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The Forest Lover
In her acclaimed novels, Susan Vreeland has given us portraits of painting and life that are as dazzling as their artistic subjects. Now, in The Forest Lover she traces the courageous life and career of Emily Carr, who, more than Georgia O'Keeffe or Frida Kahlo, blazed a path for modern women artists.
Overcoming the confines of Victorian culture, Carr became a major force in modern art by capturing an untamed British Columbia and its indigenous peoples just before industrialization changed them forever. From illegal potlatches in tribal communities to artists studios in pre World War I Paris, Vreeland tells her story with gusto and suspense, giving us a glorious novel that will appeal to lovers of art, native cultures, and lush historical fiction.
Overcoming the confines of Victorian culture, Carr became a major force in modern art by capturing an untamed British Columbia and its indigenous peoples just before industrialization changed them forever. From illegal potlatches in tribal communities to artists studios in pre World War I Paris, Vreeland tells her story with gusto and suspense, giving us a glorious novel that will appeal to lovers of art, native cultures, and lush historical fiction.
420 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
About the author
Susan Vreeland
15 books1,077 followersSusan Vreeland was an internationally renowned best-selling author and four-time winner of the Theodor Geisel Award for Fiction, the San Diego Book Award’s highest honor. She wrote historical fiction on art-related themes, and her books have been translated into 26 languages.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 563 reviews
February 10, 2017
I love good historical fiction, especially art history. The Forest Lover is the story of Emily Carr, Canadian artist at the turn of the 20th century, who travels deep into the forests of British Columbia to paint the indigenous people and the symbols of their culture. She also paints landscapes of the dark forests with a style uniquely her own. I've read 5 of Susan Vreeland's novels and she is on top of her game in every one.
March 5, 2009
I started this book several years ago, before I knew anything about Emily Carr, and couldn't finish it. Not knowing that many of the characters and situations were based on fact, I found it all too maudlin. Discouraged artist, downtrodden native cultures, stereotypes galore. It was like looking at a reflection, feeling that you're missing something critical, but not sure you really care. Since then, I've "discovered" Emily Carr and rank her among my favorite artists. Her paintings of northwest coast forests and totem poles are unbelievable -- colors that seep into your soul and abstraction that renders objects more real somehow than a literal reproduction ever could. And you know what? Emily could write too. Anyone considering reading The Forest Lover should hold that thought and hunt down a copy of Klee Wyck, one of her collections of short stories. You'll get your fill of oppressive missionaries and wronged First Nations. You'll also get some astonishingly visual writing. It's true, she writes like she paints. So, The Forest Lover. I can't recommend it to anyone who doesn't know Emily Carr's work. It's not an entre book, it's more of a fictional commentary. I'm not sure of the value of this, when the original is available and so, so extraordinary.
March 10, 2020
The best part of this book is that it introduced me to a woman artist, Emily Carr, that I had never heard of. I searched the internet for paintings that ranged from the early 1900's through to right before her death in 1945. I am not always a fan of post-impressionism, but I was drawn in by many of her works both her early works and those when she was in her full bloom. Emily Carr was a Canadian that was drawn to the wild places in the northwest and the indigenous people & their culture. She wanted to capture that culture & their spirit before it disappeared, primarily painting the various types of totems. She was passionate about her work. The book doesn't quite capture that passion for me except in bits and pieces. Her forays into the wilderness and with the native people should have felt uplifting, as she says her paintings are, but the writing just didn't make me feel that way. Even her year in France got bogged down in the telling. There was plenty of depressing aspects to the story that dealt with her own upbringing, current family dynamics, the lack of recognition for her art and the destroying of the indigenous people & their way of life. Tough to be reminded about how terrible we treated native peoples. What am I saying? Shoot, we still treat the "other" as less than!!
This is my third Vreeland novel and thus far The Passion of Artemisia is the stand out of the three.
This is my third Vreeland novel and thus far The Passion of Artemisia is the stand out of the three.
September 20, 2010
If being completely honest, I wasn't taken or impressed with "The Forest Lover" in the long haul, and much of the reason isn't because that Susan Vreeland wasn't a talented writer in some respects or even that Emily Carr's story isn't remotely interesting to hear. I was put off by the mundane portrayals, wandering/fragmented portrayal and the stereotypical coats that plagued this work. Really - this woman has a absolutely interesting life and it's presented in this way? I learned more about Emily Carr reading about her in many other sources than this book, and there's no inrtigue that makes the reader want to continue in its progression. The book seems to drag its heels in many places, even as it's written in a series of mini-chapters that revolve around a particular experience or interactions within the artist's life. The problem is that despite this sectioning, the prose feels nice, but the portrayal feels stagnant and dry. She doesn't make use of it in ways that are inventive or even remotely close to being immersive. I felt I couldn't relate with the character much in her interactions, and the purpose of the story often meandered in several sections. Transitions from one measure to the next were not very good at all.
I give it an extra half-star for the strong prose within itself, but I wouldn't recommend this particular book for those who like Emily Carr's work and want to know more about her in an intriguing format. I'll probably look into Vreeland's other offerings because I know she can write well, but this particular story didn't do much more than offer itself in the coat of strong prose, particularly when there were so many other elements working against it.
Overall score: 1.5/5
I give it an extra half-star for the strong prose within itself, but I wouldn't recommend this particular book for those who like Emily Carr's work and want to know more about her in an intriguing format. I'll probably look into Vreeland's other offerings because I know she can write well, but this particular story didn't do much more than offer itself in the coat of strong prose, particularly when there were so many other elements working against it.
Overall score: 1.5/5
July 14, 2011
Susan Vreeland is a glorious author and a favorite because I love historical fiction (and write it myself). To learn about various artists (or events or people in history) of the past through story deepens my understanding and delights me. This book is about Emily Carr who was a pioneer woman artist in the Pacific Northwest and who sought to overcome not only the prejudices of a woman artist traveling into untamed country, but to overcome the prejudices against the indigenous, native people and paint their sacred, cultural artifacts before they were entirely destroyed and confiscated for museums. It also sorrowfully depicts the dark side of Christianity in seeking to destroy the spirit of the indigenous people through abolishing their culture. The Passion of Artemisia and Girl in Hyacinth Blue are also special books, but the story of Artemisia is especially a favorite.
September 9, 2014
Imagine painting with mosquitos thick as fur on your hands. Or standing in a deserted village of silence, surrounded by trees with ancient coffins splitting apart. Or staring up at 60-foot totem poles carved with Eagles, Ravens, Bears and Whales trying to communicate their message. Or being scrutinized by a 20-foot ogress—Dzunukwa—with nipples carved into Eagles’ heads with eyes and beaks. In The Forest Lover, Susan Vreeland gives us more than a biography of the painter Emily Carr. She gives us an unforgettable experience.
Leaving the loneliness of the Pacific Northwest, Emily Carr goes to Paris to see and learn Impressionism. The description of her changes in painting style—including trading “female” watercolors for the more advanced medium of oil—is so intense that the reader can feel the paint piled on the canvas This reader could not resist looking down at her hands, expecting to see red mixed with deep violet and sun-stroked cadmium yellow.
Emily Carr is the kind of person I would have loved to know as a friend. A rebel, she befriends Native American women, some who have lost their children to the white man’s legacy of Small Pox and other diseases, attends an outlawed (by the Canadian government) Potlatch ritual and comes close to taking a fur trapper as a lover as she is seduced by the feel of the mink furs lining the floor of his tent. And anyone who has ever loved a dog will understand the type of person the artist was. Snubbed by art patrons she nevertheless continues to document the totem poles that are being sold by non-Natives and bravely enters villages emptied by government “relocations” of the Native population in order to do so.
This is a book about the artist, Emily Carr, but also about art, women, and government greed, powerful men who are able to decimate populations when the Missionaries fail. I have the Kindle version and my only complaint is that there were not enough pictures of her work, but Google images are just a tap away on a Kindle Fire and magically, there are her works, big, bright and bold like the book about her.
Leaving the loneliness of the Pacific Northwest, Emily Carr goes to Paris to see and learn Impressionism. The description of her changes in painting style—including trading “female” watercolors for the more advanced medium of oil—is so intense that the reader can feel the paint piled on the canvas This reader could not resist looking down at her hands, expecting to see red mixed with deep violet and sun-stroked cadmium yellow.
