Student Essay

Caroline Beaudoin
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.

Robert Harris went on to produce many more portraits and genre paintings after completing his painting Fathers of Confederation in 1884. He travelled extensively throughout the country as an accomplished artist and fellow countryman studying and portraying Canada’s new citizens. Harris’ portraits of children have become a national legacy. His works express the essence of his era to later generations through compelling portrayals of children’s real circumstances and the ideals of a new nation projected upon them. As recalled by Moncrieff Williamson, the artist’s eminent biographer:
Nor can it be forgotten that these sitters lived in a period of poor plumbing as well as high ideals. Disease was rampant. Childbed fever, cholera, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and rat-breeding sewage disrupted daily life to an appalling degree.¹

Harris confronted this reality while recognizing the new country’s ambitions for self-advancement through education and urban development. His paintings of young people challenged traditional colonial class differences by representing optimistic and bright futures for most of Canada’s children. These works encompass a wide survey of youthful subjects portraying city and country children including young French and English boys and girls at home and on the street. Harris was sensitive to such dichotomies as illustrated in Boggies and Gordon Reid (figs. 1 & 2). According to Williamson, the artist appreciated all these children:
Robert Harris had a wonderful relationship with all children, whether street urchins or the pampered offspring that he would be painting years later in Montreal… He adored children and they adored, or were fascinated by, him.²

Through his authentic rapport with children, Harris transgressed demographic dictates to reveal the child’s individual character based on personal merit rather than social status.

Young Boys in Training

Young Canada depicts a young fifer as an ordinary citizen rather than as a musician or military boy (fig. 3). The sitter has the appearance of a young intellect, prepared, responsible and disciplined, poised to begin his tune. The fifer in this context is associated with leadership and Canada’s proclamation as a new nation. His tuque is a stylized and symbolic salute to France’s Phrygian cap worn by Marianne, celebrating the country’s liberty. Young Canada is free to be in charge of his own affairs and future destiny. The boy simultaneously embodies the advent of change while representing a role model for those who dream of rising to leadership positions once their generation is handed the reins. The youth is confident, composed, and ready to assume his responsibilities. He is relaxed and focussed, motivated to perform his duty with a natural courage resulting from moral instinct and public education. This remarkable and anonymous boy distinguishes himself from Harris’ other commissioned portraits of children as art historian Brian Foss explains:
The children of Harris’ wealthy patrons were being taught, at their private schools and in their nurseries, a strong sense of social hierarchy, an awareness of their own place within it, and knowledge of the attributes upon which their parents had built their reputations and fortunes.³

Young Canada’s future is promising; unaffected by social indoctrination he is free to learn and willing to work especially hard. Harris could easily relate to this boy. The artist’s upbringing, rooted in Victorian tradition, was tempered by his family’s financial struggles. This reinforced his appreciation for hard work and the importance of maintaining a respectable image despite adversity: “from the beginning, the family had anything but an easy time… he was soon to learn that, on the Island one worked hard or starved.”⁴

Harris’ portrait of young Henry Botterell evokes some of the same characteristics conveyed by the fifer (fig. 4). Henry too is confident, as he nonchalantly leans against a wall, sporting tuque and snow shoes. Here is a boy of unlimited potential as he begins his journey to manhood, prepared to face his Canadian environment. The full length frontal portrait is less formal than other commissioned works, as this boy, rather than contriving a static pose casually rests against a wall, legs naturally crossed with his left thumb comfortably hooked into a pocket. Henry’s direct uninhibited gaze commands a certain authority signalling the youth’s determination despite his relaxed posture. His nonchalant stance stems from confidence not indifference. Henry Botterell is poised for action. Like Young Canada, who also engages the viewer with his direct regard, both boys symbolize admirable, youthful courage and determination, confidently secure in the knowledge that promising opportunities await them.

