Emily Carr
A fiercely independent painter who captured the primal spirit of British Columbia's rainforests and Indigenous cultures with a raw, modernist eye.
1871–1945 (age 74)·Canadian artist and writer·Birthday: December 13·The Gilded Age
Biography
Emily Carr spent her life in a passionate, often lonely, struggle to translate the overwhelming presence of the Pacific Northwest into art. Born in Victoria, British Columbia, she studied abroad but found her true subject upon returning home: the towering forests, coastal villages, and monumental totem poles of First Nations communities, which she painted not as ethnographic records but as living forces. For years, her work was met with indifference in Canada, forcing her to run a boarding house to survive. A pivotal 1927 exhibition in Toronto connected her with the Group of Seven, forging a crucial artistic kinship that reignited her career. In her later years, crippled by heart trouble, she turned to writing, producing a series of autobiographical books characterized by a startlingly direct and vivid prose style. Carr’s legacy is that of a late-blooming visionary who taught a nation to see the wild soul of its own western landscape.
The Gilded Age
1860–1882
Born during or after the Civil War, they built industrial America — the railroads, the steel mills, the first skyscrapers. An era of massive wealth, massive inequality, and the belief that the future belonged to whoever could build it fastest.
Emily was born in 1871, placing them squarely in The Gilded Age. The events that shaped this generation — world wars, depression, and rapid industrialization — shaped the world they entered and the choices available to them.
#1 When Emily Was Born
The biggest hits of 1871
Emily's Life & Times
The world at every milestone
1871Born
President: Ulysses S. Grant
1876Started school
President: Ulysses S. Grant
1884Became a teenager
President: Chester A. Arthur
1887Could drive
President: Grover Cleveland
1889Could vote
Eiffel Tower opens in Paris
President: Benjamin Harrison
1892Turned 21
President: Benjamin Harrison
1901Turned 30
Queen Victoria dies, ending the Victorian era
President: Theodore Roosevelt
1911Turned 40
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 in New York
President: William Howard Taft
1921Turned 50
First commercial radio broadcasts
President: Warren G. Harding"My Man" — Fanny Brice
1931Turned 60
The Empire State Building opens as the world's tallest
Gas: $0.17/galPresident: Herbert Hoover"Minnie the Moocher" — Cab CallowayBest Picture: Cimarron
1941Turned 70
Pearl Harbor attack brings the US into WWII
Gas: $0.19/galHome: $3,060Min wage: $0.30/hrPresident: Franklin D. Roosevelt"Chattanooga Choo Choo" — Glenn MillerBest Picture: How Green Was My Valley
1945Died at 74
WWII ends; atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Gas: $0.21/galHome: $4,600Min wage: $0.40/hrPresident: Harry S. Truman"Sentimental Journey" — Les Brown & Doris DayBest Picture: The Lost Weekend
Key Achievements
- Won the Governor General's Literary Award in 1941 for her first book, 'Klee Wyck', a collection of stories about Indigenous communities.
- Her mature paintings, like 'Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky', are considered foundational works of modern Canadian art.
- Documented and preserved through her art the totem poles and villages of coastal First Nations at a time of cultural erosion.
- Became a central figure, though geographically separate, in the movement to define a distinctly Canadian modern art alongside the Group of Seven.
Did You Know?
She owned a boarding house in Victoria she nicknamed 'The House of All Sorts', which she wrote about in a book of the same name.
She kept a menagerie of animals, including a monkey named Woo and several dogs, which were constant companions.
To reach remote Indigenous villages for sketching, she traveled extensively in a caravan she called 'The Elephant'.
Her painting 'The Indian Church' was purchased by the Art Gallery of Ontario for $1,000 in 1929, a significant sum that aided her financially.
““You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone, but it seems to me you are more alone while living than even going and coming.””