Emily Carr is the kind of person I would have loved to know as a friend. A rebel, she befriends Native American women, some who have lost their children to the white man’s legacy of Small Pox and other diseases, attends an outlawed (by the Canadian government) Potlatch ritual and comes close to taking a fur trapper as a lover as she is seduced by the feel of the mink furs lining the floor of his tent. And anyone who has ever loved a dog will understand the type of person the artist was. Snubbed by art patrons she nevertheless continues to document the totem poles that are being sold by non-Natives and bravely enters villages emptied by government “relocations” of the Native population in order to do so.
This is a book about the artist, Emily Carr, but also about art, women, and government greed, powerful men who are able to decimate populations when the Missionaries fail. I have the Kindle version and my only complaint is that there were not enough pictures of her work, but Google images are just a tap away on a Kindle Fire and magically, there are her works, big, bright and bold like the book about her.
February 3, 2016
"Paintings are inspired by nature, true, but made in the artist's soul. That's why no two individuals see the same thing and express it alike.To attempt to reproduce France or Canada without filtering it through one's sensibilities is mere copy work, done by people worried over the number of leaves on a tree. Though they may have harmonized their colors, they have not plumbed for the feel." --- Emily Carr
And so Emily Carr answered her naysayers who critiqued her work. She was a woman far beyond her time in all things. Susan Vreeland captures the essence and the spirit of Emily Carr in her book. Emily is multi-faceted and Ms. Vreeland explores that in the aspects of her questionable childhood, her relationships with her sisters, her interactions with the local people, and her work as an artist.
I especially was drawn into Emily's constant search to explore the limited offerings to women as artists during this time period. Her diligence lasted a lifetime even in the sacrifices that played out in her disconnect with family members. Art was her craft, her means of breathing in and out. It was at the core of her being. All other life experiences paled in comparison.
The relationship between Emily and Sophie was touching. Emily desperately wanted a sisterhood connection that was lacking within her own family dynamics. But as Emily tended to do throughout the book, Sophie was set in the shadows as Emily's life revolved around her pursuit of the artistic moment. With canvas and paintbrush in hand, Emily moved on to the next challenge. And yet, we can't fault her for her hunger and deepset desire to bring the beauty and majesty of the forest and totems to the world.
This was a very satisfying read thanks to the skill of Susan Vreeland who traveled to many of the places that Emily, herself, traveled. Ms. Vreeland presented Emily in such a way that one could not help but envision the struggles that we all experience....the quest of presenting ourselves to the world in our purest form of self.
And so Emily Carr answered her naysayers who critiqued her work. She was a woman far beyond her time in all things. Susan Vreeland captures the essence and the spirit of Emily Carr in her book. Emily is multi-faceted and Ms. Vreeland explores that in the aspects of her questionable childhood, her relationships with her sisters, her interactions with the local people, and her work as an artist.
I especially was drawn into Emily's constant search to explore the limited offerings to women as artists during this time period. Her diligence lasted a lifetime even in the sacrifices that played out in her disconnect with family members. Art was her craft, her means of breathing in and out. It was at the core of her being. All other life experiences paled in comparison.
The relationship between Emily and Sophie was touching. Emily desperately wanted a sisterhood connection that was lacking within her own family dynamics. But as Emily tended to do throughout the book, Sophie was set in the shadows as Emily's life revolved around her pursuit of the artistic moment. With canvas and paintbrush in hand, Emily moved on to the next challenge. And yet, we can't fault her for her hunger and deepset desire to bring the beauty and majesty of the forest and totems to the world.
This was a very satisfying read thanks to the skill of Susan Vreeland who traveled to many of the places that Emily, herself, traveled. Ms. Vreeland presented Emily in such a way that one could not help but envision the struggles that we all experience....the quest of presenting ourselves to the world in our purest form of self.
February 8, 2017
This is a biographical novel about the British Columbia artist Emily Carr. When I started this, I had never heard of Emily Carr. That is a loss now corrected. Vreeland takes some liberties about the life of Emily Carr: in the novel she has four older sisters, whereas in real life Emily was the second youngest of nine children; she says in the author afterward that some of the characters "are inventions. or derivations of actual people."
I don't think Vreeland exaggerated Carr's passion for her art, which was pretty much all-consuming. She was driven to document the part of the earth in which she found herself, which was largely that of the Native peoples of the area. Their way of life was threatened by white settlement - first from disease brought by them and then from white domination both religiously and governmentally.
For many years Carr was not appreciated by most in British Columbia. Her use of color was new and not "English" and the very subjects of her work was not respected.
There are many examples on the web of Carr's work and this one is included in her Wikipedia article. While this specific painting is not mentioned in the book, several chapters and references are made to Kitkwancool. It was obviously dear to Emily Carr - and to Susan Vreeland who spent so much time chronicling one five day visit there.
This may not be literature, but I am most grateful to the online friend who brought it to my attention. Ketchikan has two of the largest totem pole collections in the world (or so it says on the internet), a third is in Sitka. Fortunately, totems are still being carved and raised and respected.
I don't think Vreeland exaggerated Carr's passion for her art, which was pretty much all-consuming. She was driven to document the part of the earth in which she found herself, which was largely that of the Native peoples of the area. Their way of life was threatened by white settlement - first from disease brought by them and then from white domination both religiously and governmentally.
For many years Carr was not appreciated by most in British Columbia. Her use of color was new and not "English" and the very subjects of her work was not respected.
There are many examples on the web of Carr's work and this one is included in her Wikipedia article. While this specific painting is not mentioned in the book, several chapters and references are made to Kitkwancool. It was obviously dear to Emily Carr - and to Susan Vreeland who spent so much time chronicling one five day visit there.
This may not be literature, but I am most grateful to the online friend who brought it to my attention. Ketchikan has two of the largest totem pole collections in the world (or so it says on the internet), a third is in Sitka. Fortunately, totems are still being carved and raised and respected.
January 11, 2008
This is my favorite Vreeland book! It was given to me by my boyfriend's Grandmother. She said it's a book worth passing on. She was right! Living in British Columbia, where Emily Carr found her love of painting, just makes this book even better! After reading this book, I went to the gallery to gawk at her paintings. This is one Canadian artist that everyone should know about. Vreeland does a wonderful job of creating Emily Carr. I only wish I could have known her!
January 4, 2014
Canadian painter Emily Carr once said, "Nobody could write my hodge-podge life but me." With self-effacing humor, she claimed that biographers couldn't "be bothered with the little drab nothings that have made up my life."
To Susan Vreeland, who's quickly become America's most popular biographer of famous artists, that must have sounded like an irresistible challenge. Her bestselling “Girl in Hyacinth Blue" followed the life of a single Vermeer painting from the 20th century back to its creation in 17th-century Delft. The feminist theme laced delicately through that novel's closing chapters became the heavy-handed impulse of her next book, “The Passion of Artemisia," about the Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi.
Now, with "The Forest Lover," her story of Emily Carr, Vreeland has found perhaps the most appropriate venue yet to express her own exuberant feminism and spirituality. What's more, by immersing herself in Carr's extensive writings, Vreeland has picked up the tenor of the painter's language - her eclectic mysticism, emotional devotion, and single- mindedness. The result is a life story that's sympathetic to a fault.
Born in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1871, Carr grew up the youngest of five sisters. The death of her parents during her teen years left her exposed to the strict rule of her eldest sister, whom she strained against throughout her life. In part to escape that control, Emily dropped out of high school and went to San Francisco to study art at the age of 16. Three years later, she prevailed on her guardian to let her study in England. But between her frustration with instructors who would teach "ladies" only water colors (not the manly oils) and 18 months in a sanitarium, her trip seemed largely a failure. Feeling weak and confused, she returned home "to the starched and doilied parlor of the yellow, two-story bird cage of a house in Victoria, B.C. where she'd been born, and found only hypocrisy and criticism."
Vreeland picks up the story here when Emily is 33, already a confirmed eccentric, an embarrassment to her prim sisters, who can't fathom why she wants to wander around the forest looking at pagan relics and "socializing with primitives." To Carr, the attraction is profound, though vague: She hopes to "discover what it is about wild places that call to her with such promise." Repeatedly, she canoes alone up the west coast of Vancouver Island to meet skeptical Indians whose knowledge of white people is confined to narrow-minded missionaries or cruel officials.
