保罗·凯恩认领

Out of the cycle of one hundred paintings that Kane created, it is this one, Cunnawa-bum, that is used as the frontispiece in his book Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America. Although the image of the young Metis woman of Plains Cree and British ancestry featured in the book is only one of numerous portraits in the painted cycle, as frontispiece she becomes a sort of cover girl for Kane’s life project. Wanderings of an Artist recounts how the young woman, whom Kane met at Fort Edmonton, held her swan’s-wing fan “in a most coquettish manner” and that it was her charm that inspired Kane. No preliminary portrait sketch or drawing exists of Cunnawa-bum. Kane developed his general concept for a fan portrait through several schematic drawings of a figure holding a fan, sometimes within an oval. One of these drawings is a profile of a “flathead” woman; none are articulated with features that suggest an individual. In the painting the awkwardly disembodied arm implicitly suggests that Kane’s focus was the beguiling fan, underlined by its trompe l’oeil nudge into the viewer’s space. This strangely generic aspect of the portrait, despite its connection to an individual, is carried over into its life as the chromolithograph frontispiece to Wanderings of an Artist where its title becomes the anonymous Portrait of a Half-Breed Cree Girl. According to the ethnologist Daniel Wilson (1816–1892), a friend of Kane’s who reviewed Wanderings of an Artist, the oil captures the racial duality of the sitter; Wilson writes that Kane’s painting “presents an exceedingly interesting illustration of the blending of the white and Indian features in the female Half-breed.” Wilson is criticizing the work of the chromolithographer, Vincent Brooks, who had “sacrificed every trace of Indian features in his desire to produce his own ideal of a pretty face, such as might equally well have been copied for an ordinary wax doll.” For the artist, ethnographer, and lithographer, respectively, the essence of Cunnawa-bum’s charm was presented as a fan, in her identity as a half-breed, and as a wax doll. It is perhaps in Cunnawa-bum’s best interest that modern viewers shift the focus to the meaning of her name—“One That Looks at the Stars”—as a way to subvert the nineteenth-century male gaze and recognize her as empowered.

The Constant Sky projects the quintessential Romantic ideal that equates pristine nature with “primitive man.” An Aboriginal woman, The Constant Sky, sitting on an animal skin, leans against a tree trunk, her child by her side. The massive tree, with its intertwining branches, vines, and protective leaf canopy, suggests an ancient and unspoiled landscape. It is an idyllic locale, where a mirror-like river and the modest waterfall suggest the calm and comforting sounds of nature that reassure The Constant Sky of her way of life. For all the assumptions made during Kane’s time about the Aboriginal people being a “vanishing race,” one wonders if Kane’s image is meant to be an affirmation of the permanence of the Aboriginal presence. Seen from a nineteenth-century perspective, the early morning light in this painting alludes to the future, underscoring the idea of continuity that is implicit in both the woman’s name and the presence of the child. Kane may have drawn on several different personal experiences to create this painting; he apparently relied on sketches of landscapes, figures, and cultural objects from different regions and tribes. Ultimately Kane’s random borrowing from his own field sketches is moot, as his goal was to transcend the particular and capture an essential moral truth. Kane’s Arcadian landscape, framed by a painted, decorative arch of gold, offers a meditation on the ideal communion between humankind and nature, which at the time was thought to be manifest in the lives of the Aboriginal people.

