman; mrh’s mother): death, 57; family background, 12; family tragedies, 13, 23, 329n16; later life, 24, 338n21; marriage, 12, 329n7; mrh and, 14, 18, 25, 43, 46 Riter, Charles (mrh’s nephew), 347n26 Riter, Clara (mrh’s sister). See Currie, Clara Riter, Etta (mrh’s niece), 26 Riter, Etta (mrh’s sister), 23 Riter, Etta (mrh’s sister-in-law), 26 Riter, Frank (mrh’s nephew), 305–6, 307, 308, 369n25, 370n30 Riter, Harold (mrh’s nephew), 26 Riter, John (mrh’s grandfather), 12, 329n10 Riter, John Saul (mrh’s father), 11–12, 13, 23, 329n7, 329n15, 332n56 Riter, John Thomas (mrh’s brother), 22–3 Riter, Joseph W. (mrh’s brother), 13, 18, 21, 26, 333n70 Riter, Judy (mrh’s great-niece), 307 Riter, Maria (née Reed; mrh’s grandmother), 12, 14, 329n10

398

Index

Riter, Maria (née Simpson; mrh’s sister-in-law), 338n21 Riter, Pearl (mrh’s niece), 307 Riter, Ronald T. (mrh’s great-nephew), 8, 19, 305–6, 307 Riter Curse, 23, 26 road intersections, 138, 233 Roberts, William, 54 Rogers, Aurelia (née Widmeyer): assistance placing mrh’s paintings, 293, 295, 296–7; assistance with mrh’s European trips, 26, 67, 97–8; death, 302; friendship with mrh, 18, 291 Rogers, Robert, 18, 67, 291, 302 Route de Bapaume, 203, 357n12 Royal Bank, 222, 350n38 Royal Newfoundland Regiment, 94 Ruskin, John, 25, 32, 286, 335n20 Sainte-Catherine graveyard, 142, 144 Saint-Éloi (Ypres), 229–30 St Julien, 227–9 St Paul’s Anglican Church (Clinton, on), 21 St Pol, 149 Salon (Société des Artistes Français), 28, 31, 191, 193, 334n17, 356n20 salvaging, creative, 88, 90, 193–6 Sanctuary Wood (Hill 62), 195–6, 227, 243, 359n17 San Francisco: World’s Fair (1915), 51 Sargent, John Singer, 30, 203; Madame X (1884), 35 Sassoon, Siegfried: “On Passing the New Menin Gate,” 182 Saunders, Nicholas J., 72–3, 242, 243 Scarpe River, 166 Scarry, Elaine, 214; The Body in Pain, 208 scarves, batik, 282–3, 284–5, 286–7 Seaforth Highlanders, 62, 342n38 Second Battle of Ypres, 9, 54, 142, 172, 173, 178, 227, 242 Service, Robert: “Jean Desprez,” 349n22 sfumato (“smoke”) technique, 212–13 Shaw, Wendell B., 61 shell holes, 113, 194 shell-shock (post-traumatic stress), 62, 171, 208, 223–5, 251, 255