Even as Carr dedicates herself to understanding, painting, and preserving these native cultures, the Canadian government is engaged in a blunt policy of assimilating what it calls the "First Nations," a process of cultural eradication that involves outlawing native ceremonies, evicting tribes from ancestral lands, and forcing the light of Christianity on a dark race.
The novel is made up of little episodes, sometimes only thinly connected, that hopscotch through Carr's life. We land on her efforts to teach prissy women how to paint, a trip to France that introduced her to Post- impressionism, arguments with her aesthetically dim sisters, her time as a landlady, and an affair that Vreeland invented to dramatize Carr's sexual ambivalence.
Carr's strangely childlike personality comes through well - her guilelessness, her straightforward devotion (or rejection), the enthusiasm that outstrips her diction. Asked how she can paint the wind, Carr answers, "By making the trees go whiz-bang and whoop it up." But in general, these scenes, which should be small gems, are merely small - inadequate to fill in the complicated itinerary of Carr's life and lacking the psychological depth to illuminate her mind.
Vreeland seems unwilling to put much distance between her and her subject, the kind of distance in which the author might have found room to explore the real complexity of this woman's animus. That's especially evident in the many scenes of Carr trekking bravely through the forest, talking only to herself or her dog, looking to paint new Indian totem poles before they're cut down for museums or allowed to rot on the ground. Vreeland repeatedly runs up against the narrow limits of Carr's vague spirituality. Asked why she wants to make pictures of these poles, she effuses, "Because they show a connection. Trees and animals and people. I want white people to see this greatness." Again and again, her misty-eyed enthusiasm for "something deeper," for "the spirit of a thing," fails to enunciate anything but a kind of sincere but gassy euphoria.
Not surprisingly, Carr was a great fan of Walt Whitman, but the many passages of "Leaves of Grass" quoted here are a reminder of how difficult it is to articulate that mystical sense of communion. Frankly, Carr's language can't do it, and Vreeland's determination to stay confined in her subject's vernacular keeps her from doing it either.
Ultimately, two very different friends of Carr emerge as more interesting characters than she is. One is Howard, a mentally impaired man who was brutalized as a boy for his interest in the Indians, and the other is Sophie, a Squamish basket maker who suffers the death of one child after another. Both these people, the kind of strange oddballs that Carr sympathized with, live stretched in painful suspension between cultures that won't accept them. Howard is eventually driven insane by his guardian's insistence that he abandon the Indian songs that animate him, and Sophie is wracked with guilt for alternately betraying her ancestral god and her Christian God. These are sensitive portraits, drawn with all the necessary pathos, and they indicate the deeper mysteries of faith intimated by Carr's paintings.
But through most of this novel, Vreeland seems unwilling to mix the primary colors on her narrative pallet to produce anything equally suggestive or subtle. Only the final chapters rise to that challenge and provide some truly beautiful, stirring writing. Carr had to be patient for decades, waiting for critics to recognize the power of her dark, lush work. Readers of "The Forest Lover" won't be disappointed for exercising the same perseverance.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0127/p1...
To Susan Vreeland, who's quickly become America's most popular biographer of famous artists, that must have sounded like an irresistible challenge. Her bestselling “Girl in Hyacinth Blue" followed the life of a single Vermeer painting from the 20th century back to its creation in 17th-century Delft. The feminist theme laced delicately through that novel's closing chapters became the heavy-handed impulse of her next book, “The Passion of Artemisia," about the Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi.
Now, with "The Forest Lover," her story of Emily Carr, Vreeland has found perhaps the most appropriate venue yet to express her own exuberant feminism and spirituality. What's more, by immersing herself in Carr's extensive writings, Vreeland has picked up the tenor of the painter's language - her eclectic mysticism, emotional devotion, and single- mindedness. The result is a life story that's sympathetic to a fault.
Born in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1871, Carr grew up the youngest of five sisters. The death of her parents during her teen years left her exposed to the strict rule of her eldest sister, whom she strained against throughout her life. In part to escape that control, Emily dropped out of high school and went to San Francisco to study art at the age of 16. Three years later, she prevailed on her guardian to let her study in England. But between her frustration with instructors who would teach "ladies" only water colors (not the manly oils) and 18 months in a sanitarium, her trip seemed largely a failure. Feeling weak and confused, she returned home "to the starched and doilied parlor of the yellow, two-story bird cage of a house in Victoria, B.C. where she'd been born, and found only hypocrisy and criticism."
Vreeland picks up the story here when Emily is 33, already a confirmed eccentric, an embarrassment to her prim sisters, who can't fathom why she wants to wander around the forest looking at pagan relics and "socializing with primitives." To Carr, the attraction is profound, though vague: She hopes to "discover what it is about wild places that call to her with such promise." Repeatedly, she canoes alone up the west coast of Vancouver Island to meet skeptical Indians whose knowledge of white people is confined to narrow-minded missionaries or cruel officials.
Even as Carr dedicates herself to understanding, painting, and preserving these native cultures, the Canadian government is engaged in a blunt policy of assimilating what it calls the "First Nations," a process of cultural eradication that involves outlawing native ceremonies, evicting tribes from ancestral lands, and forcing the light of Christianity on a dark race.
The novel is made up of little episodes, sometimes only thinly connected, that hopscotch through Carr's life. We land on her efforts to teach prissy women how to paint, a trip to France that introduced her to Post- impressionism, arguments with her aesthetically dim sisters, her time as a landlady, and an affair that Vreeland invented to dramatize Carr's sexual ambivalence.
Carr's strangely childlike personality comes through well - her guilelessness, her straightforward devotion (or rejection), the enthusiasm that outstrips her diction. Asked how she can paint the wind, Carr answers, "By making the trees go whiz-bang and whoop it up." But in general, these scenes, which should be small gems, are merely small - inadequate to fill in the complicated itinerary of Carr's life and lacking the psychological depth to illuminate her mind.
Vreeland seems unwilling to put much distance between her and her subject, the kind of distance in which the author might have found room to explore the real complexity of this woman's animus. That's especially evident in the many scenes of Carr trekking bravely through the forest, talking only to herself or her dog, looking to paint new Indian totem poles before they're cut down for museums or allowed to rot on the ground. Vreeland repeatedly runs up against the narrow limits of Carr's vague spirituality. Asked why she wants to make pictures of these poles, she effuses, "Because they show a connection. Trees and animals and people. I want white people to see this greatness." Again and again, her misty-eyed enthusiasm for "something deeper," for "the spirit of a thing," fails to enunciate anything but a kind of sincere but gassy euphoria.
Not surprisingly, Carr was a great fan of Walt Whitman, but the many passages of "Leaves of Grass" quoted here are a reminder of how difficult it is to articulate that mystical sense of communion. Frankly, Carr's language can't do it, and Vreeland's determination to stay confined in her subject's vernacular keeps her from doing it either.
Ultimately, two very different friends of Carr emerge as more interesting characters than she is. One is Howard, a mentally impaired man who was brutalized as a boy for his interest in the Indians, and the other is Sophie, a Squamish basket maker who suffers the death of one child after another. Both these people, the kind of strange oddballs that Carr sympathized with, live stretched in painful suspension between cultures that won't accept them. Howard is eventually driven insane by his guardian's insistence that he abandon the Indian songs that animate him, and Sophie is wracked with guilt for alternately betraying her ancestral god and her Christian God. These are sensitive portraits, drawn with all the necessary pathos, and they indicate the deeper mysteries of faith intimated by Carr's paintings.
But through most of this novel, Vreeland seems unwilling to mix the primary colors on her narrative pallet to produce anything equally suggestive or subtle. Only the final chapters rise to that challenge and provide some truly beautiful, stirring writing. Carr had to be patient for decades, waiting for critics to recognize the power of her dark, lush work. Readers of "The Forest Lover" won't be disappointed for exercising the same perseverance.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0127/p1...
January 26, 2019
Beautiful historical fiction. I found Emily to be a very interesting character, but was most drawn in as she developed in her relationships with Sophie and Harold. It made her more understandable, and led me to understand her passion for art even more.
I loved the author's descriptions of British Columbia, and these landscapes I've never experienced directly.
I loved the author's descriptions of British Columbia, and these landscapes I've never experienced directly.
March 4, 2009
Stilted fomulaic writing. A disappointment. More like a romance novel than good historical fiction.
