HOW GOOD IS YOUR BACKSIDE: BEHIND PAINTINGS

HOW GOOD IS YOUR BACKSIDE: BEHIND PAINTINGS

Years ago I was wrapping up my undergraduate studies in art history and history, pondering my next steps. Looking back, I sheepishly admit that at the time a movie The Red Violin helped inspire me to continue towards a career in fine arts. The Red Violin is essentially a cinematic ‘provenance’ of an important 17th century violin. The plot follows the violin from its creation through all its subsequent ownerships and travels, whilst shifting back and forth to the contemporary specialists conducting extensive research upon the piece before it could be offered for commercial sale. I was absolutely captivated by the efforts made to research the entire history of ownership and whereabouts of this important violin, in an attempt to augment its credibility and worth. Most fortunately, such efforts are equally endeavored in the fine arts. Equipped with a new fervour to seriously pursue a career, I knew that I would oftentimes have the pleasure of investigating art. One soon finds that one of the best ways to delve into a historical painting’s past starts first by flipping it over.

A painting’s backside, aka verso, can be devoid of or richly adorned with notations, labels, seals, numbers, stamps and symbols. All of the above can be of great assistance when trying to piece together the: who, what, when, where, and how of a painting. Typically, for historical art the more decorous the backside the more beneficial. For this reason, the backside of a painting can be just as visually and intellectually rewarding as the imagery on the front. Artists’ finest works tend to be exhibited more often, leaving them covered with the labels of exhibitions and authoritative art galleries. Peter Ohler Jr. remembers years ago the awe of flipping over a very fine Lawren Harris panel Isolated Peak to find the backside was completely filled up by various show and gallery labels, with barely a square inch unadorned. He recalls now that the back panel was “like an old suitcase that had travelled around the world.” Everywhere a suitcase had been, it picked up another memento on location.

Some of the many things that can help in researching authenticity and provenance that you might find on the backside of a painting include old gallery and exhibition labels, estate stamps, signatures, hand-written notations, framers and art suppliers stickers, numbers, seals and ex-owners names. Historical Canadian art has many such clues. Old gallery labels for well respected dealers and galleries are desirable additions to the painting’s verso; they reinforce the merit of a work based on the knowledge that informed specialists of a previous era also heralded the work. If authentic, the antiquated labels themselves can physically attest to the genuine vintage of a painting. Some gallery labels from bygone eras in Canadian art history that are esteemed include the Laing Galleries, McCready Galleries, Dominion Gallery, Scott & Sons, Watson Galleries.

Another preferred type of label is that of the public institutions’ or societies’ exhibitions. These typically indicate that the work of art has been included in an organized showcase, implying that the work of art was previously well regarded. In some way or another the work held enough significance to warrant inclusion in an exhibition. Some examples of labels that denote important exhibitions are Canadian National Exhibition Graphis Arts Dept. labels, old Art Gallery of Toronto labels (now the Art Gallery of Ontario), Royal Canadian Academy annual exhibitions, or other museum shows, or shows abroad.

There are all sorts of notations hand-written on the back of paintings: scribbles, symbols, inventory numbers etc. Artists themselves might sign, title, date or make notes on the verso instead of or in addition to the front. Friends, family or experts of an artist have also been widely known to inventory, authenticate or categorize paintings in the artist’s absence or death. When Harris was in New Hampshire, he had Doris Mills inventory all of his work that remained in the Studio Building and various places around Toronto. She marked the back of his panels with a fractioned number, such as 1/26. The first number represents a grouping by subject matter: one for Arctic sketches, two for Algoma sketches, three for houses, four for Lake Superior and so on until group eight. The second number was the order in which she inventoried each group. After Tom Thomson’s untimely death his fellow artists stamped the sketches that remained in the studio with a monogram designed by J.E.H. MacDonald, and he and Lawren Harris noted ‘Not for Sale’ and ‘First Class’ to those they considered the finest.

By: Jill Turner

Have you ever wondered what something on the backside of your Canadian painting means? We invite you to EMAIL US pictures of anything you might be curious about, and we will see of we can investigate your backside.

THE PRACTICAL PHOTOGRAPH...

The Practical Photograph and the Diminishing Decadence of Descriptions

The gallery has had ample opportunities to reflect upon the advent of photography over the past year. We had a successful show of Richard Henry Trueman photographs of British Columbia and the Rockies from the late 19th century, and more recently we have had an online sale and show of early 20th century photographs called With Train and Grain: Expanding the Canadian Prairies in Photograph. We have also had the opportunity to develop a permanent presence for available historical photographs on our website, including a variety of Western Canadian subjects by numerous photographers.

