Emily Carr Biography | Oil Painting Reproductions

Emily Carr was born in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1871, the year British Columbia joined Canada. Her father encouraged her artistic inclinations, yet it was in 1891, after her parents' deaths, that Carr pursued her art. She studied at the San Francisco Art Institute for two years before returning to Victoria. In 1899 Carr went to London to study at the Westminster School of Art, after which she returned to British Columbia in 1905.

Emily Carr wanted to gain more knowledge on the new artistic trends, so in 1910 Carr returned to Europe to further her study at the Académie Colarossi in Paris. In Montparnasse with her sister Alice, Emily Carr met modernist painter Harry Gibb and studied with Gibbs his techniques shaped and influenced her style of painting in the Post-Impressionists and the Fauvists styles and she adopted a vibrant color palette rather than continuing with the pastel colors of her earlier British training.

Influenced by the Post-Impressionists and the Fauvists she met and studied within France. Carr returned home to exhibit her French-inspired paintings. In the summer of 1912, she again traveled north, at Cumshewa, a Haida village on Moresby Island, and painted a carved raven that she later turned into her iconic painting, Big Raven.

During the following 15 years, Emily Carr did very little painting, instead, she ran a lodging known as the 'House of All Sorts', which provided the namesake and source material for her later book. After some time her work came to the attention of several powerful and supportive individuals, including Marius Barbeau, a prominent ethnologist at the National Museum in Ottawa. He, in turn, persuaded Eric Brown, Director of Canada's National Gallery to visit her in 1927.

Carr continued to travel throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, her last trip north was in the summer of 1928. Recognition of her work grew, and her work was displayed in London, Paris, Washington, and Amsterdam, in addition to major Canadian cities.

At the exhibition on West Coast native Aboriginal art at the National Gallery in 1927, Carr met members of the Group of Seven. Lauren Harris of the Group turned into an especially vital supporter of hers. This meeting ended the isolation of her previous 15 years leading to one of her most productive periods and the creation of many of her most unmistakable works. Carr held her first solo show in 1935.

Emily Carr's paintings, The Crazy Stair (The Crooked Staircase), sold for $3.39 million at a Toronto art auction in 2013.

Art Movement History: Post-Impressionism, Expressionism.
Artists Influencing Emily Carr: Lawren Harris, Harry Gibb.
She Traveled To France, USA, England, Netherlands.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.