October 22, 2023
Vita romanzata (una parte) della pittrice canadese Emily Carr.
Pittrice a me totalmente sconosciuta; avevo comprato il libro per conoscerla spinta dalla riproduzione di un suo quadro.
Copio dalla presentazione del libro "un'artista la cui vita è stata segnata dal conflitto con le ottuse convenzioni sociali e i pregiudizi dell'epoca. Vera e propria icona (prima di Georgia O'Keeffe e Frida Kahlo) dell'arte del secolo scorso, Emily Carr (1871-1945) condusse, infatti, un'esistenza scandalosa per il suo tempo: donna bianca della buona società vittoriana, visse tra le tribù indiane della Columbia britannica, e fece suo il loro stile di vita «selvaggio e pagano».
Soggetto dei suoi quadri l'arte dei nativi, la natura. Per un certo periodo della sua vita studiò a Parigi e fu influenzata dai fauves.
Pittrice a me totalmente sconosciuta; avevo comprato il libro per conoscerla spinta dalla riproduzione di un suo quadro.
Copio dalla presentazione del libro "un'artista la cui vita è stata segnata dal conflitto con le ottuse convenzioni sociali e i pregiudizi dell'epoca. Vera e propria icona (prima di Georgia O'Keeffe e Frida Kahlo) dell'arte del secolo scorso, Emily Carr (1871-1945) condusse, infatti, un'esistenza scandalosa per il suo tempo: donna bianca della buona società vittoriana, visse tra le tribù indiane della Columbia britannica, e fece suo il loro stile di vita «selvaggio e pagano».
Soggetto dei suoi quadri l'arte dei nativi, la natura. Per un certo periodo della sua vita studiò a Parigi e fu influenzata dai fauves.
January 15, 2016
The Forest Lover is historical fiction by author Susan Vreeland about the life and paintings of Emily Carr. Emily was born in British Columbia to a well-to-do family but was not content to spend her days going to church and becoming a high society woman. At the age of 7, her father gave her a paint set and from then on painting was her passion, as was the British Columbia countryside and the indigenous people who lived there. Against her families wishes, Emily sets out into tribal villages to paint Totem poles before they all disappear. It's a time of unrest, with the country making native Potlatches illegal and many of the villages dying out due to disease. Standing totem poles are being purchased or stolen by collectors and are quickly disappearing from the native culture. Emily marches in with her paints, makes friends with the people of the villages, and paints away with her watercolors. Hearing about a new, vibrant technique catching on in Paris, Emily persuades her eldest sister to let go of some of their trust fund and she heads off to Paris for a year of learning. Back in British Columbia, she applies her new skills to her paintings but they are not well accepted by local society. Years later, Emily's paintings are finally revered for the wonderful art that they are.
Historical fiction is my favorite genre and this novel was excellent. Vreeland did a fantastic job of portraying Ms. Carr's personality and passion, making her a very 3 dimensional character and bringing us right into her life. I loved Emily's spirit; I loved her friend Sophie, even as my heart broke for her; I loved her friend Harold, though he broke my heart as well. It's a rare and great novel that can make us bleed for the people involved. How I want a piece of Emily Carr's work to hang in my house and remember her by.
Historical fiction is my favorite genre and this novel was excellent. Vreeland did a fantastic job of portraying Ms. Carr's personality and passion, making her a very 3 dimensional character and bringing us right into her life. I loved Emily's spirit; I loved her friend Sophie, even as my heart broke for her; I loved her friend Harold, though he broke my heart as well. It's a rare and great novel that can make us bleed for the people involved. How I want a piece of Emily Carr's work to hang in my house and remember her by.
March 15, 2021
“Emily afferò la sacca da viaggio e il paniere di vimini con il cibo e cominciò a risalire la spiaggia, il berretto che sbattachiava al vento. “ inizia così questo romanzo di Susan Vreeland, con un’immagine di una donna che cammina contro vento . Sola. Con un paniere e gli acquerelli. In salita.
In due righe l’autrice ha scattato un’istantanea del carattere e della vita della Carr.
Chi era questa donna?
Emily Carr, come ho scoperto, è stata un’artista canadese che ha cercato per tutta la vita di immortalare lo spirito dei nativi. Dipingendo totem, case, nativi; dipingendo le meravigliose foreste dell’Ovest, infondendogli tutto lo “spirito” che sentiva quando era lì, circondata dalla Natura. Lì si sentiva parte del creato, lì riusciva a “sentirsi”, a interrogarsi, a mettersi a nudo.
“ a volte non so nemmeno perché li sto dipingendo”
“e perché lo fa?”
“ un tempo pensavo che fosse per conservare una sorta di archivio. Adesso penso che sia per essere vicina a qualche spirito che ancora non capisco. Per onorare le persone che li hanno fatti. E pe esprimere il mio amore per l’Ovest.” (dialogo tra Emily Carr e Marius Barbeau, antropologo.)
La sua vita, come la sua pittura (inscindibili) sono state comprese da pochi e solo dopo molto tempo, causandole un grande dolore, facendola sentire dilaniata, sempre mancante di qualcosa. Sia nella vita personale che nella pittura. Non ha mai avuto “tutto”, ha sempre dovuto scegliere, rinunciare a qualcosa o qualcuno. Non ha mai avuto una vita facile.
Da una parte il rapporto conflittuale con le sorelle –Dede in particolare- dall’altra l’amicizia con l’indiana Sophie, tra un mondo e l’altro senza appartenere mai veramente a nessuno dei due; da una parte le accuse del circolo di pittura del Vancouver ladies’ art club di essere simpatizzante con persone “inferiori” e quelle dei primi critici che giudicavano troppo moderni , quasi fauves , i suoi quadri (perché non limitarsi a paesaggi e o nature morte? Perché usare certi colori?) ; e dall’altra il riconoscimento da parte di capi indiani e di artisti francesi come il maestro Gibb o di Frances Hodgkins, pittrice neozelandese che le aveva profetizzato che in patria non sarebbe stata compresa.
E poi Claude, il marinaio che la accende di passione (spenta bruscamente dai ricordi tremendi di un padre terrorizzante) e Harold, un ragazzo fragile ,la cui sanità mentale è stata incrinata dai genitori(cattolici fin troppo ferventi), che diventa una sorta di amico-assistente. Ama in modo diverso entrambi, ma non si legherà mai a nessuno (tranne, forse, al suo adorato cane Billy).
Emily è una donna che si sente irrisolta. Non riesce a darsi pace, non capisce se il suo sia un capriccio o un vero talento – non che sia facile: è una donna di inizio Novecento che dipinge e all’epoca le donne artiste erano considerate strane. Le donne dovevano sposarsi e potevano relegare tele e acquerelli ad un hobby domenicale, ancora meglio se i soggetti delle tele erano i figli- e soprattutto si sente incapace di esprimere davvero quel che sente.
Quando finisce un lavoro e lo guarda si sente frustrata, sapendo di non essere riuscita completamente nell’intento. Per questo parte per la Francia, impara a dipingere ad olio, impara a “vedere” i colori e le forme in modo diverso e man mano che lavora, scava dentro di sé, pennellata dopo pennellata arriva a conoscersi sempre di più.
Quando torna a casa è decisa: dipingerà totem, boschi, dipingerà quello che la fa vibrare: di gioia od orrore non importa, quello che conta è sentirsi viva e trasmettere quella vibrazione, quella forza ancestrale nei suoi soggetti.
Ogni animale intagliato, ogni figura che Emily osserva, lavora dentro di lei, a volte le dà conforto, a volte la sconvolge. A volte è durissima dipingere, sia fisicamente, che psicologicamente e per certi periodi deve interrompere quello che più ama fare.
Ne soffre, ma anche i periodi di pausa – più o meno forzati- servono a darle le risposte che cerca, a farle comprendere , come le ha detto Henry , che ha lei a Hailat:” il dono dello spirito”.
E anche che , come Dzunukwa, anche lei può sempre rimettere insieme i pezzi – morire simbolicamente- e ricominciare, ancora e ancora.
Come dicevo, non ha avuto una vita facile, ma ha avuto una vita intensa, all’insegna della libertà. Pagandola a caro prezzo, letteralmente e metaforicamente. E, forse, alla fine le sorelle e il mondo l’hanno saputa capire(ancor più che apprezzare).
