Student Essay

Maya Soren
This essay was written by an M.A. student in a Museum Practice seminar in the Department of Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University. The seminar was taught by Dr. Loren Lerner with the assistance of Dina Vescio, a M.A. graduate of the program.

The Canadian Dairy Industry and the Canadienne Cow’s Quebec Heritage Status

The Canadian dairy industry is a highly regulated and profitable industry, as well as a key contributor to the national economy. In 2007, the dairy industry ranked fourth behind grains, red meats and horticulture, producing $5.2 billion in net farm receipts.¹ In the same year, dairy products from approximately 445 dairy processing plants were valued at $11.6 billion, which accounts for 15% of all processing sales in the food and beverage industry in the country.² Furthermore, the dairy industry employs thousands of Canadians; in 2007 roughly 30,000 people worked in dairy farms and 21,132 others in the primary dairy-processing sector.³ About 81% of Canadian dairy farms are located in Ontario and Quebec and they use seven breeds of cattle: the Holstein – comprising more than 93% of herds, Ayrshire, Jersey, Guernsey, Canadienne, Shorthorn and Brown Swiss (fig. 1).⁴

The Canadienne, introduced in the 16th and 17th centuries by French-Canadian settlers in New France with cattle from Normandy and later Brittany and Gascony, is still the only dairy breed to have been developed on North American soil (fig. 2).⁵ Though farmers have praised the Canadienne for its “superior fertility, calving ease, exceptional rusticity, and adaption to the difficult Canadian environmental conditions,”⁶ in the 1940s and 50s dairy farmers in Ontario and Quebec began to crossbreed or replace the Canadienne with larger milk producers like the Holstein. As a smaller cow, the Canadienne’s lower milk production was no longer economically viable in an industrialized Canadian economy. Today, with about 200 Canadienne cows left in the gene pool almost exclusively in Quebec, the Canadienne’s population is at threat. However, researchers at the Ministère des Pêcheries, de l’Agriculture et de l’Alimentation du Québec and the Canada Agriculture Museum are making attempts to regenerate the population, and dairy farmers in the Iles de la Madeleine use the Canadienne’s milk to make artisanal cheeses for commercial sale. With a long and unique history in Canadian dairying, the Canadienne cow undoubtedly holds great historical and cultural significance for farmers, especially in Quebec due to the formation in 1895 of the l’Association des éléveurs de bovins canadiens (today the Société des Éléveurs de Bovins Canadiens/Canadian Cattle Breeders Association) in order to protect the breed from extinction. In 1999, the breed was given official heritage status by the Quebec provincial government because of its close association with the historical origins and agricultural traditions of the province.⁷ This designation was also legislated in order to pay tribute to the breeders who have worked to preserve the breed by encouraging extensive breeding, and have sought to make the breed more widely known and better appreciated outside of the province.⁸

As the Quebec government’s official tourist website states: “Québec’s roads and waterways echo with countless reminders of the often rustic life led by the province’s first settlers: ancestral homes, historic churches and chapels, covered bridges, mills, and lighthouses—all repositories for the collective memories of current and future generations.”⁹ In the same way that these vernacular architectural landmarks have been preserved and often even given heritage status, for the last ten years the Canadienne cow has also been officially recognized as an important part of Québec’s history that merits protecting. As we will see in subsequent sections, cows have had a special place in the hearts of not only European artists from the nineteenth century, but also for Canadian artists who demonstrated that cows are an inextricable feature of Canada’s rural landscape.

