Thom Ian M. - Pause: an Emily Carr Sketch Book

PAUSE

A SKETCH BOOK

EMILY CARR
INTRODUCTION BY IAN M. THOM

Copyright 2007 by Douglas & McIntyre
Text of Pause copyright 1953 and 2007 by Ken Porter, Estate of Emily Carr
Introduction copyright 2007 by Ian M. Thom
Drawings and handwritten notations from Emily Carr (18711945), sketchbook for Pause 1903,
bound sketchbook with 56 drawings in graphite and ink, 23 pages of handwritten notations,
20.7 16.5 cm (overall size), Gift of Dr. Jack Parnell, McMichael Canadian Art Collection 1973.8

07 08 09 10 11 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

First published in 1953 by Clarke, Irwin & Company Ltd.

Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.
2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada v5t 4s7
www.douglas-mcintyre.com

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Carr, Emily, 18711945
Pause: a sketch book/Emily Carr; introduction by Ian M. Thom.
ISBN 978-1-55365-229-8
1. Carr, Emily, 18711945. 2. PaintersCanadaBiography.
3. Hospital patientsEnglandBiography. I. Title.
ND249.C3A2 2007 759.11 C2006-906444-X

Editing by Saeko Usukawa
Cover and text design by Ingrid Paulson
Cover drawing, detail from Emily Carr, Nurse with Pills, sketchbook for Pause 1903, graphite
and ink on paper, McMichael Canadian Art Collection 1973.8, Gift of Dr. Jack Parnell
Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens
Printed on acid-free paper that is forest friendly (100% post-consumer recycled paper)
and has been processed chlorine free.

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

The Fat Girl and Her Failure

The Horseshoe Bus

Promenading in the Corridor

Nurse with Pills

Sunhills Birds

Our Medical Advisers

Saturday Morning

Emily and Hokey

Ada

Men

Hokey with Emily in the Wheelbarrow

Emily and Scrap

Why Cant Men Mind Their Own Business?

5 Oclock a.m.

Worming

Bird Study

Bird Study

Hokeys Poem

Lament of the Polar Bear

Birds Fighting

Marmaduke

I Cannot Eat

Dr. Sally Bottle

Some Eat, Some Wont

Birds Weeping

Rest

Dutch Boy

Stork

Mice

Sanatoriumites

Rabbits

The Thrushs Nest

Hens

Geese

Cat

More Hens

More Geese

Anticipation (Scraps Child)

Realization (Scraps Child)

Concertina

Frogs

Cats

By permission of Ira Dilworth from a sketch book in his possession. The sketch book is now in the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

To my valued friend
Doctor David Baillie

EMILY CARRS JOURNEY to becoming an artist was not a smooth or direct one. Born in 1871 in Victoria, a small city on the west coast of Canada, remote from the art capitals of the world, she had little exposure to art at home and no opportunities for professional training. Her art studies initially took her to San Francisco (189093) and, beginning in 1899, to London, England, where she enrolled in the Westminster School of Art in September of that year. Carr spent the first year of the new century in London but then left to attend the studio classes of Julius Olsson in St. Ives in Cornwall. After a year, she returned to London and tried the Westminster School again but soon fled to the more rural village of Bushey in Hertfordshire, where she worked with John Whiteley. The less than inspired teaching in London, followed by a rather fractured course of studies in a variety of artists colonies, none which seemed to be substantially advancing her career, all likely contributed to her growing unhappiness in England. She also developed an antipathy to large cities, particularly London (and she later had a similar experience in Paris). Carr herself felt that her illness resulted from the fact that she had simply worked too hard at her art.

Women with physical and mental ailments that were difficult to diagnose were often termed hysterics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because hysteria was believed to be caused by a disturbance of the uterus. The treatment for hysteria, what we might now describe as an emotional collapse, was experimental, and Carr recorded a strange mixture of prolonged bed rest and a dietary regime that started with being

starved on skim milk Gradually they changed the starving to stuffing, beating the food into my system with massage, massage, electricityfour hours of it each day The electricity sent me nearly mad. I was not allowed to read, to talk, to think. By degrees I gained a little strength but my nerves and spirit were in a jangle.

Carr was at a nadir in her artistic and emotional life.

Although Carr has gained a reputation for being a difficult and sometimes contrary personality, she always seems to have managed to find at least a few friends in any situation and soon made allies among both staff and patients at the sanatorium. More importantly for us, she was unable to resist recording some of her experiences in both words and drawings during her long stay.

The first story in Pause is tellingly titled Condemned, and it launches the narrative of her time in the sanatorium. Of the landscape she saw during that January journey to the sanatorium, Carr wrote: Low hillocks puckered the face of the land. These eight words vividly convey her lack of affection for this new landscape and suggest a bleakness that characterized much of her convalescence.

The East Anglia Sanatorium, under the supervision of Dr. Jane Walker (called Dr. Sally Bottle in these stories), was largely devoted to the care of people with tuberculosis (T.B.) and other respiratory diseases. At that time, it was believed that a great deal of fresh air (along with an alarmingly hearty diet) would mend ravaged lungs. This meant that most windows were kept open even in winter and that the patients were subjected to bone-chilling cold. Carr described the shock at arriving in her room: the nurse shook a mound of snow off the counterpane and showed a smaller mound [of the bed warmer] underneath not warm enough even to damp the snow.

Carrs early days in the San, as she and other patients called it, were characterized by prolonged weeping and a deep depression. What saved her from a complete mental breakdown were her rebellious nature and her remarkable ability to see the humour in her own predicament. One bright spot was the arrival of a small bird in Carrs open-air room, which made all the difference. I slept fitfully, turning on the light every while to see if she were still there. Her coming unasked was so friendly, so warming.