���hai mai voluto qualcosa così violentemente da essere disposta a gettare via tutto e a rischiare la vita? (..) non ti è mai venuto in mente che aggrapparsi alla vita pieni di paura, senza il desiderio di viverla appieno, non è una forma di gratitudine nei confronti di Dio per avercela data?” (Emily alla sorella Lizzie )”
Ed Emily Carr, così come ce la racconta la scrittura sempre meravigliosa della Vreeland, ha fatto della sua vita e della sua arte proprio questo: si è spogliata delle paure e ha regalato al mondo opere potenti , che arrivano al cuore di chi sa vedere. Em’ly (come la chiamava Sophie) ha reso onore e memoria a quei nativi che tanto amava e grazie ai quali ha imparato a usare “parole forti”, a cantare la sua canzone.
Ho amato anche questo lavoro di Susan Vreeland, questo romanzo che è un omaggio ad un’artista che non conoscevo affatto (ho mandato un’email alla cugina di mia mamma, che vie ad Alberta e che da quando è in pensione ha preso una laurea in storia dell’arte e dipinge, per sapere se lei conosce Emily Carr e il suo lavoro. Mentre scrivo questa recensione attendo una risposta).
E che è anche un omaggio ad un popolo meraviglioso, con tradizioni e usanze antichissime, spazzate via dall’uomo bianco, dalla sua cultura e dalle malattie portate dal Vecchio Mondo (vaiolo, morbillo, tubercolosi per dirne alcune): quando ho letto che la vera Sophie ha perso non sei, ma ventun bambini, mi si è stretto il cuore).
La religione, portata avanti in modo cieco e assolutistico – insieme a interessi economici- ha portato alla distruzione di qualcosa di prezioso, derubando l’umanità di qualcosa di estremamente importante. Per fortuna Emily Carr e altri appassionati hanno cercato di rendere giustizia al popolo nativo americano.
Quattro stelle a questo romanzo che parte piano e non proprio in maniera accattivante ( io ed Emily ci abbiam messo un po’ per capirci!) , ma che poi svela il suo “Grande Spirito “ e lascia il lettore pieno di sgomento e meraviglia.
Perdetevi anche voi tra zanzare e foreste immense, con “Foglie d’erba “ di Whitman ( che adoro, e le cui citazioni son nel libro) in una mano e le tele nell’altra, catturate lo spirito dei totem, dei potlach e fate la conoscenza di una vera artista, che fino alla fine della vita (già su una sedia a rotelle e con un paio di ictus) ha continuato a dipingere.
In due righe l’autrice ha scattato un’istantanea del carattere e della vita della Carr.
Chi era questa donna?
Emily Carr, come ho scoperto, è stata un’artista canadese che ha cercato per tutta la vita di immortalare lo spirito dei nativi. Dipingendo totem, case, nativi; dipingendo le meravigliose foreste dell’Ovest, infondendogli tutto lo “spirito” che sentiva quando era lì, circondata dalla Natura. Lì si sentiva parte del creato, lì riusciva a “sentirsi”, a interrogarsi, a mettersi a nudo.
“ a volte non so nemmeno perché li sto dipingendo”
“e perché lo fa?”
“ un tempo pensavo che fosse per conservare una sorta di archivio. Adesso penso che sia per essere vicina a qualche spirito che ancora non capisco. Per onorare le persone che li hanno fatti. E pe esprimere il mio amore per l’Ovest.” (dialogo tra Emily Carr e Marius Barbeau, antropologo.)
La sua vita, come la sua pittura (inscindibili) sono state comprese da pochi e solo dopo molto tempo, causandole un grande dolore, facendola sentire dilaniata, sempre mancante di qualcosa. Sia nella vita personale che nella pittura. Non ha mai avuto “tutto”, ha sempre dovuto scegliere, rinunciare a qualcosa o qualcuno. Non ha mai avuto una vita facile.
Da una parte il rapporto conflittuale con le sorelle –Dede in particolare- dall’altra l’amicizia con l’indiana Sophie, tra un mondo e l’altro senza appartenere mai veramente a nessuno dei due; da una parte le accuse del circolo di pittura del Vancouver ladies’ art club di essere simpatizzante con persone “inferiori” e quelle dei primi critici che giudicavano troppo moderni , quasi fauves , i suoi quadri (perché non limitarsi a paesaggi e o nature morte? Perché usare certi colori?) ; e dall’altra il riconoscimento da parte di capi indiani e di artisti francesi come il maestro Gibb o di Frances Hodgkins, pittrice neozelandese che le aveva profetizzato che in patria non sarebbe stata compresa.
E poi Claude, il marinaio che la accende di passione (spenta bruscamente dai ricordi tremendi di un padre terrorizzante) e Harold, un ragazzo fragile ,la cui sanità mentale è stata incrinata dai genitori(cattolici fin troppo ferventi), che diventa una sorta di amico-assistente. Ama in modo diverso entrambi, ma non si legherà mai a nessuno (tranne, forse, al suo adorato cane Billy).
Emily è una donna che si sente irrisolta. Non riesce a darsi pace, non capisce se il suo sia un capriccio o un vero talento – non che sia facile: è una donna di inizio Novecento che dipinge e all’epoca le donne artiste erano considerate strane. Le donne dovevano sposarsi e potevano relegare tele e acquerelli ad un hobby domenicale, ancora meglio se i soggetti delle tele erano i figli- e soprattutto si sente incapace di esprimere davvero quel che sente.
Quando finisce un lavoro e lo guarda si sente frustrata, sapendo di non essere riuscita completamente nell’intento. Per questo parte per la Francia, impara a dipingere ad olio, impara a “vedere” i colori e le forme in modo diverso e man mano che lavora, scava dentro di sé, pennellata dopo pennellata arriva a conoscersi sempre di più.
Quando torna a casa è decisa: dipingerà totem, boschi, dipingerà quello che la fa vibrare: di gioia od orrore non importa, quello che conta è sentirsi viva e trasmettere quella vibrazione, quella forza ancestrale nei suoi soggetti.
Ogni animale intagliato, ogni figura che Emily osserva, lavora dentro di lei, a volte le dà conforto, a volte la sconvolge. A volte è durissima dipingere, sia fisicamente, che psicologicamente e per certi periodi deve interrompere quello che più ama fare.
Ne soffre, ma anche i periodi di pausa – più o meno forzati- servono a darle le risposte che cerca, a farle comprendere , come le ha detto Henry , che ha lei a Hailat:” il dono dello spirito”.
E anche che , come Dzunukwa, anche lei può sempre rimettere insieme i pezzi – morire simbolicamente- e ricominciare, ancora e ancora.
Come dicevo, non ha avuto una vita facile, ma ha avuto una vita intensa, all’insegna della libertà. Pagandola a caro prezzo, letteralmente e metaforicamente. E, forse, alla fine le sorelle e il mondo l’hanno saputa capire(ancor più che apprezzare).
���hai mai voluto qualcosa così violentemente da essere disposta a gettare via tutto e a rischiare la vita? (..) non ti è mai venuto in mente che aggrapparsi alla vita pieni di paura, senza il desiderio di viverla appieno, non è una forma di gratitudine nei confronti di Dio per avercela data?” (Emily alla sorella Lizzie )”
Ed Emily Carr, così come ce la racconta la scrittura sempre meravigliosa della Vreeland, ha fatto della sua vita e della sua arte proprio questo: si è spogliata delle paure e ha regalato al mondo opere potenti , che arrivano al cuore di chi sa vedere. Em’ly (come la chiamava Sophie) ha reso onore e memoria a quei nativi che tanto amava e grazie ai quali ha imparato a usare “parole forti”, a cantare la sua canzone.
Ho amato anche questo lavoro di Susan Vreeland, questo romanzo che è un omaggio ad un’artista che non conoscevo affatto (ho mandato un’email alla cugina di mia mamma, che vie ad Alberta e che da quando è in pensione ha preso una laurea in storia dell’arte e dipinge, per sapere se lei conosce Emily Carr e il suo lavoro. Mentre scrivo questa recensione attendo una risposta).
E che è anche un omaggio ad un popolo meraviglioso, con tradizioni e usanze antichissime, spazzate via dall’uomo bianco, dalla sua cultura e dalle malattie portate dal Vecchio Mondo (vaiolo, morbillo, tubercolosi per dirne alcune): quando ho letto che la vera Sophie ha perso non sei, ma ventun bambini, mi si è stretto il cuore).