Young Girls as Little Girls

Robert Harris’ depictions of girls were traditionally and often bound by the social conventions prevalent during the era in which he lived and worked. Dead Bird portrays a binary boy/girl pairing in which character is the subject (fig. 5). The voice of reason, represented by the boy, confronts emotion, signified by the girl. With this painting Harris maintains the long-held belief, reaffirmed in art and literature since the Enlightenment, that males were governed by moral reason and scientific logic while females naturally succumbed to emotional outbursts, occasionally bordering on hysteria. The painting references Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s portrait Girl Mourning over her Dead Bird (fig. 6). Harris studied in London and Paris in 1877 and returned again in 1883.⁵ He experienced Europe’s art first hand and was quite familiar with its scope of portraiture. The similarities between the two paintings are as striking as their differences. Clearly the girls in Greuze and Harris’ paintings sorrowfully mourn the passing of the bird – a conventionally accepted symbol for lost innocence – each holding a hand to their face, overcome with grief.⁶ What differs, however, is how Harris includes the boy in his work, visually inserting a male perspective into the narrative paralleling historian Jennifer Milam’s observation that “Diderot favoured Greuze’s painting specifically because it offer[ed] the pretext of a moral lesson.”⁷ Similarly Harris, a devout Anglican, believed neither values of virtue nor moral should be overlooked in his work. Williamson explains:
On Sundays, Robert unfailingly attended services in various Anglican churches…Like the majority of intellectuals of the time, Robert Harris immensely enjoyed fine preaching. He took delight in comparing sermons for depth in quality and spiritual richness.⁸

Harris’ boy, seated next to the despondent girl and pointing to the cage, fixes his eyes on the girl as he attempts to reason with her. The boy is portrayed as a patient, calm, and understanding individual, ready and willing to offer his sister comfort and support. The painting underscores Harris’ faith in the younger male generation’s compassion and moral integrity, while suggesting that the female counterpart deservingly benefits from this type of exemplary courteous behaviour.

A similar theme is portrayed in The Unruly Guest, although much more playfully rendered (fig. 7). The boy captures the viewers’ attention as he stands before his dog, actively taking charge of the situation while his sisters sit passively to his left, properly demonstrating restraint and composure. Prettily dressed in ruffles and ribbons, the girls respectfully show deference to their brother’s obvious authority while the boy gallantly performs his gentlemanly duty.

Author Greg Thomas contends that “children-girls especially-were being commodified as an essential element of bourgeois spectacle functioning as icons of the new socio-economic order.”⁹ Robert Skipper’s Daughter personifies this tendency (fig. 8). The title of the painting alone suggests that the significance of the girl’s identity is due more to her father’s name than her own. All dressed up in a pure white frock, protectively installed beneath her parasol she is little more than a pretty prop within the landscape, to be admired and gazed upon. Seated quietly and comfortably, she is as charming as her surroundings, perfectly arranged in leisurely impressionistic fashion.

Consistent with his generation, Harris’ work predominantly depicted boys training to become men while girls remained girls. The painter’s creative insight and inquiry led him to address an innovative theme however, during the height of his professional career, a theme which celebrated Canada’s commitment to more accessible education for its youth and education’s need for reform.

An Emerging Generation

The same year Robert Harris painted The One-room School, Canoe Cove, P.E.I. he was offered a position at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts by the Governor General of Canada (fig. 9).¹⁰ Clearly the artist was affected by the preeminent role education was to occupy within Canada’s new Dominion. The painting attests to the challenging task and adverse conditions faced by devoted teachers. Heated with a single small stove and lit only by windows, the school room was attended by girls and boys of mixed ages. With minimum materials, resources, and comforts, challenged by parental objection and scrutiny, the teacher’s role was instrumental in shaping Canada’s youth.

A Meeting of the School Trustees was inspired following a short visit Harris had with Kate Henderson, a local school teacher and family friend, during his return trip home to Prince Edward Island in 1885, accompanied by his new bride Elizabeth Putnam Harris (fig. 10).¹¹ Privileged to have benefited from tutoring as a child and having taught courses himself at the Art Association of Montreal, Harris valued the vital role teachers played in preparing students, both girls and boys alike, for their bright new futures. ¹² With this painting the artist effectively inserted a female voice into Canada’s historical discourse. Her placement in the foreground commands not only the trustees’ attention but the viewers as well. Subtly implied through gesture, Ms. Henderson asserts her authority, calmly reasoning with the trustees, symbolizing a critical link between the fathers and their children. Educated and outspoken she too will participate pro-actively in developing this new nation. Williamson declared this work a “masterpiece and the sensation of the 1886 Academy exhibition when it was displayed that fall at the Colonial Exhibition in London.”¹³ Over a century after the painter commemorated Kate Henderson for her tenacious conviction, the pioneering Canadian pair became the celebrated subject of a Heritage Minute film featured on National television during the 1990s.¹⁴ Robert Harris’ genuine admiration for Canadian children, consistently portrayed throughout his lifetime’s work, personifies Canada as an optimistically youthful, progressive, and democratic nation.

