Rapture, Rhythm and the Tree of Life: Emily Carr and Her Female Contemporaries

A selection of works from this exhibition have been extended through January 22, 2021.

 

Drawn primarily from the Vancouver Art Gallery’s collection, Rapture, Rhythm and the Tree of Life: Emily Carr and Her Female Contemporaries focuses on artwork from the first half of the twentieth century by women artists based in British Columbia, and presents an expanded account of the context in which modernism developed on the Canadian West Coast during the early to mid-1900s.

 

Born in Victoria, BC, Emily Carr (1871–1945) is widely recognized for her paintings of forested British Columbian landscapes that investigate the shapes, colours and rhythmic changes in nature. In this exhibition, Carr’s images of the forest and the coast are presented alongside work by some of her lesser-known female contemporaries—including Unity Bainbridge, Beatrice Lennie, Nan Lawson Cheney, Irene Hoffar Reid, Grace Wilson Melvin and Vera Weatherbie—together with baskets, cedar hats and cradle boards made at this time by Indigenous women—such as Amy Cooper, Mary Little and Gertrude Dick.