La religione, portata avanti in modo cieco e assolutistico – insieme a interessi economici- ha portato alla distruzione di qualcosa di prezioso, derubando l’umanità di qualcosa di estremamente importante. Per fortuna Emily Carr e altri appassionati hanno cercato di rendere giustizia al popolo nativo americano.
Quattro stelle a questo romanzo che parte piano e non proprio in maniera accattivante ( io ed Emily ci abbiam messo un po’ per capirci!) , ma che poi svela il suo “Grande Spirito “ e lascia il lettore pieno di sgomento e meraviglia.
Perdetevi anche voi tra zanzare e foreste immense, con “Foglie d’erba “ di Whitman ( che adoro, e le cui citazioni son nel libro) in una mano e le tele nell’altra, catturate lo spirito dei totem, dei potlach e fate la conoscenza di una vera artista, che fino alla fine della vita (già su una sedia a rotelle e con un paio di ictus) ha continuato a dipingere.
April 17, 2010
Quite a lot about the place and time is woven well into the fictionalized biography. The characters become real in the course of the action and preparing the setting, which does not always happen in this sort of biographical writing. A very upbeat read, too.
Citation that might give a feeling for the best and less best: "On the last night before Emily's return to Paris to collect her canvases and winter clothes, she and Frances lingered at the restaurant on the quay, sharing a tureen of mussels and a carafe of red wine. Emily gazed at the harbor. Lights winked on anchored boats and the moon cast a column of dancing silver on the water.
"You saved me from a lonely summer," Frances said.
"You saved me from a wasted one."
"It's the loneliness of what we've chosen that..."
"Cuts into the joy?"
"Like a claw in my chest." Frances leaned on her elbows on both sides of her cheese plate with sudden urgency. "Why don't you stay here, Millie? Paint with me in Paris this winter. We can share a studio. Live there together. I'll introduce tyou to the painters at La Rotonde. And dealers."
"And never paint another cedar or totem face to face? Give up the one relationship that has fed me for years///with a place? How many poles have been sold or destroyed since I've been gone?"
Of course the sections of her work on the totems and her place is engrossing, too, especially for someone who loves the Pacific Northwest.
Citation that might give a feeling for the best and less best: "On the last night before Emily's return to Paris to collect her canvases and winter clothes, she and Frances lingered at the restaurant on the quay, sharing a tureen of mussels and a carafe of red wine. Emily gazed at the harbor. Lights winked on anchored boats and the moon cast a column of dancing silver on the water.
"You saved me from a lonely summer," Frances said.
"You saved me from a wasted one."
"It's the loneliness of what we've chosen that..."
"Cuts into the joy?"
"Like a claw in my chest." Frances leaned on her elbows on both sides of her cheese plate with sudden urgency. "Why don't you stay here, Millie? Paint with me in Paris this winter. We can share a studio. Live there together. I'll introduce tyou to the painters at La Rotonde. And dealers."
"And never paint another cedar or totem face to face? Give up the one relationship that has fed me for years///with a place? How many poles have been sold or destroyed since I've been gone?"
Of course the sections of her work on the totems and her place is engrossing, too, especially for someone who loves the Pacific Northwest.
February 24, 2016
The Forest Lover - Susan Vreeland
3 stars
Emily Carr was a post impressionist Canadian artist who died in 1945. Forest Lover is an uneven fictionalized biography of her life as a struggling female painter. I find the woman and her work to be fascinating, but this retelling of her life leaves much to be desired. The story begins with Emily as a grown woman trying to scratch a living as an artist. She teaches art to well-to-do ladies and their children, but is continually dissatisfied with the limits placed on her life and her art. Throughout the book Vreeland creates some fictional relationships for Emily, but none of these friendships seem to have depth and they continue to feel fictional as the story progresses.
After reading this book, I read more about the life of Emily Carr. The more I know about her, the less satisfied I am with The Forest Lover. Apparently, Carr first studied art in San Francisco and later in London. These experiences get only passing reference in Vreeland's book. Vreeland does capture the depth of Carr's interest and sympathy for native people, but again, I felt the personal relationships were improbable. The redeeming feature of this book was Vreeland's descriptions of the physical difficulties Carr had to endure to create her master works. I couldn't believe the relationship with the French Canadian trapper/trader, but the details of the constant rain and the pestilential mosquitoes made me want to run for cover.
3 stars
Emily Carr was a post impressionist Canadian artist who died in 1945. Forest Lover is an uneven fictionalized biography of her life as a struggling female painter. I find the woman and her work to be fascinating, but this retelling of her life leaves much to be desired. The story begins with Emily as a grown woman trying to scratch a living as an artist. She teaches art to well-to-do ladies and their children, but is continually dissatisfied with the limits placed on her life and her art. Throughout the book Vreeland creates some fictional relationships for Emily, but none of these friendships seem to have depth and they continue to feel fictional as the story progresses.
After reading this book, I read more about the life of Emily Carr. The more I know about her, the less satisfied I am with The Forest Lover. Apparently, Carr first studied art in San Francisco and later in London. These experiences get only passing reference in Vreeland's book. Vreeland does capture the depth of Carr's interest and sympathy for native people, but again, I felt the personal relationships were improbable. The redeeming feature of this book was Vreeland's descriptions of the physical difficulties Carr had to endure to create her master works. I couldn't believe the relationship with the French Canadian trapper/trader, but the details of the constant rain and the pestilential mosquitoes made me want to run for cover.
January 7, 2016
so, maybe 2 ½-stars. i'm fairly torn over this book - i thought some of it was great, and i thought some of it was... really not great. i felt the social message of indigenous rights to be handled rather ham-fistedly and, at times, insensitively. there was a very child-like or immature feeling of emily carr that vreeland presented. while i wasn't particularly bothered over whether that was accurate or not, i was frustrated that this felt like a very loose thread, with not enough given to create a better, stronger understanding of the character vreeland created. carr's life was a bit meandering, and this novel meanders too - but the flow could have been much better. there is a lot going on in the book: carr's family and family history, her art, her personal life, indigenous issues (loss of culture, residential schools, reservations, racism), women's rights, religion, friendship, mental health concerns,... it's a bit of a horn of plenty in the topics' department. and, in real life, carr was a fascinating and complex woman. but i think this is why the book got bogged down for me - too much was taken on and none of it was handled strongly. and this is too bad because it's clear vreeland has huge respect and sympathy for emily carr.
November 6, 2009
I picked this up because I wanted to learn more about Emily Carr. I did and I didn't. Susan Vreeland's writing style in The Forest Lover demonstrates what happens when a popular middlebrow author attempts to write what he or she thinks is "arty" prose: an artificial herky-jerky mess. Like E.L. Doctorow's treatment of the Collyer brothers in Homer and Langley, Vreeland changed many basic facts about the Canadian artist's life. This artifice is completely unnecessary. Yet again, a very real, very interesting character is neutered by a writer looking to make their book easy and accessible.
September 25, 2011
Emily Carr was a Canadian artist consumed by the art of the west coast First Nations, despite opposition from her family and the art establishment.
Ms Vreeland has a very interesting artist to profile in this novel, but the whole thing felt facile and without any deep examination. Usually one of her books leaves me with a sense of deeper understanding of what drove the artist. Not so here.
The only reason that I can say that I am glad to have listened to this book is that it drove me to look for Carr's paintings. I found them stunning and strong. Would love to see them in person to experience their full power.
Ms Vreeland has a very interesting artist to profile in this novel, but the whole thing felt facile and without any deep examination. Usually one of her books leaves me with a sense of deeper understanding of what drove the artist. Not so here.
The only reason that I can say that I am glad to have listened to this book is that it drove me to look for Carr's paintings. I found them stunning and strong. Would love to see them in person to experience their full power.
