"Painting the passing race": Arthur Pitts (1889-1972) on the Northwest coast
Date
1993
Authors
Mason, Kerry Louise
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Abstract
Arthur D. J. Pitts' (1889-1972) major contribution to Canadian art history is his "Indian Collection", paintings of and about the Native people of the Northwest coast. Most of these paintings were completed in British Columbia between 1930 and 1935, although Pitts' interest in depicting people of traditional cultures began in his youth and never waned.
This study is the story of Arthur Pitts, his adventures and his art, focusing primarily on his first fifty years. How did the son of a tailor's assistant, born in South London at the end of the nineteenth century, come to record Native people and cultures in British Columbia and Alaska in the twentieth century? Not only how, but why, is of central interest in this thesis. In the course of the discussion aspects of Edwardian England illuminate the background of Pitts who, while painting well into the middle of this century, was firmly rooted in the Edwardian age.
Chapter One focuses on Pitts' early world. In true Edwardian fashion Pitts sought his first adventures by travelling to other parts of the British Empire, first South Africa, then Canada. In South Africa in 1912-13 Pitts turned his interest in photography to the task of recording Zulu people. Here the seeds of a life-long interest in depicting Native people germinated.
Chapter Two traces Pitts from the trenches of World War I, where he was seriously wounded, through ensuing periods of convalescence, first in England and then on Vancouver Island. Years of art study and efforts to succeed as a commercial artist followed.
Chapter Three concentrates on the period beginning in 1930, at which point Pitts combined his talent for portraiture and his fascination for Native cultures to paint his " Indian Collection". Pitts, Like George Catlin, Paul Kane, Edward Curtis, Emily Carr, and many other artists, felt the imperative to record what was commonly believed to be a "passing race".
It was Pitts' intention and fondest desire to capture in watercolour all that he could of the Northwest coast Native people. To this end Pitts travelled over four thousand miles of British Columbia and Alaska, painting at every opportunity.
Arthur Pitts embodied, in his ability to overcome incredible obstacles, the maxim of the Edwardian age, "to struggle and prevail". In his solitary quest, quite outside the mainstream of twentieth century art, Pitts made a lasting contribution with his historically and ethnographically significant visual record of the Salish, Tlinget and Kootenay people. Although his paintings have been held in public repositories for forty years, Pitts' story has been patiently waiting in his journals until now.