A Hiker's Guide to Art of the Canadian Rockies

Kathy E. Zimon is Fine Arts Librarian (Emerita) of the University of
Calgary and the author of Alberta Society of Artists: The First 70
Years.

Once the Canadian Pacific Railway made travel to the Canadian Rockies
relatively accessible, those most captivated by the spectacular scenery
near Banff and Jasper were artists, and it is the specific views they
recorded on paper and canvas during the 1920s to 1940s that are the
subject of this book. Lisa Christensen, art historian, former Glenbow
Museum curator, and intrepid hiker, has located not only the famous
landmarks but also many of the remote vistas the artists sketched and
painted. As familiar with the terrain as with the art, she describes
both with well-researched detail.

Works discussed include those by visiting artists Frederic Marlett
Bell-Smith and John Singer Sargent; American wilderness advocate Belmore
Browne and German-born wildlife painter Carl Rungius, who maintained
studios in Banff; English artists A.C. Leighton and Walter J. Phillips,
who eventually settled in the West; Banff native Peter Whyte and
Catherine Robb Whyte, who met as students at the School of the Museum of
Fine Arts in Boston; and Group of Seven members Lawren Harris, Arthur
Lismer, J.E.H. MacDonald, and A.Y. Jackson, among others.

Appropriately, A Hiker’s Guide is organized by site, allowing the
reader to compare several artists’ interpretations of such popular
subjects as Lake O’Hara, Mount Robson, and Mount Assiniboine. Every
painting discussed is reproduced in color and accompanied by sidebars of
“trail info”: type of hike, best time to go, trailhead, distance,
elevation gain, degree of difficulty, hiking/driving time, topographic
map number, route and alternate trails. The text is a lively mix of
anecdote, art history, and mountain lore, augmented by quotes from
contemporary letters and diaries of artists, outfitters, guides, and
alpinists. Archival photographs of artists sketching and painting
outdoors also illustrate the text.

First published in hardcover in 1996, A Hiker’s Guide has won eight
awards for both content and production values. It is an original and
inspired contribution to the study of these mountain landscapes, and is
highly recommended for the understanding of a genre that figures so
prominently in the history of art in the Canadian West.