May 20, 2019
Perhaps it was simply the timing (having just come from a very long, very violent and male-centric read), or the fact that I fell in love with Vancouver and British Columbia on a trip earlier this year, but for some reason this one hit me as the perfect read. I came into this book knowing a little about Emily Carr, but not very much. The book inspired me to take a look at many more of her paintings, which are surprising and incredible. I would be interested to read more about her relationships with the First Nations peoples that she encountered on her trips to ostensibly make a record of their monumental art works before they were lost to the disgraceful practices of European colonialists during the period of Carr's life. Vreeland paints a rosy picture, with Carr befriending people along the way and being accepted into various native communities. The author's note provides some hints that this may not be too far from the truth, as the author interviewed some First Nations people who remember Emily Carr. The fact that she was invited to experience a potlatch, a practice already outlawed by that time, would seem to indicate that at least that particular community trusted her enough to take the risk of inviting her into this important cultural practice. Vreeland's version of Carr repeatedly mulls over the difference between appreciation and appropriation, and much of Carr's work does ask us to do this. In any case, this female-driven story was a pleasure to read for many reasons. Vreeland's characters are sympathetic and vibrant, and one feels, as in the best historical fiction, that one wants to go from this novel to learning more about its subjects.
March 9, 2017
A magnificent telling of the story of one of Canada's most beloved and misunderstood painters, Emily Carr. This is a "faction" - fiction but with a lot of actual facts of Ms. Carr's life. And seems to capture what the real Ms. Carr actually went through to follow her passion - to paint the west coast First Nations homes, villages and particularly totem poles.
It is also a sad but accurate statement on what was done to the First Nations people by the governments of British Columbia, Canada and by the ordinary white European people of the west coast.
It captures from the first page.
It is also a sad but accurate statement on what was done to the First Nations people by the governments of British Columbia, Canada and by the ordinary white European people of the west coast.
It captures from the first page.
May 18, 2021
This was absolutely amazing. Vreeland took an artist I had previously never heard of, the Canadian painter Emily Carr, and inserted me into her art and inspiration. I felt like I was feeling Emily's desire to capture what she loved about the Native peoples, their totems and nature. Her exuberant love of the totems and the greens of the forest was unmistakable. I just wish she could have started something with the fur trapper.
November 19, 2018
A brilliant exploration of Emily Carr and what moved her as an artist, I was sad when the book ended. I could have read a hundred pages more easily!
December 17, 2022
historical fiction about Emily Carr. Very good. I read an e book; there weren't any photos of her work.
January 14, 2023
Between 2 and 3 stars...
January 12, 2024
"I don't get a paper. Times were better when everyone went 'round shouting things to each other."
This book makes me want to spend more time outside.
This book makes me want to spend more time outside.
December 12, 2017
I loved learning about Emily Carr. However, I didn’t think the writing was very good.
March 7, 2023
I have loved Susan Vreeland's other historical fiction novels and this one was no exception. I didn't want it to end. "The Forest Lover" was Emily Carr, a landscape artist, living in British Columbia (1871 to 1945). She traveled to many small indigenous villages, putting her live in peril at times, painting the disappearing totem poles and beautiful landscapes. Her friendship with Sophie, a native basket maker, was remarkable.
January 26, 2021
This historical novel of Emily Carr’s life shares her most productive years as a painter of Western Canadian art, from 1904 when she was still discovering her own style to 1930, when she finally achieved what she had always wanted, to have her art displayed in the National Gallery in Ottawa and appreciated by both critics and the public.
For the most part, Vreeland stays true to the facts of Carr’s life. I have read a biography of Carr and some of her writing and didn’t find the added characters and situations in this story bothersome. I think they serve a purpose, giving readers a better understanding of this unusual woman, her passionate drive to paint, her love of Indian culture and customs and her persistent loneliness. I know some purists may disagree, but this is a novel, not a biography.
In the early parts of the book, readers witness Carr’s frustration with her work, unable to bring what she feels inside herself about the vast Canadian landscape on to her canvases. She knew it demanded a new style, not something transferred from Europe and believed that its inspiration could come from the land and the arts of it first people. At the time, Carr was still working in watercolors, as only men were allowed to paint in oils.
Frustrated she traveled to Paris to see what she could learn from the more modern impressionists. The “Fauvres” were painting in wild vibrant colors, using distortion and exaggeration, strong linear patterns and bolder brushwork in their work to express feeling and motion and outlining their subjects rather than blending their colors. In art classes, she found herself ignored because she was a woman painter and had to try several different teachers to get the help she needed. She was not happy in Paris. The language stifled her and the strange, noisy city scared her. It was not until she met Frances Hodgkins a painter from New Zealand and the two women began painting together that she was able to practice some of what she had seen the other modernist painters doing. It was in Paris that she began to learn the use of vigorous spirited color and the power it had to express feeling and emotion in her work.
After a year she returned to Western Canada and to the bush country she loved where she painted the Indian villages with the children, the beaches with their decorated canoes and the wild life. But what she loved were the huge magnificent totem poles. Many of them were disappearing with the way of life of the indigenous people who were being forced from their land and from their way of life by missionaries from the churches and the government with the passage of the Indian Act. The Act forbade them to practice their culture and live the way of life passed down to them by their ancestors. Their homes, considered eyesores were burnt to the ground and they were forced to live on reservations, their valuable beach land quickly snatched up by developers and their children sent to residential schools. They were dying from diseases passed to them by the white men, diseases to which they had no immunity. Many of them were children.
Carr loved these people. She felt a kinship with their culture and their way of life and had a passion for the wild primeval forests, dense, tangled, mysterious and filled with mighty Douglas firs and cedars. She loved the scents and the aromas, the solemnity and the peace of those places. She knew God did not camp only in places where there was a steeple. She sensed a presence under the tree’s canopy; she felt spirits there.
Knowing the culture was fast disappearing she wanted to record it before it was lost. She traveled deep into the dark woodlands to find abandoned totems, coffin trees where they placed their dead, abandoned menstrual huts and bighouses. The huge long houses were the center of their communities, the places where children played games with pebbles, old men puffed on pipes, women wove cedar bark mats, grandmothers cradled babies, stories were told, food was shared, deaths were grieved and kinships were developed among families, villagers, neighbours and friends. Carr was brash and fearless, often alone in dangerous isolated places where no white man let alone a white woman would be permitted, yet she courageously made her way, sleeping rough in a tent, battling the rain, observing the wildlife and painting the trees, animals and birds. It was in these deep dark woods that she felt God in the spaces between the trees. Looked on as an eccentric, she was often ignored.
Carr was criticized for socializing with the Indians, who were considered a people to be subjugated to the Canadian way of life by their Caucasian invaders. They were considered “dirty primitives”, their totems considered “pagan relics” and ”idols”, their potlatch festivals judged illegal. Carr’s prim sisters never understood her passion or approved of her work and considered her an embarrassment. They could not understand why she would choose to live in such conditions just to paint. Her eldest sister Dede, who conducted her life like every Victorian era white Christian woman should, cared for her younger sisters and held the purse strings on the small trust fund left to support herself and her sisters but gave Carr only small sums for her work. Her sister Alice was the most supportive and the one who accompanied her to Paris for a year of study. Emily always lived on the edge of poverty, with money for lodgings, food and art supplies always continuing competing needs. At times she was forced to give up painting to earn money to live, teaching art classes, making pottery and rugs, becoming a landlord and renting out apartments and rooms and raising sheep dogs for sale.
Her goal was always to earn a living as a women painter, but her shows were never successful and her paintings didn’t sell. After she returned from Paris, the criticisms became worse. She was spoken of as “the lady painter who once had promise” and her work was ridiculed and dismissed as the work of an agitated imagination. Vancouver did not understand her choice of subject matter or her style. They were not ready for her. She overwhelmed them. But the Indians on Canada’s West Coast hailed her as “Hailat, A Person with Spirit Power in Her Hands”. It wasn’t until she was fifty-seven and asked to display her work in the National Gallery in Ottawa that she was recognized for her work.
Vreeland’s narrative includes some humorous dialogue about her critics (“a bunch of caterwalling old tabbies”) as well as notable descriptions of some intimate moments when the reader feels a closeness to Carr and believe they understand her. Vreeland has been able to get inside Carr’s head to share her thoughts, feelings and emotions. There are several intimate moments when we feel deeply for Carr: when she knows she must put her beloved dog Billy down but cannot force herself to do it alone; when she first feels the power of close contact as her friend Frances rubs her feet after a long day of painting in France ; when Claude, a French fur trapper, gently rubs salve on her inflamed skin, ravaged by mosquito bites; when she spends quiet moments with her friend Sophie Frank, a Squamish basket maker who looses nine children to white man’s diseases yet still struggles to balance the inflexible Christian dogma that alienates her from her traditional ways and beliefs with her own cultural traditions and then there are the quiet moments listening to Harold Cooke the son of missionaries who attended residential school and is now a damaged soul, as he reads passages of his writing. They are all so well done. It is in presenting Carr's brash fearlessness as an artist with her more personal vulnerability and need for acceptance and love, that Vreeland truly demonstrates her ability as a writer.