Shepherd, Francis J., 45–6, 47, 293 shrines. See memorials Shuniah Lodge (Freemasons), 280–1 Siebrecht, Claudia: “Imagining the Absent Dead,” 109, 346n22 Silcox, David P., 344nn56–7 silk, paintings on, 282–3, 284–5, 286–7 Simpson, Charles, W., 61, 149 Skarbina, Franz, 28, 29–30, 30, 334n7 Société des amis des arts de Seine-et-Oise exhibition (1924), 283 Société des Artistes Français (Salon), 28, 31, 191, 193, 334n17, 356n20 Somme: background and conditions at, 199, 201, 221–2; Battle of the, 201, 203; burials at, 113, 201; map, 200; paintings from, 201, 203–5, 209, 212– 14; proposed Somme Memorial for the Dead, 266, 364n3; Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, 201. See also Courcelette Somme Memorial Fund, 266, 272 Sontag, Susan, 132 Souchez Valley, 101, 105, 107, 152 Speck, Catherine, 5, 155, 356n25; Beyond the Battlefield, 69, 326n3 Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 50, 273–4, 365n25 Stettheimer, Florine, 237, 286 Stevens, Lorna, 330n23 Stewart, Susan, 131 Stewart, William D.: All Our Yesterdays, 329n6 Strong, Annie May Hamilton (mrh’s sister-in-law), 267 Symbolism, 32, 39, 63, 132 Tagore, Rabindranath, 300 tanks, 225–7, 258 Taussig, Michael, 209 Taylor, Rowland, 96–7, 101–2, 120, 240, 248–9, 344n64, 348n54 telescoping effect, 107–8, 113, 347n31 Telfer, Douglas, 303–4, 306 textile art, 282–3, 284–5, 286–7 Théâtre National de l’Opéra exhibition (1922), 266–7, 273

Index

Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, 201 Third Battle of Ypres, 172, 354n7 Thomson, Tom, 48–9 Thorburn, Margaret (Peggy), 9 3 Rue Joseph Bara (Paris), 265 Thunder Bay (on). See Port Arthur Thunder Bay Daily Sentinel, The (newspaper), 18–19, 20–1, 23 Tippett, Maria, 8, 52–3, 145, 146–7, 226, 335n25, 349n22 Toronto Star Weekly (newspaper), 292–3 Touring Club (Arras), 168 tourism, and commemoration, 100, 175, 177, 178–9 Townsend Gallery (Toronto), 44 Tracy, Dale: With the Witnesses, 209 transition, theme of, 164, 166–7 transnational perspective, 107, 260–1 Traynor, Ethel M., 18, 330n30 Traynor, Mary A., 18, 21, 330n30 Treaty of Versailles, 119, 120 Tudor-Hart, Percyval, 37 Turner, J.M.W., 63 22nd (Montreal) Battalion, 203, 205 University Women’s Club (Montreal), 291 University Women’s Club (Victoria), 47, 67, 280, 281, 366n37 University Women’s Club (Winnipeg), 292, 294–5 Vance, Jonathan, 152 Vancouver (bc), 4–5, 60, 299 Vancouver Art Gallery, 304, 305 Vancouver Daily World (newspaper), 63, 65 Van der Kolk, Bessel A., 223 van Dyck, Anthony, 17 Van Gogh, Vincent, 85 Varley, Frederick H., 61, 145, 149, 233; The Sunken Road (1919), 145; For What? (1917–19), 110 vermin, on battlefield, 278 Verthuy, Maïr, 364n4 V-frame technique, 203–5, 207 Victoria (bc), 46–7, 50–1 Villers-au-Bois, 75, 79

399

Vimy Ridge: aerial view, 101; Battle of, 59, 74; burial sites, 84–5; Canadian National Vimy Memorial, 58, 88, 105, 345n11; first impressions, 72–4; paintings from, 3, 82–4, 85 Vimy Village, 138 Vinck, Gaston de, 193, 258, 356n31, 363n44 Vinck, Louise de: English Tank at the Zouave Valley at Hooghe Near Ypres (1920), 258 violence, 208 visual rhetorical theory, 9 Vitti Academy (Académie Vitti), 28, 31 Vogler, Thomas A., 72 Voormezelle, 249, 250 Vorticism, 53 Walker, (Byron) Edmund: acquisitions for National Gallery, 364n8; mrh’s forgiveness of, 283; rejection of mrh, 44, 47, 57, 58–60, 267, 281; war artists selection and, 58, 61, 192, 339n35 Wallace, Richard W., 286, 288 War Amps, The, 107, 304–5. See also Amputation Club of British Columbia war artists: Beaverbrook’s support for, 57–8; comparison between official and unofficial artists, 149, 214; composition and mediums, 93–4, 145–6, 344n56; gender and, 69; German and French artists, 57; mrh’s application to be, 57, 58–61; provisions for, 58, 95–6, 149, 338n25, 344n62; selection of, 61, 339n35; women artists, 58, 192 War Graves Commission, 242. See also cemeteries and gravesites watercolours, 94, 344n56 Watkins, Megan, 223–4 Watson, Adele (Fanny), 43, 270, 275, 291, 306, 337n46 Watson, Katharine, 270, 274–5, 276–8, 282, 291, 306 weapons: grenades, 255; mining warfare, 85, 131, 230; tanks, 225–7, 258; unexploded ordnance, 82–3, 225, 227–9 Webley, F.W., 127 Weinberg, Michael, 40 Wells, Clifford, 151

