Paul Kane

Background

Paul Kane was born on September 3, 1810 in Mallow, County Cork, Ireland. He was the son of Michael Kane and Frances Loach.

Education

Paul Kane attended school at Upper Canada College, and some time later was trained by an art teacher, named Thomas Drury, at the Upper Canada College around 1830.

Career

Paul started his career as a decorative furniture painter in Toronto and later in Cobourg in the late 1820s.

After spending five years travelling and painting in the United States (Detroit, St. Louis, Mobile and New Orleans), between 1841 and 1842 he visited Italy to study the old masters, spending time in Genoa, Venice, Florence and Rome. The painter hiked from Rome to Naples, and eventually left Italy through the Brenner Pass to Switzerland, continuing on to Paris and then London. In London, Kane might have met the American artist George Catlin and viewed Catlin’s Indian Gallery, a showcase of paintings, lectures and performances based on his sketches of Indigenous peoples in the Western United States. Inspired by Catlin’s images and experiences, Kane returned to Canada determined to paint a similar series in the Canadian North-West.

Kane left Toronto in 1845 to sketch Indigenous peoples in their homelands and to collect their legends. He returned in 1848, having made over 700 sketches of western scenery and of Indigenous peoples from some 80 tribes.

When Paul Kane exhibited a selection of his work in Toronto upon his return in 1848, his viewers were astonished. His pictures gave them glimpses of the country that they could never have imagined. The oil-sketches on display, such as the Medicine Pipe Stem Dance, represented the first solo exhibition of any artist in British North America.

Upon his return to Toronto, the painter's true mission was yet to unfold. He was not interested in showing the clear light of the western skies, nor the bright colours of the Aboriginal people's ceremonial garments, nor the rugged landscape that he had so intensely traversed. He wanted instead to fulfill his Catlin-inspired assignment of documenting the "wild west" by polishing his works according to the stylistic discourse of his day: idealized Aboriginal people, Europeanized landscapes, muted colours. With the patronage of G.W. Allen, a wealthy Toronto financier, he proceeded to transform his sketches into oil paintings conforming to the contemporary standards of Europe.

Kane also served as a mentor and an inspiration to Canadian painters such as F. A. Verner, Lucius O'Brien and William Cresswell.

Achievements

• Paul Kane was mostly known for his paintings of First Nations people in the Canadian West and other Native Americans in the Columbia District.
  
  During his lifetime, the artist received many commissions.
  
  In 1937 Kane was declared a National Historic Person.
  
  On August 11, 1971, the year of the centenary of Kane's death, Canada Post issued a postage stamp entitled "Paul Kane, painter", designed by William Rueter based on Kane's painting "Indian Encampment on Lake Huron".
  
  Paul Kane High School in St. Albert, Alberta, Canada, was named in his honor.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Wanderings of an Artist Among the Indians of North America 1859

• painting

  • Portrait of Mrs. Conger of Cobourg

  • Interior of a Ceremonial Lodge

  • The Constant Sky, Saulteaux

  • Assiniboine Hunting Buffalo

  • Freeman Schermerhorn Clench

  • Kee-akee-ka-saa-ka-wow

  • Big Snake, Chief of the Blackfoot Indians, Recounting his War Exploits to Five Subordinate Chiefs

  • Maydoc-game-kinungee, "I Hear the Noise of a Deer", Ojibway Chief, Michipicoten Island

  • Native American encampment

  • George Gurnett

  • Old Cox, Sandwich Islander

  • Flathead Child

  • Jasper House

  • Portrait of John Henry Lefroy

  • Flat Head Woman and Child

  • Indian encampment on Lake Huron

  • The Buffalo Pound

  • The Death of Omoxesisixany

  • Self-portrait

  • Kane Bull

  • A Winter Scene in the Rockies

  • Encampment

  • Medicine Pipe Stem Dance

  • Flathead Woman

  • Scalp Dance by the Chualpays Indians

  • François Lucie, A Cree Half-Breed Guide

  • Below the Cascades, Columbia River with Indians Fishing

  • Clallum Women weaving up an blanket

  • Mount St Helens erupting at night

  • Fort Edmonton

  • French River Rapids

  • Lodge Interior

  • Buffalo Bulls Fighting

  • Cunnawa-bum

  • The Cackabakah Falls

  • Lake Huron

  • Medicine Mask Dance

  • Eliza Clarke Cory Clench

  • Hunting Fish

Connections

Kane married Harriet Clench in 1853. The couple had four children — two sons and two daughters.

Father:

Michael Kane

Mother:

Frances Loach

Wife:

Harriet Clench Kane

References

• Paul Kane, the Artist: Wilderness to Studio
  2011
• Paul Kane: Frontier Artist and Indian Painter
  1971
• Paul Kane's Great Nor-West
  1995