Vreeland seems to comprehend the artistic mind and she writes about the act of painting as one who truly understands not just the subject matter, but the flow of paint, the choice of colours, the physical motion of applying the paint to the canvas and the way thick daubs of paint are built up on the canvas. It is what makes her narrative so memorable.
Although the book includes a few selected plates of Carr’s paintings, they are all in black and white, doing little justice to her work, which is as much about color as size, exaggeration and distortion. One look at the hardback cover gives readers a sense of what they are missing when they view the black and white plates inside. I would suggest anyone about to read the novel first visit a gallery and experience her work, with the immense canvases, rich powerful colors and unusual subject matter. The totems are magnificent, the houses sad, poorly constructed and lonely and the villages, with their church standing domineeringly on the main street, a reminder of all the sadness they brought. Viewing these canvases will give readers a much deeper sense of what Emily Carr’s art is all about and why she had chosen that style to express her feelings about the West Coast of Canada and its people.
This a very good account of a formidable, courageous and extraordinary women’s determination to carry out her passion despite scorn from her family, society, her critics and her own poverty and self-doubt. She died in 1974 at the age of seventy-four. It is a story that is easy to read, well researched and written, and also very moving.
For the most part, Vreeland stays true to the facts of Carr’s life. I have read a biography of Carr and some of her writing and didn’t find the added characters and situations in this story bothersome. I think they serve a purpose, giving readers a better understanding of this unusual woman, her passionate drive to paint, her love of Indian culture and customs and her persistent loneliness. I know some purists may disagree, but this is a novel, not a biography.
In the early parts of the book, readers witness Carr’s frustration with her work, unable to bring what she feels inside herself about the vast Canadian landscape on to her canvases. She knew it demanded a new style, not something transferred from Europe and believed that its inspiration could come from the land and the arts of it first people. At the time, Carr was still working in watercolors, as only men were allowed to paint in oils.
Frustrated she traveled to Paris to see what she could learn from the more modern impressionists. The “Fauvres” were painting in wild vibrant colors, using distortion and exaggeration, strong linear patterns and bolder brushwork in their work to express feeling and motion and outlining their subjects rather than blending their colors. In art classes, she found herself ignored because she was a woman painter and had to try several different teachers to get the help she needed. She was not happy in Paris. The language stifled her and the strange, noisy city scared her. It was not until she met Frances Hodgkins a painter from New Zealand and the two women began painting together that she was able to practice some of what she had seen the other modernist painters doing. It was in Paris that she began to learn the use of vigorous spirited color and the power it had to express feeling and emotion in her work.
After a year she returned to Western Canada and to the bush country she loved where she painted the Indian villages with the children, the beaches with their decorated canoes and the wild life. But what she loved were the huge magnificent totem poles. Many of them were disappearing with the way of life of the indigenous people who were being forced from their land and from their way of life by missionaries from the churches and the government with the passage of the Indian Act. The Act forbade them to practice their culture and live the way of life passed down to them by their ancestors. Their homes, considered eyesores were burnt to the ground and they were forced to live on reservations, their valuable beach land quickly snatched up by developers and their children sent to residential schools. They were dying from diseases passed to them by the white men, diseases to which they had no immunity. Many of them were children.
Carr loved these people. She felt a kinship with their culture and their way of life and had a passion for the wild primeval forests, dense, tangled, mysterious and filled with mighty Douglas firs and cedars. She loved the scents and the aromas, the solemnity and the peace of those places. She knew God did not camp only in places where there was a steeple. She sensed a presence under the tree’s canopy; she felt spirits there.
Knowing the culture was fast disappearing she wanted to record it before it was lost. She traveled deep into the dark woodlands to find abandoned totems, coffin trees where they placed their dead, abandoned menstrual huts and bighouses. The huge long houses were the center of their communities, the places where children played games with pebbles, old men puffed on pipes, women wove cedar bark mats, grandmothers cradled babies, stories were told, food was shared, deaths were grieved and kinships were developed among families, villagers, neighbours and friends. Carr was brash and fearless, often alone in dangerous isolated places where no white man let alone a white woman would be permitted, yet she courageously made her way, sleeping rough in a tent, battling the rain, observing the wildlife and painting the trees, animals and birds. It was in these deep dark woods that she felt God in the spaces between the trees. Looked on as an eccentric, she was often ignored.
Carr was criticized for socializing with the Indians, who were considered a people to be subjugated to the Canadian way of life by their Caucasian invaders. They were considered “dirty primitives”, their totems considered “pagan relics” and ”idols”, their potlatch festivals judged illegal. Carr’s prim sisters never understood her passion or approved of her work and considered her an embarrassment. They could not understand why she would choose to live in such conditions just to paint. Her eldest sister Dede, who conducted her life like every Victorian era white Christian woman should, cared for her younger sisters and held the purse strings on the small trust fund left to support herself and her sisters but gave Carr only small sums for her work. Her sister Alice was the most supportive and the one who accompanied her to Paris for a year of study. Emily always lived on the edge of poverty, with money for lodgings, food and art supplies always continuing competing needs. At times she was forced to give up painting to earn money to live, teaching art classes, making pottery and rugs, becoming a landlord and renting out apartments and rooms and raising sheep dogs for sale.
Her goal was always to earn a living as a women painter, but her shows were never successful and her paintings didn’t sell. After she returned from Paris, the criticisms became worse. She was spoken of as “the lady painter who once had promise” and her work was ridiculed and dismissed as the work of an agitated imagination. Vancouver did not understand her choice of subject matter or her style. They were not ready for her. She overwhelmed them. But the Indians on Canada’s West Coast hailed her as “Hailat, A Person with Spirit Power in Her Hands”. It wasn’t until she was fifty-seven and asked to display her work in the National Gallery in Ottawa that she was recognized for her work.
Vreeland’s narrative includes some humorous dialogue about her critics (“a bunch of caterwalling old tabbies”) as well as notable descriptions of some intimate moments when the reader feels a closeness to Carr and believe they understand her. Vreeland has been able to get inside Carr’s head to share her thoughts, feelings and emotions. There are several intimate moments when we feel deeply for Carr: when she knows she must put her beloved dog Billy down but cannot force herself to do it alone; when she first feels the power of close contact as her friend Frances rubs her feet after a long day of painting in France ; when Claude, a French fur trapper, gently rubs salve on her inflamed skin, ravaged by mosquito bites; when she spends quiet moments with her friend Sophie Frank, a Squamish basket maker who looses nine children to white man’s diseases yet still struggles to balance the inflexible Christian dogma that alienates her from her traditional ways and beliefs with her own cultural traditions and then there are the quiet moments listening to Harold Cooke the son of missionaries who attended residential school and is now a damaged soul, as he reads passages of his writing. They are all so well done. It is in presenting Carr's brash fearlessness as an artist with her more personal vulnerability and need for acceptance and love, that Vreeland truly demonstrates her ability as a writer.
Vreeland seems to comprehend the artistic mind and she writes about the act of painting as one who truly understands not just the subject matter, but the flow of paint, the choice of colours, the physical motion of applying the paint to the canvas and the way thick daubs of paint are built up on the canvas. It is what makes her narrative so memorable.
Although the book includes a few selected plates of Carr’s paintings, they are all in black and white, doing little justice to her work, which is as much about color as size, exaggeration and distortion. One look at the hardback cover gives readers a sense of what they are missing when they view the black and white plates inside. I would suggest anyone about to read the novel first visit a gallery and experience her work, with the immense canvases, rich powerful colors and unusual subject matter. The totems are magnificent, the houses sad, poorly constructed and lonely and the villages, with their church standing domineeringly on the main street, a reminder of all the sadness they brought. Viewing these canvases will give readers a much deeper sense of what Emily Carr’s art is all about and why she had chosen that style to express her feelings about the West Coast of Canada and its people.
This a very good account of a formidable, courageous and extraordinary women’s determination to carry out her passion despite scorn from her family, society, her critics and her own poverty and self-doubt. She died in 1974 at the age of seventy-four. It is a story that is easy to read, well researched and written, and also very moving.
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