The Buffalo Pound speaks as much to issues of patronage as it does to Kane’s approach to a subject that was of great interest to him. Kane was enthralled with plains bison, and he would execute a number of paintings based on the theme. This particular painting, which depicts bison being directed into a corral for slaughter, was one of fourteen produced for Sir George Simpson, governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), who authorized and aided Kane’s travel through HBC territory. Simpson intended to display the paintings in a room he was designing as a “museum of Indian curiosities” and seems to have had a vested interest in the images Kane produced for him. Simpson was not shy about directing the artist on subject matter, advising him that the bison should be depicted in profile so as to “give a better idea of the appearance of the animals.” Kane obliged, but the side view from a distant, elevated vantage point also allowed the artist to better distill the essential elements of the event into a pictorial narrative: the stampeding herd is funnelled by Aboriginal men (on horseback and foot) along a narrowing lane into a corral in which another man, perched in a tree, “chants an invocation for the success of the undertaking.” Curiously, Kane’s field journal mentions nothing of his witnessing the actual hunt, just the pound containing the aftermath of a previous slaughter. The artist may well have relied on oral accounts of the event. Kane’s painting is a composite based on several sketches—of bison, figures, landscape—and a detailed pencil drawing that corresponds closely to this particular version.

Previous research has assumed that Kane’s works on paper were sketched from life. However, this oil on paper, Medicine Pipe Stem Dance, was likely painted by Kane after the event, as a study for the later oil painting. It lacks the immediacy of a sketch drawn from life. Kane makes no reference in his field journal to the pipe stem dance; if we are to believe his book Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America, the Blackfoot ceremony took place in the afternoon and included Kane as one of the observers in the circle of seated men. (He was invited to the ceremony, as artist, to “add magical powers in increasing its efficacy.”1) The study spotlights the two dancers, and the vantage point is elevated, giving a more expansive view of dancers, spectators, and landscape. Kane’s depiction of the pipe stems suggests they were inspired by his drawings of individual cultural objects rather than by experience. In this painting Kane has chosen to depict a pipe stem from the very enemy nation (Plains Cree) that the Blackfoot were preparing to engage in battle.2 This seeming inconsistency may well underline Kane’s constructed approach to this work. The oil painting based on the study was an early creation in Kane’s cycle of one hundred paintings. The canvas was one of eight “Indian pictures” Kane exhibited at the Upper Canada Provincial Exhibition of 1852 in Brockville. One press account includes a lengthy entry on Medicine Pipe Stem Dance, referring to the “extracts, which we subjoin from Mr Kane’s journal” as a way to “fully explain the picture and superstitions attached to the ceremonial.”3 The entry reads like a detailed ethnological explanation, unlike the comparatively brief account in Wanderings of an Artist. That Kane did not make even a brief reference in his journal to his invitation to this sacred event, combined with the detailed ethnological description in the press review, suggests that Medicine Pipe Stem Dance (both the study and the oil painting) may rely more on descriptions that Kane read than on his own experience.

The Cackabakah Falls1 is a superb example of Kane’s embrace of the sublime. In portraying Kakabeka Falls, the artist has chosen as his subject one of the natural wonders along the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) voyageur route. His depiction of these falls as a fearsome force of nature is intended to inspire and overwhelm the viewer, while the foreground wedge of land offers a stable view at a safe distance.An illustration of an artist using a camera lucida, from the Dictionnaire encyclopédique et biographique de l'industrie et des arts industriels (1882) Kane was but a passenger when travelling with the HBC brigades, and while the men portaged, he would sketch. In executing his earlier drawing of this particular view, Kakabeka Falls, 1846, Kane appears to have been aided by an optical instrument. The precise articulation of outline and details of the “tower” in the middle, and the heavier pencil tracing the foliage and rocks in the foreground, suggest Kane used a device called a camera lucida. In translating his linear rendition into an oil painting, Kane created a spectacular vision of the sublime. Light glances off the massive sheets of falling water, reflects off the horizontal striations of the chert2 rock, and vies with the storm cloud for supremacy. The diminutive Aboriginal figures on the riverbank are a typical Romantic device used to provide scale and emphasize the immensity of this natural wonder—and, by projection, Kane’s own experience. Kane makes no mention of the falls by name in his field journal, nor does he indicate his response to the view; he simply notes that he made sketches of two portages along this leg of his journey.3 It is as though Kane relies on his drawing to accurately record his experience and his painting to emotionally express it.