The writer acknowledges the financial support of the Whyte Museum and its archives for the research associated with the texts in this blog. Opinions in this blog text are the author’s own.

The Whyte Museum in Banff will feature an exhibition entitled Artistry Revealed: Peter Whyte, Catharine Robb Whyte and Their Contemporaries. June 17th to October 21st, 2018. A book, accompanying the exhibition, will be published. The exhibition and publication are supported by the Museum Assistance Program of the Government of Canada.

 

4. Banff, travels and setbacks

The wedding took place on June 30, 1930, in Concord.[i] The couple drove to Banff in Catharine’s car, a Packard Roadster, arriving in early August, intending to make their home there. At first lodging at Peter’s parents, they spent much of the summer sketching in the mountains, at Yoho, and in early September registered as guests at the Lake O’Hara Lodge. Here they spent a couple of weeks sketching with J.E.H. MacDonald. They then engaged in some arduous hiking. They also began planning the building of their house and studio which would be completed in May of 1931. In early 1931, They had travelled to Toronto and MacDonald introduced them to Lawren Harris.

In November, Peter was informed that one of his paintings had been accepted for the National Academy of Design exhibition in New York. He had submitted a work to this important exhibition at the insistence of Carl Rungius. Three of his works were also included in the spring exhibition of the Art Association of Montreal in 1932.[ii]

An initial trip in the late autumn of 1931 to Nassau, in the Bahamas, at the invitation of Fred Ambrister, a photographer whom they had met at Lake Louise, proved to be a bit of a disappointment, and the couple were on their way home by January of 1932.[iii] Back in Banff in February, they decided to take on the running of the new Skoki Ski Lodge, receiving guests in the spring of 1932. Re-opening in the spring of 1933, one of their guests, a British mathematician teaching at MIT named Raymond E. Paley, was killed in an avalanche in early April. Peter was devastated by this tragedy and blamed himself. Although an inquiry absolved him of all responsibility, Paley’s death haunted him for the rest of his life. It also ended their ski lodge venture at Skoki.

In the fall of 1933, they were in Hawaii for the winter where they sketched. Early in 1934, still in Hawaii, they purchased two steamer tickets for a round-the-world trip which lasted some eighteen months, taking them to China, Japan, the Dutch East Indies, finally returning to Banff, only to leave again on more travels to Switzerland for skiing, then back to Banff, and on to Hawaii again in 1936. A trip down the West Coast, and to Vancouver Island followed, then another through the Panama Canal, on to Europe for skiing in the Alps again. They were soon sketching in Norway in May and June of 1938. With war threatening in Europe, they returned to Banff by September to spend their first full year in Banff.

Peter’s father passed away in June of 1940. With the war now enveloping Europe, Peter decided in the summer to join the Reserve Army, and took two weeks of basic training in Calgary. He was 35. Over the next five years, Peter’s efforts and hopes of being named an official war artist met with obstacles and disappointment. Disillusioned, he requested his discharge which he received in December of 1944.[iv] Settled back into his life in Banff, he seems to have turned increasingly to alcohol.

Catharine had first remarked on his tendency to depression when they were at art school in Boston. At the beginning of their relationship, in the fall of 1927, she noted in her journal “He gets discouraged though I haven’t quite decided what about. He said he couldn’t speak good English and I wouldn’t understand. He wants to go to China; also says he’s never going to marry for you can do better work that way, which I was glad to hear. I bet him he would be famous within ten years and he bet not.”[v]  Catharine always seems to have had more confidence in him than he had in himself, believing in his superior talent. Elsewhere, she says: “He told me what he is planning to do: get a good foundation and then go back to Canada and start a school of art in Banff, and later get children to work with him and teach them, for he said he wished he’d had that, for people don’t even have faith in him now and think he does it for fun. I’ll bet Peter could do it. There is a lot to him.”[vi]

In a letter to Catharine in January of 1929, Peter confided in Catharine. “Tomorrow I will be twenty-four. Do you know, Catharine, I have never had a birthday party, not even when I was little?  Someday, when I am back from our trip, can’t we have a nice little party, just so I can say I had one? This must sound a bit childish, but there were so many things I couldn’t have when I was small and the others in our family did have, I often dreamed of doing them when I was older, just to even up things.”[vii]  The statement has more to do with his sense of being a neglected middle child.

It is interesting to note Catharine’s comments on a self-portrait he did in 1932, while she was away from Banff for a few days. Noting that during Banff Indian Days that year he had made three good sketches of the Indian camp and an Indian portrait, she adds: “He also painted a self-portrait and it’s the saddest looking thing I’ve ever seen.”[viii] The rough self-portrait sketch, unfinished, shows his head mostly in shadow, with an unusually large right ear. The face is lacking that quiet smile which one often notices in photographs of him at that time.

Over the next decade, after his discharge from the Air Force in 1944, Peter’s mental health continued to be cause for concern. But he nevertheless was able to keep his level of activity up, having decided to submit some of his works to the Art Association of Montreal in 1947, some fifteen years after first submitting to that exhibition. These were exhibited and one of the English language papers singled out “a striking composition of mountains by Peter Whyte.” On his visit to Banff that year, Fred Brigden suggested Peter and Catharine submit works to the Royal Canadian Academy and the Ontario Society of Artists exhibitions in 1948. But another opportunity presented itself when Clare Bice visited Banff in mid-September and was introduced to them by their mutual friends George and Kathleen Daly Pepper. Bice asked to borrow some of their sketches for an exhibition at the London Public Gallery. The offer was accepted and the exhibition was sent off in March of 1948. It was well received and travelled to a number of Ontario galleries, including Hart House. The sketches were also exhibited in Concord.