The Cow as Artistic Inspiration in Late 19th Century Rural Canada

For Canadians living in Ontario and Quebec, it is hard to imagine a rural landscape without picturing a herd of cows grazing in a farmer’s field. The cow, the symbol and reality of an agricultural way of life, was a common subject for Canadian artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Homer Ransford Watson, Horatio Walker, and Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté are some of the better known landscape painters who specialized in the depiction of farm animals. These artists were particularly inspired by two European movements in painting: the Barbizon school in France, and the Hague school in the Netherlands. Jean-François Millet’s paintings of French peasant life, such as Woman Pasturing her Cow, express a romantic anti-urban sentiment that is realistic in its approach (fig. 3).¹⁰ For the Hague painter Willem Maris, realism was equally important, especially in his paintings of cows, such as Cow Beside a Ditch, that explores the quiet moments of country living through the surrogate image of a cow (fig. 4).¹¹ For the Hague and the Barbizon painters alike the theme of pastoral life was more in tune with the aesthetics of art than the representation of historical and mythological scenes.

Homer Ransford Watson was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy and eventually its president. Although an active painter in Toronto, New York, Montreal, and London, where wealthy patrons supported his work, he chose to live and work in the rural community of Doon, Ontario where he was born.¹² Watson’s On the Grand River at Doon (ca. 1880) a scene near his home in rural Ontario and Down in the Laurentides (1882) painted in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec capture in two very different settings the bucolic elements of country living. In both works, he offers a picturesque interpretation of the farmer’s fields and his animals tamed through human activity (fig. 5 & fig. 6).

Horatio Walker, born in Listowel, Ontario, in contrast to the more distant views of cows in Watson landscapes is more interested in close-up studies of the animal. Cow (1878), a drawing in crayon and watercolour shows Walker’s determination to capture the body pose and profile of this seated animal (fig. 7). A later work titled Cows (1915), affirms his appreciation for the body of the cow as it assumes various stances and positions (fig. 8). In this painting Walker explores the motion of three cows, the rhythm of their heads at different angles and the movement of their legs plodding deliberately along the dirt path.

Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, born in Arthabaska, Quebec, was inspired more directly by Impressionist artists such as Claude Monet whose haystack fields and flower meadows are filled with light and colour. La ferme Bourbeau, a painting of the house of his neighbours, Solyme Bourbeau and his wife Clarisse Leboeuf who owned a large farm on the Gosselin River, partakes of these qualities (fig. 9). In front of the house, one can see the Bourbeau herd of cows coming home at dusk from a day of grazing in the pastures. Of note in this work is how Suzor-Coté gave relief and volume to shapes and shadows by juxtaposing strokes of pure colour.¹³

The Cow in Contemporary Canadian Art

Over one hundred years ago Canadian artists were showcasing cows as part of the rural environment of Ontario and Quebec and in order to experiment with painterly techniques. This is an interest that continues for contemporary artists such as Bernice Luftie Sorge and Joe Fafard. Based in Dunham, Quebec Sorge is an active print-maker and painter whose works often explore cultural identity, dichotomy, and the natural world. Woman and Cow reveals the artist’s understanding of the tender relationship between a farmer in the Eastern Townships and her herd of Canadienne cows (fig. 10). In this composition of abstract shapes and contrasting colours the cow and the farmer are locked together in a gentle embrace. Finally, one cannot discuss recent images of the cow in Canadian art without recognizing that Joe Fafard is the best example of an artist’s strong affinity for cows. For Fafard, a multi-media artist from Ste. Marthe, Saskatchewan the cow is the perfect subject for formal experimentation. Martha is one of hundreds of cows that Fafard has produced in clay and papier-mâché sculptures and in prints and paintings (fig. 11).¹⁴