Upon reflection it is amazing to see how far photography has come in a mere two centuries, especially when compared against other developments spanning thousands of years of art history. Not only is photography a highly respected form of fine art; it has also proven to be integral for documentation and visual aid. Today many photographers take pictures, or use photography in whole or part, with creative aims in mind. From the mid-19th century photographers used early photographic processes to document what they saw around them. Documenting the expansion of the Canadian Pacific Railway line westwards is a good example. Photography is also ever increasingly used as a visual aid, exemplified in the academic and commercial art industry alone through art history textbooks and art catalogues to the images used for online shopping.

The use of photography in daily life, and the art industry more specifically, has come so far it is difficult to imagine picking up an art catalogue or textbook with no photographs for visual reference. Before the widespread use of photography and improved printing techniques, how would an author or cataloguer relay what the art being discussed looked like to readers who haven’t seen the art? Some books and catalogues would include engravings copying paintings being discussed, but this would be far too costly and time consuming for a large or multi-volume catalogue of art. If an author or cataloguer wanted to give a sense of what a picture looked like it, they would simply have to describe it in writing, usually in great detail. Such was the case for picture dealer John Smith’s multi-volume A Catalogue raisonne of the works of the most eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters published in editions between 1829 and 1908 (most of which published in the 1830s).

The need for descriptive cataloguing has diminished nearly to redundancy since photography has been used in book publishing. When one can look at images of paintings the use of lavish and prose-like wording to describe art is no longer necessary, and may even seem like a foreign concept today. However, in 1829 when John Smith embarked upon cataloguing Old Master paintings in private and public collections across Europe wordy descriptions were necessary for the reader to visualize the paintings in the epic catalogue raisonne. In the 19th century cataloguers would have been well practiced at flowery cataloguing; but to today’s readers the style of these entries might seem over-the-top and even comical. I will conclude by leaving you with a selection of entertaining descriptions of Dutch Old Master genre painting entries from A Catalogue raisonne of the works of the most eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters. They attempt to convey the quality, mood, and/ or detail of the paintings being discussed. I hope you find them as amusing as I do!

1. A Pig-sty- of a highly picturesque appearance, in which are three hogs luxuriating in filth. A tub, partly overturned, and other objects, complete a picture which exhibits a faithful transcript of nature.

2. Twelfth Night- The subject is composed of about twenty persons, most of whom are exhilarated with liquor, and are indulging in the gayest excesses of mirth and jollity. Among the various groups may be noticed an old fellow (probably the king of the evening’s amusement), wearing a yellow dress and a napkin round his head, completely inebriated, whom a man and a woman are lifting on a table.

3. A Lady and her Page- This superlative bijoux of art represents the portrait of a lady of singular beauty, about twenty-three years of age; her fair countenance is seen in nearly a front view, and her dark hair is tastefully disposed in curls. She is elegantly attired in a white satin robe….she is attended by a page, habited in the fanciful costume of the period…

4. Villagers Merry-making- The scene of hilarity is represented as passing in front of a house of a picturesque appearance…. Mirth and conviviality prevail throughout the piece.

5. The Angry Man- A gentleman elegantly habited in a yellow jacket, with slashed sleeves, and blue hose; his countenance agitated with anger, and his right hand grasping the hilt of his sword, which he is in the act of drawing from its scabbard.

6. Villagers dancing and regaling- The cheerful scene is passing in front of some cottages occupying the right of the picture, one of which is distinguished by a vine growing luxuriantly over some trellis-work … A social group of four persons may also be noticed under the shade of the trellis-work, and in addition to these are an old man seated near a tilted cart with a jug in his hand, and the mirth-stirring fiddler mounted on a tub. The more distant scenery exhibits a continuation of the village. This most enchanting work of art is dated 1660.

7. A Hurdy-Gurdy Player- A merry fellow, of a florid complexion wearing a black slouched hat, and a dark purplish coloured cloak over a yellowish jacket. He is seated, playing an instrument. The figure in this clever little picture is seen to the middle.

All excerpts extracted from John Smith’s A Catalogue raisonne of the works of the most eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters published in editions between 1829 and 1908

By: Jill Turner

Photo credits

1 and 2. Exhibition posters for Masters Gallery shows featuring historical photography.

3. A historical photograph documenting a Frontier funeral (from a Yukon album)

4. An example of a contemporary art catalogue displaying high resolution colour photographs of the paintings in an exhibition (Masters Gallery Calgary's 30th Anniversary exhibition)

5. Interior title page of a 1908 edition of John Smith's A Catalogue Raisonne of the most eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters.