(Image: Peter Rindisbacher, after Interior of a Sioux Lodge, 1824. Aquatint and etching, hand-coloured. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa.
Peter Winkworth Collection of Canadiana: Vast New Lands--Canada's Northwest, by various artists
Winnipeg Art Gallery, 300 Memorial Blvd.
To Jan. 21
Amidst Greeks myths and old English trade laws, the grand narrative of history can seem a little dull--something for dusty old professors more than us everyday, working folk. So it's easy to forget that at its core, history is made up of countless individual stories, each of them involving a living, breathing person.
The fur traders who paddled up and down the rivers of the early Canadian west, for example, and the native people they encountered, were obviously from a different historical and cultural context than us. And yet they weren't really all that much different in the desires, struggles, and contradictions that made up their daily lives.
An exhibit currently on display at the WAG shows the familiar historical archetypes that we all know, as well as the real, living people behind those masks. The sixty or so paintings and prints are entirely from the collection of the late Peter Winkworth, a financier who collected more than 4,000 pieces of historical art during his lifetime and then left them all to the government of Canada.
The exhibit presents what seems to be a fairly straightforward visual history of the Canadian north and west between about 1800 and 1890, and yet it's packed with stories that go beyond the names we may think we know.
There's John Franklin, for example, the captain of an expedition that vanished in the Canadian arctic in 1849, and which thereby captured the popular imagination of Europe for years afterward.
Sir George Back was the official artist for some of Franklin's earlier (and more fortunate) expeditions, and there are several works here by him, all done while he traveled through the vast parcel of land that stretched from present-day Thunder Bay to the Pacific Ocean and the North Pole.
Before he teamed up with the legendary Franklin, though, Back had adventures of his own, including joining the British navy at age 12, and spending six years in a prison camp in France after being captured at sea.
And yet beyond the one-dimensional image we may hold of someone like Back, that of the romantic explorer and artist, was a man who historians describe as an unrepentant womanizer, drinker, and carouser. His co-workers seem to have considered him difficult and untrustworthy, while his journals were described by a contemporary as "all ornament and conceit, (with) no substance, and no small portion of sentimentality and self-admiration."
Despite those apparent inconsistencies, however, the half dozen woks here by Back offer a rare and elegant glimpse at a world that has changed forever.
As for Louis Riel, his leadership in two rebellions, and his subsequent execution, have made him as celebrated and controversial figure as any in the Canadian West.
But as works from his own era show, Riel's place in the popular mind may have changed greatly over time. One work, for example, a political cartoon from a Toronto newspaper in 1885, shows General Middleton, leader of the government troops who defeated Riel at Battoche. In the work, Middleton is seen telling prime minister John A. Macdonald: "Here is your prisoner. I have done my duty, now you do yours."
Behind the two men, and the shackled figure of Riel, a noose dangles suggestively.
One of the most intriguing characters in this exhibit, though, may be Peter Rindisbacher. A farmer and artist who immigrated here in 1821 with his Swiss parents, Rindisbacher is considered the first full-time resident artist among the settlers of the Canadian west.
For several years, Rindisbacher painted scenes from daily life, including the native populations of this part of the prairies, before moving with his family to St. Paul, Minnesota. Prints of his works were circulated widely in Europe and the U.S., providing some of the earliest images of the Canadian west to the larger world.
In 1834, only 28 years old, Rindisbacher died from a tuberculosis epidemic that swept the young American city of St. Paul. Beyond those few bare facts, little is known about this important and rather tragic figure.
These images, then, and the characters behind them, form a distinct, lively part of our history as Manitobans--and there's nothing really dull or dusty about that.
