Emily Carr: At the Edge of the World

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including The
Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret
Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

This is a book for readers if all ages who love stories and art. Jo
Ellen Bogart’s highly detailed yet concise text covers a great deal of
ground, while black-and-white sketches by Max Newhouse enliven roughly
half of every page. Text and sketches, together with 16 full-colour
plates of Emily Carr’s own paintings, combine to make Emily Carr: At
the Edge of the World an excellent introduction to her work and life.

Bogart’s narrative moves easily from Carr’s birth in 1871 in
Victoria, British Columbia (a place she would come to call “at the
edge of the world”), to the full recognition of her importance as a
painter in the early 1940s in Montreal, in London by the Tate Gallery,
and with the awarding of an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by the
University of British Columbia shortly before her death in 1945.

Newhouse’s 18 whimsical, fine-line ink sketches have a “naif” or
childlike air that would have pleased his subject. They depict Carr at
work surrounded by her small menagerie of pets, including her beloved
monkey, Woo; Carr’s sketching trips in British Columbia from 1931 to
1942; and her walks in Victoria pushing Woo in a baby carriage and
accompanied by five leashed dogs. The sketches make an attractive start
to each brief chapter.

The full-colour plates of Carr’s paintings include well-known ones
such as A Skidegate Pole (1941–42), Big Raven (1931), Woo (undated) on
a tree branch wearing a frock, and Arbutus Tree (1922). Among the colour
plates is Carr’s little-known My Bed, Somewhere in France (1911–12),
which features a shabby chair and side table beside a vast, canopied bed
with a woman’s head on the pillow; two birds perched on top of a chair
watch the sleeping woman.

Carr’s sense of humour shows to good advantage in her paintings and
sketches as well as in her writings. Readers of Emily Carr will see why
Tundra Books was attracted to this fresh presentation of a great
artist’s life and work. Highly recommended.