Capturing Canada on Paper and Canvas

Kakebeka Falls, Ontario. Kaministikwia River
Credit: William Armstrong, Kakebeka Falls, Ontario. Kaministikwia River 1856, 1911. Toronto Public Library (TRL) JRR 2330

About the Exhibit

The TD Gallery exhibition includes thirty-seven landscape views of Canadian art from the 1780s to the 1910s by notable Canadian artists William Armstrong, Anthony R.V. Crease, John A. Fleming, Anne Langton, William G.R. Hind, Lucius O'Brien, James Peachey, George Reid and others.

In the era before the camera, artists, surveyors and engineers captured the nuances of Canada's diverse scenery, including its waterways, shorelines, mountains, plains and vegetation. Whether their goal was to document the land's topography for the placement of fortifications and settlements or to create aesthetic works of art from their travels, these early trailblazers have left us with a lasting record of the Canadian landscape before and during colonial expansion.

Enjoy the richness, the diversity and the glory of Canada through this selection of paintings, drawings and prints from the library's Canadian Documentary Art Collection, Baldwin Collection of Canadiana, Special Collections.

Related Programming:

Screening of C. W. Jefferys Picturing Canada (2005)
Wed. Feb. 11 at 2:00 p.m.
Toronto Reference Library

Screening of From Field to Studio: the art of Paul Kane (2006)
Wed. Feb. 25 at 2:00 p.m.
Toronto Reference Library

Director John Bessai will introduce both films.

Exhibition Items:

Samuel Gurney Cresswell, 1827-1867
Sledging over Hummocky Ice, Northwest Territories
1853
Lithograph
919.8 C67 BR FO OSS No8

Marion Angelique (Wilkie) Kerr
Hermit Range, Selkirk Mountains, British Columbia
ca 189-
Water colour over pencil
961-4

William Armstrong, 1822-1914
Ploughboy, off Lonely Island, 1859, Georgian Bay, Ontario
1912
Water colour, touches of gouache
J. Ross Robertson Collection
JRR 2425

Anthony R.V. Crease, 1827-1892
Cutting the First Sod for the Ontario Simcoe and Huron Railroad, Toronto, Ontario
1851
Water colour, touches of gouache, over pencil
J. Ross Robertson Collection
JRR 518