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Vintage Emily Carr

Her paintings sell for upward of $500,000 and the pottery she used to sell as trinkets for 50 cents now sell for about $5,000. Schools, libraries, parks, streets and even stamps bear her name.

Her paintings sell for upward of $500,000 and the pottery she used to sell as trinkets for 50 cents now sell for about $5,000. Schools, libraries, parks, streets and even stamps bear her name. Three books about her have been published this year alone. Yet to some in Victoria, Emily Carr will always be the crazy lady in James Bay with the monkey.

Earlier this summer, Victoria's Royal British Columbia Museum opened "Emily Carr: Eccentric, Artist, Author, Genius," a comprehensive exhibit presenting an exhaustive look at one of Canada's best known artists. Among the 80-odd framed paintings, pottery loaned from rock star Bryan Adam's personal collection, and photos of Carr at work, is a life-size recreation of "The Elephant," the caravan used by Carr for her painting and writing trips into the wilds of south Vancouver Island.

Four totem poles that historians believe Carr would have encountered on her travels to First Nations villages have been loaned to the museum and form a centrepiece.

But the items creating the greatest interest among museum-goers are Carr's personal effects – family photos, cartoons, travel journals and letters to friends and fellow artists like Group of Seven member, Lawren Harris. Many of the artifacts displayed in the 16 showcases are on show for the first time and have reduced some visitors to tears, according to Kathryn Bridge of B.C. Archives and the curatorial chairwoman of the exhibit.

"There is something about what she (Carr) has to say that still resonates," says Bridge. "She transcends time and generations and hits people. She argues with herself in her journals and people suck up that stuff today.

"Despite the datedness of some of it and the lack of political correctness, it's usually the writing people cry at."

Bridge has noticed men transfixed by Carr's diaries, and spotted three teenage boys reading one 1905 article out loud to each other. Here's a sample of the self-doubt that pervades much of the correspondence. In a letter to close friend and literary executor Ira Dilworth, in 1940, Carr writes: "Here's the m.s. (manuscript) – another disappointment. I always think they are going to be better than they are and when they are not I'm sore. Words on paper show up all the slovenliness and ignorance so very plainly."

A year later, Carr won the Governor General's award for her first book, Klee Wyck, which means "laughing one" – the name given to her by the Nuu-Chah-nulth some 40 years before.

In another letter to close friend Willie Newcombe at the end of her life, Carr is in a melancholy mood. Leaving Newcombe a trunk of what remains of her life's work – a trunk that accompanied her to San Francisco in 1890, the United Kingdom in 1899 and Alaska in 1907 – Carr suggests a clinical method of disposal.

"Clear away the inevitable personal trash one leaves, where one has odds and ends half finished. Don't hesitate to burn... it is a clean satisfactory way of disposal."

Newcombe burned nothing, and the trunk with much of its contents are on display.

Despite the success she enjoyed late in life, Carr could be forgiven for feelings of doubt. As she began to experiment with modernist ideas and move away from classic Victorian interpretations, her painting not only prompted indifference but offence. Following one local exhibit, an art critic advised pregnant women to avoid the show. When Carr ran a boarding house to support her artistic endeavours, some of her boarders complained that Carr's pictures displayed in the dining room turned their stomachs.

When she died after a series of heart attacks at St. Mary's Priory (now the James Bay Inn) in Victoria in March 1945, 53 people attended her funeral. The Vancouver show for which she had been preparing 35 oil-on-paper sketches was never held. She was 74.

Despite her renown today, Emily Carr is still viewed as an odd and aloof character by some in her hometown, says Jan Ross, resident curator of Carr House. Four blocks from the Royal B.C. Museum, Carr House is the restored Victorian birthplace of Emily Carr and an informative complement to the museum's exhibit.

"Emily would often offer drawings instead of payment," says Ross. "I knew her paperboy and he told me how she would bake him cookies at Christmas and give him sketches of animals. He said the cookies were awful, but he kept some of the sketches.

Ross's parents grew up in Victoria and well remember Carr in her element in Beacon Hill Park with her constant companion – a monkey named Woo. Carr's obscurity in her home town is no surprise to Ross given that other homegrown artists like Myfanwy Pavelic and Robert Bateman are better known in Europe than they are in B.C.

But Ross is inspired by Carr's legacy and the sacrifices she endured to achieve artistic success. She believes that for all her self-doubt, Carr knew that by the end of her life she had fulfilled her potential.

"She nailed it with her art and she knew it," says Ross. "She once said 'I had a great life. I had art and it moved me.'"

A more fitting epitaph might be that penned about 100 years ago by a Victoria Times Colonist art critic. Reporting Carr's impact on Victoria's staid art scene, he described the women's art club as "clearly baffled to find an eagle on the local hen roost."

Carr in Victoria

• Emily Carr: Eccentric, Artist, Author, Genius is at the Royal British Columbia Museum till April 7, 2002. Watercolours make up one-third of the artwork in the exhibit and will be replaced Dec. 4 and 5 by other Carr watercolours, due to the delicacy of fugitive watercolour pigments. For more information about the exhibit, or the museum's other attractions, prices and location, visit www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca or call 250 356-RBCM.

• The birthplace and childhood home of Emily Carr, Carr House, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. till mid-October. It is located at 207 Government Street in historic James Bay, four blocks behind the Parliament buildings. Until Oct. 7, the house will host "Emily's All Sorts," billed as a rare chance to view a private collection of objects, which range from Emily's father's safe to a camp stool used by the artist while painting outdoors. For more information, visit www.emilycarr.com or call 250 383-5843.

• For a walking tour of Emily's old neighbourhood with "Emily Carr" (as portrayed by artist and actress Molly Raher Newman – complete with monkey Woo), call 250 384-9046. Newman also performs in the garden of Carr House and stages painting tours and dinner theatre shows.

• Pacific Coastal Airlines flies from Vancouver to Victoria from $59 one way. For details, call 1 800 663-2872. Alternatively, call 1-888-BCFERRY (1-888-223-3779) for ferry schedules.

— Neville Judd