Paul Kane travelled from Thunder Bay to Fort Vancouver in 1845, where he painted the Indigenous communities along his travels. He sketched and painted dozens of works depicting scenes from the Hudson’s Bay Company territory. He has been called the founding father of Canadian art
Dr. Ian MacLaren wrote Paul Kane’s Travels in Indigenous North America, comprised of four volumes, as a project 30 years in the making. A painstaking, panoramic exploration, it studies the artist’s oeuvre in terms of his contemporaries, his technique, and the complicated history of the provenance of the works.
This talk focuses on how Indigenous Peoples were represented and how hindsight provides us with an opportunity to reflect on that representation.
Biography:
From 1985 to 2016, Ian MacLaren taught at the University of Alberta, in the departments of English and Film Studies, Canadian Studies, and History and Classics. He was also an adjunct professor at the Canadian Circumpolar Institute. He has published many articles, about arctic exploration, early Canadian literature, the history of national parks, and exploration and travel writing. He has authored, co-authored, and/or edited four books:
- Arctic Artist: The Journal and Paintings of George Back, Midshipman with Franklin 1819–1822 (1994);
- The Ladies, the Gwich’in, and the Rat: Travels on the Athabasca, Mackenzie, Rat, Porcupine, and Yukon Rivers in 1926 (1998)
- Mapper of Mountains: M.P. Bridgland in the Canadian Rockies 1902–1930 (2005)
- Culturing Wilderness in Jasper National Park (2007).