Figures

fig. 1 Canada Agriculture Museum Experimental Farm. (Photo: the author)

fig. 2 Canadienne Cow at the Canada Agriculture Museum Experimental Farm. (Photo: the author)

fig. 3 Jean-François Millet, Woman Pasturing her Cow, 1858, oil on canvas, 73 x 93 cm, Musée de Brou, France. (Photo: {http://fadis.library.utoronto.ca/cgi-bin/WebObjects/FADIS.woa/1/wo/l6cOod91XEihMDbZBbKCh0/15.7.5.9.1.27.51.1})

fig. 4 Willem Maris, Cow beside a Ditch, ca. 1885-1895, oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm, Rijksmuseum. (Photo: SK-A-2706, Rijksmuseum {http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/aria/aria_assets/SK-A-2706?lang=en})

fig. 5 Homer Ransford Watson, On the Grand River at Doon, ca.1880, oil on canvas, 60.6 x 91.4 cm, National Gallery of Canada (Photo: {http://cybermuse.beaux-arts.ca/cybermuse/search/artwork_e.jsp?mkey=3384})

fig. 6 Homer Ransford Watson, Down in the Laurentides, 1882, oil on canvas, 65.8 x 107 cm, National Gallery of Canada. (Photo: {http://cybermuse.beaux-arts.ca/cybermuse/search/artwork_e.jsp?mkey=10211})

fig. 7 Horatio Walker, Cow, 1878, crayon and watercolour, Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University. (Photo: Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery 976.14 {http://www.pro.rcip-chin.gc.ca/bd-dl/artefacts-eng.jsp?emu=en.artefacts:/Proxac/newImgWin.jsp&currLang=English&i=0&j=8})

fig. 8 Horatio Walker, Cows, ca.1915, oil on canvas, 129.9 x 183.3 cm, National Gallery of Canada (16595). (Photo: {http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Horatio_Walker_-_Cows_-_ca._1910-20.jpg})

fig. 9 Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, La Ferme Bourbeau, 1908-1909, oil on canvas, 61 x 88 cm, private collection of Claude and Claire P. Bertrand. (Photo: reproduced in Laurier Lacroix, Suzor-Coté: lumière et matière (Québec: Musée du Québec, National Gallery of Canada, 2002) 173.)

fig. 10 Bernice Luftie Sorge, Woman and Cow, ca. 1985, acrylic on masonite board, 90 x 55 cm. (Photo: the artist).

fig. 11 Joe Fafard, Martha, 2007, patinated bronze, 26.7 x 68.6 x 29.2 cm, Mira Godard Gallery. (Photo: {http://www.godardgallery.com/fafard.htm})

Notes

1. The Industry, Canadian Dairy Commission (20 Aug. 2008) 26 Oct. 2009 {www.cdc.ca/cdc/index_en.asp?caId=87}.
2. The Industry.
3. The Industry.
4. The Industry.
5. Brian Krick and Ted Lawrence, Canadienne Cow, Canadian Farm Animal Genetic Resources Foundation, 26 Oct. 2009 {www.cfagrf.com/Canadienne_
   Cow.htm}.
6. Krick and Lawrence.
7. An Act Respecting Animal Breeds Forming Part of Quebec’s Agricultural Heritage, Publications Québec (1 Nov. 2009) 2 Nov. 2009 {www2.publications duquebec.gouv.qc.ca/dynamicSearch/telecharge.php?type=2&file=/R_0_01/R0_01_A.html}.
8. An Act Respecting Animal Breeds Forming Part of Quebec’s Agricultural Heritage.
9. Bonjour Québec, Gouvernement du Québec, 26 Oct. 2009 {www.bonjour
   quebec.com/qc-en/histoire0.html}.
10. Dorothea K. Beard, Barbizon school, Grove Art Online, 27 Oct. 2009 {www.oxfordartonline.com}.
11. Ronald de Leeuw, John Sillevis and Charles Dumas, eds., The Hague School: Dutch Masters of the 19th Century (The Hague: Haags Gemeentemuseum, 1983) 117.
12. Dennis Reid, A Concise History of Canadian Painting (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1973) 105.
13. Laurier Lacroix, Suzor-Coté: Retour à Arthabaska (Arthabaska: Musée Laurier, 1987) 21.
14. Matthew Teitelbaum and Peter White, Joe Fafard: Cows and other luminaries 1977-1987 (Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery, Dunlop Art Gallery, 1987) 15.