The Early Canadian Art | Essay

Running head: EARLY CANADIAN ART
EARLY CANADIAN ART
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EARLY CANADIAN ART1
Nude paintings attained an argumentative position in the domain of Canadian art as a
place of censorships and dispute since the early twentieth century. The historic emphasis
within the Canadian art history relied on the landscape painting of the Group of Seven. Such
an emphasis implied to the status quo that themes related to figure and the nude had
significantly gone overlooked. According to Rosi et al. (2016), nude paintings were regarded
as common sight in the Canadian art world since the 1880s into the early twentieth century.
Despite of its initiation, with the development of new century, the notion of ‘nude’ turned
into a focus of hostility, suppression and conflict by wide ranging art critics, artists in
addition to the general public (Saltman, 2016). On the other hand, artists in Canada similar to
the ones in Europe as well as the United States, explored ideas related to contemporary
artistic techniques as they reconnoitred the category of nude paintings, usually constructing
misleading paintings which were at times acknowledged, whereas in others were perceived as
a matter of disapproval and disagreement. The thesis statement of the essay is “Nude
paintings challenged viewers of Canadian art domain by reconfiguring the structures which
ascribed value of an ideal female body and the subject.”
During the early twentieth century, few artists in the Canadian art domain casted light
on urban theme as well as on the human figures and specifically the nudes. These artists
viewed that their art works were not only disregarded but also in certain occurrences censured
and repressed. As per Elvins (2018), during the early 1910s, the Montreal painter John
Lyman returned to Paris and witnessed his Post- Impressionist nude paintings analysed by a
critic in the form of “caricatures, abortions, and sexual as well as repugnant deformities”.
Canadian artists who painted and exhibited nude paintings were Toronto based Bertram
Brooker as well as Lilias Torrance Newton from Montreal. These artists who indulged into
representing nude paintings were restricted from exhibiting their paintings in the Art Gallery
of Ontario as well as Canadian Group of Painters exhibition. Furthermore, in the 1930s,

EARLY CANADIAN ART2
Bertram Brooker’s Figures in Landscape was taken out from an Ontario Society of Artists
gallery and subsequent to two years Nude in the Studio, a painting by Lilias Torrance Newton
in 1933 was removed from Canadian Group of Painters gallery at the Art Gallery of Toronto
(Burr, 2017). Furthermore, in 1965, law enforcement officials seized artist Robert Markle for
creating nude painting and removed from the art gallery of Toronto's Dorothy Cameron
Gallery when justice of Ontario’s legal system judged those art works as lewd and indecent.
Comprehensive studies have found that many of the art works of Montreal-born artist
Prudence Heward particularly the famous one Girl under a Tree in 1931 was criticized (Burr,
2017). Although, being recognized for her sculptural forms along with defiant figures besides
expressionistic colours, Heward gained substantial level of attention for her provocative
illustrations of feminine figures. Moreover, despite of her significant dedication in painting
people, Heward because of her inclination towards nude art illustrations was recognized as
‘an adopted daughter of the Group of Seven’. On the contrary, Porter (2015) has claimed that
Heward’s nude painting also received an affirmative response asserting that it offered insights
into Canadian morality as well as the restrictions of things which Canada as a nation accepted
as art during the early twentieth century.
Artists portraying nudes in Canadian art world during the interwar period did not
deliver ideal descriptions of reclining attractiveness and magnificence in imaginative scenery.
Rather, most of the nude portrayals created during the 1930s emphasized on the association
between artists, model and the viewers which had in history been overlooked or disregarded
by the notion that women represented in a nude portrayal by artists like Giorgione or Boucher
did not represent any realistic form of women (Windsor, 2017). On the other hand, it focused
on an unthreatening representation of an idealised feminine figure present to attain a sight of
a male spectator. In the view of Rabinovitch-Fox (2016), as aspect of nude paintings during
1930s which was present in the Canadian art domain was major diversity. The wide range of