Additional Images

Provenance:

Private Collection, Toronto.

Literature:

Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, Charles Pachter, Toronto, 1992, colour plates 48, 51, 53, 55, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66 and 131, for works featuring imagery of the Moose.
Charles Pachter, M Is For Moose: A Charles Pachter Alphabet, Toronto, 2008, n.p., reproduced in colour (representing “Q is for Queen, trooping the colour.”)

Note:

At the 1947 Canadian National Exhibition, a young Charles Pachter came face to face with a powerful but peaceful animal that would have a lasting effect on the artist’s life and work. For close to forty years, the moose has been a signature subject to Pachter, the “Monarch of the North” having become a true icon of Canadian Pop Art.

Pachter, in M Is For Moose, describes some of the experience which led him to develop his unique and powerful depictions of his Canada, remembering “when I was a fine arts student in university, it was often suggested to me by patronizing professors that the Canada of my imagination was not as important as the iconography from other places. If it came from elsewhere, it was consequential. If it came from here, not.

So I began to draw, paint, and make prints in which I wanted to make Canada look cool, elegant, interesting, even “glamorous”, and put it on a level playing field with all those other countries I was told were more worthy of notice. Each of us has created a Canada that is unique, based on our accumulated life experiences, where we happen to live, who our friends are.”

Pachter’s steel and graphite moose sculptures are featured in important collections across Canada and internationally. The commanding three-dimensional works are installed in numerous public spaces, including two corten steel works on the University of Toronto’s campus, with works also installed at Norway Point, Lake of Bays and Inniskillin Winery, Niagara-on-the-Lake.

We extend our thanks to Charles Pachter for providing important
information in the cataloguing of this work.