Additional Images

Provenance:

G. Blair Laing Limited, Toronto, ON;
Private Collection, Toronto, ON;
Joyner Waddington's, Toronto, ON, 29 May 2007, lot 56;
Mayberry Fine Art, Ltd, Winnipeg, MB;
Collection of Sir Christopher and Lady Ondaatje

Literature:

Dennis Reid, Krieghoff: Images of Canada (Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 1999), 23 and 24 pls. 22 and 23 for related canvases depicting Caughnawaga encampments.

Note:

First Nations people were part of the fabric of Montreal, particularly the Kanien’kehá:ka from the Caughnawaga (Kahnawake) Reserve—located about eleven kilometres up the St. Lawrence River near Lachine. Dennis Reid notes that Krieghoff’s most ambitious scenes of First Nations people from this period, 1848-1850, “depict family groupings around a fire in summer, the Native equivalent, in a manner, of the Canadian Interior series.” In Reid’s view, the purpose of these compositions was “to present typical Natives of the Montreal region in a natural setting to emphasise their attachment to the land.” (1) Krieghoff also inserts a few charming details—the baby on the cradleboard, the basket full of maize, the toddler squaring up with a dog—to animate his careful study of the forest interior.

Reid suggests that Krieghoff would most likely have been creating these scenes as composites from paintings or engravings he could have accessed in Montreal. He especially calls attention to the delicate twig supporting the heavy iron pot as evidence that Krieghoff, ever the observative painter, might not yet have been using empirical evidence on which to base his work. Of a similar scene, “Caughnawaga Indian Encampment at a Portage,” now in the permanent collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, (Reid, pl. 22, p. 23) Reid explains that “at this stage in the series, the landscape also is opening up, taking on more prominence. It clearly is no longer a broad symbol of nature, but reflects knowledgeable observation in its convincingly portrayed mix of coniferous and deciduous on the different hills.” (2)

(1) Dennis Reid, Krieghoff: Images of Canada, (Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 1999), 61.

(2) Reid, 63.