LIST OF FIGURES

fig. 1 Robert Harris, Boggies, 1873, graphite on paper, 12.3 x 20.8 cm, Confederation Centre Art Gallery. Gift of Robert Harris Trust, 1965. (Photo: Confederation Centre Art Gallery)

fig. 2 Robert Harris, Portrait of Gordon Reed, (1895-1959), oil on canvas 122.1 x 63.2 cm,
gift of Mrs. Geoffrey S. McDougall. (Photo: M966.188.2 McCord Museum {http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/scripts/viewobject.php?Lang=2&accessnumber= M966.188.2&section=196})

fig. 3 Robert Harris, Young Canada, 1898, oil on canvas, 61 x 50.8 cm, Gift of Caroline Hill, Ottawa, 1900. (Photo: 142 National Gallery of Canada {http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/ search/artwork_e.jsp?mkey=10231})

fig. 4 Robert Harris, Robert Henry Botterell, 1888, oil on canvas, 72.4 x 52.1 cm, private collection.

fig. 5 Robert Harris, Dead Bird, c.1890, oil on canvas, 40.6 x 50.8 cm, private collection. (Photo: Joan Murray, Home Truths: A Celebration of Family Life by Canada’s Best-Loved Painters (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1997))

fig. 6 Jean-Baptiste Greuze, A Girl with a Dead Canary, 1765, oil on canvas, oval: 53.30 x 46 cm. (Photo: National Galleries of Scotland. (Photo: {http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/ online_az/4:322/?initial=G&artistId=4971&artistName=Jean-Baptiste Greuze&submit=1})

fig. 7 Robert Harris, Unruly Guest: Portrait of the Children of G. Stethem Esq., 1880, oil on canvas , 94 x 124.5 cm, private collection. (Photo: Joan Murray, Home Truths: A Celebration of Family Life by Canada’s Best-Loved Painters (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1997))

fig. 8 Robert Harris, Robert Skipper’s Daughter, 1908, oil on canvas, 61.2 x 76.5 cm, private collection.

fig. 9 Robert Harris, The One-room School, Canoe Cove, P.E.I., 1880, oil on canvas, 91.7 x 127.5 cm, Confederation Centre Art Gallery. Gift of the Robert Harris Trust, 1965. (Photo: Confederation Centre Art Gallery).

fig. 10 Robert Harris, A Meeting with the School Trustees, 1885, oil on canvas, 99.7×123.8cm, National Gallery of Canada. (Photo:{http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Harris_-_A_Meeting_of_the_School_Trustees.jpg})

NOTES

1. Moncrieff Williamson, Robert Harris (1849-1919) (Ottawa: The National Gallery of Canada, 1973) 14.
2. Moncrieff Williamson, Island Painter: The Life of Robert Harris (1849-1919) (Charlottetown: The Ragweed Press, 1983) 77.
3. Brian Foss, Robert Harris and the Politics of Portraiture (St. Lambert: Marsil Museum, 1991).
4. Williamson, Island Painter, 22.
5. Williamson, Island Painter, 155-6.
6. Marilyn R. Brown, ed., Picturing Children: Constructions of Childhood Between Rousseau and Freud (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2002) 50.
7. Brown, 50.
8. Williamson, Island Painter, 80.
9. Brown, 104.
10. Williamson, Island Painter, 156.
11. Williamson, Island Painter, 109.
12. Williamson, Island Painter, 98.
13. Williamson, Island Painter, 109.
14. To view the Heritage Minute film and a synopsis outlining the details surrounding the event, see: {http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10183}.