400

Index

West Algoma Annual Fair (1888), 20–1 Western Women’s Weekly, 63, 65 Whistler, James, 22, 30 White Rock (bc), 300 Whitman, Walt, 8, 100, 223; “When Lilac Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” 110; “The Wound-Dresser,” 1 Whytock, Jim, 329n6 Willson, Henry Beckles, 172, 178–9; Ypres, 179 Wilson Gallery (Ottawa), 44 Winnipeg (mb), 25, 292, 294, 299 Winnipeg Art Gallery, 46 Winnipeg Free Press, The (newspaper), 25 Winnipeg School of Art exhibition (1914), 50 Winter, Jay, 8, 100, 175, 177, 182, 298, 342n37; Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, 177 witnessing, 8, 72, 110, 209, 223 women: changes in fashion and self-representation, 52, 288; as nurses, 60–1; sidelining of, 5, 326n2; as war artists, 58, 69, 192 Women’s Art Association of Canada, 25 Wood, Derwent: Canada Golgotha (1918), 349n22 Woolf, Virginia: A Room of One’s Own, 237 World’s Fair (1915), 51 World War I. See First World War Wright, Walter, 71, 82, 98 Wyle, Florence, 58 Yeats, W.B.: “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” 247–8 Young, Henry Esson, 6, 9, 51, 53, 302 Young, Kathryn A. See No Man’s Land (Young and McKinnon) Young, Rosalind: archival material from, 9; assistance for mrh, 280, 366n37; correspondence with, 87–8, 114, 278–9; on Hart–mrh rift, 302; mrh’s portraits of, 51; photographs, 6, 55, 55

Ypres: background, 172, 174; civilian resilience, 188, 191–2; Cloth Hall, 172, 174, 174–5, 177, 184, 188, 191–2, 355nn15–16; commemorative industry in, 175, 177, 178–9; Hotel Ypriana, 239, 240, 240–1; maps, xiv, 173; Menin Gate, 177, 179, 182, 263; Military Cross awarded to, 188; mrh’s departure from, 264, 363n54; mrh’s move to and return to, 171, 239, 241; mrh’s paintings from, 177–8, 179, 182, 184, 188, 191–2, 193–6, 241–3, 251–2, 256–7, 261, 263–4; Mudie-Cooke in, 192; photographs of mrh painting, 174, 174–5, 175; Ramparts Cemetery, 179, 354n7; respite sought by mrh’s at, 102; Second Battle of, 9, 54, 142, 172, 173, 178, 227, 242; Third Battle of, 172, 354n7 Zhang, Jianguo: Over There (with Zhang), 149–50 Zhang, Junyong: Over There (with Zhang), 149–50 Zillebeke, 243, 247, 258 Zimmerman, Esther (née Stafford; mrh’s grandmother), 12, 329n11 Zimmerman, John (mrh’s grandfather), 12, 329n11 Zimmerman, Maria (née Snyder; mrh’s greatgrandmother), 329n14 Zimmerman, Matthias (mrh’s great-grandfather), 329n14, 335n22 Zonnebeke, 258, 260 Zouave soldiers, 146 Zouave Valley (Flanders), 258 Zouave Valley (France), 107, 110