Catharine’s letters to her mother at this time began to mention Peter’s condition. In November of 1947, they declined an invitation to spend Christmas in Concord, with Catharine writing “I know it is wiser to stay home for a few months until Peter really feels better.” In September of 1948, she writes that “A lot of his trouble is emotional,” adding later that “He gets very tense when he is troubled or worried about something. It came to a head two weeks ago, and that caused him to be sick.” In May of 1949, she writes that “the worry and strain of the last few years since he left the Air Force have taken an awful lot out of him, and every time he gets feeling a bit better, maybe gets a picture out he wants to paint on, he gets slapped down again. Some people might have ended up by having a nervous breakdown under the circumstances but luckily it hasn’t been that, but worry is bound to tell on a person some way…”

Physically, there was some transformation as well. He was balding and had gained a lot of weight due to being less active than he had been in the 1930s. Their physician, Dr Duncan MacKenzie, suggested that part of the problem might stem from his strict Scottish Presbyterian upbringing, all three boys “having difficulties adjusting themselves now.” All of them were manifesting problems with alcohol.  “Dr MacKenzie,” she writes, “thinks Pete has lost a bit of confidence in himself…” He recommended Peter see a Doctor in Vancouver, and the couple decided to take a brief holiday in Victoria, “the first real holiday of this sort we have had since before the war.” Their visit to Dr Davidson in Vancouver resulted in the recommendation that if he could learn to relax, the anxiety and tension might be alleviated. There is no mention of alcoholism in Catharine’s correspondence of the time. But Peter’s addiction was common knowledge in Banff. Close friends were aware of it too, and it seems their good friend Murray Adaskin may have communicated the situation to Lawren Harris, soliciting advice, which was duly given.

Back in Banff, they spent some time in July at Moraine Lake where Catharine observed:

“We finally got up here. It is the sort of place we seem to like best and Pete seems more relaxed. It’s so quiet, the scenery lovely and the atmosphere informal. This is the first summer since the first one nineteen years ago when we haven’t had to plan to be back to see this person or that. It seems funny but it is so.”

Clearly, the constant interruptions at home in Banff, the responsibilities and demands on him were not conducive to his peace of mind. Nevertheless, throughout this time, there were sketching trips, and Peter’s work shows no sign of diminishing powers. He was an artist who kept his personal feelings out of his work, other than an obvious affection for his subject matter.

A few years later, Peter was diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes and these were successfully operated on in 1953 and in 1957. Peter’s state of mind may have improved somewhat as Catharine no longer mentions it in her letters. Nevertheless, he was visually impaired because of his cataracts for much of the 1950s. Between surgeries, he could only work a few hours a day.

I have stressed Peter’s condition over the 1950’s and 1960’s since his productivity decreased during that time. Catharine was much affected by his condition because they always painted together when away from Banff. But in Banff, her obligations as a hostess, and constant interruptions limited her own output.

During the 1950s and early 1960s, Peter and Catharine were actively planning their Foundation, and the building of a combined library, archives and gallery building. Peter would not live to see the institution they had planned together and died on 3^rd of December 1966. The building was officially opened in 1968.

Lawren Harris, writing to Catharine in April of 1949, had suggested Peter had “the equipment, the technique, the talent to do far better work than he has ever done” provided he left Banff, adding that Banff was “a recreation and sports center primarily with nice townsfolk but no real interest in creative ferment and stimulation.”[ix] The establishment of the Wa-Che-Yo-Cha-Pa Foundation (later renamed the Peter and Catharine Whyte Foundation) made certain that there would be a permanent home in Banff for “creative ferment and stimulation.”

5. Legacy

Concluding a brief essay on Peter and Catharine’s work in 1988, their nephew Jon Whyte regretted the fact that neither had left “the legacy of a growing aesthetic vision that seemed so attainable in the early 1930s.”[x] An interesting point, to be sure, and one to which one might hastily agree. But that would perhaps be regretting intentions they did not have.  I am not sure either of them would have had such regrets. Perhaps Peter might have. His predisposition to despondency might have suggested failure, but his achievement as a painter was perhaps less a result of his lack of a “growing aesthetic vision” than a chronic lack of self-esteem. He never really recovered from the tragic death of Raymond Paley in 1933. Added to this was a desire to travel in the mistaken belief that self-fulfilment might come in an escape to an unexplored territory. But he could not escape from Banff, to which he always returned. The mountains give him a sense of place, inspired him, but they also closed him in. His academic training and his preferred subject matter may have limited the growth of his aesthetic vision. In that sense, the emulation of established figures such as Rungius and Browne was a handicap, presenting an alternate idea of success. Others, such as Lawren Harris thought him capable of moving on to new avenues of exploration, and a notion of success that he did not share.

There is in Jon Whyte’s statement an underlying premise that can also be questioned. What exactly does a “growing aesthetic vision” entail? Who determines or quantifies that growth? What are the criteria? All too often the premise reflects a modernist paradigm where progress and movement determine relevance or significance.  The achievements of many other artists have been diminished by the application of an aesthetic that was not in accordance with their own ambitions as expressed in the work they produced.

Such is the case with Walter J. Phillips, a friend of the Whytes, who had moved to Banff in the late 1940s, having taught at the Banff Summer School of the Arts since 1940. Douglas Cole questioned Phillips’ marginalization as well. In a lecture on the relationship between Phillips and the mainstream of Canadian art, Cole suggests that his “personality, media, locality and artistic content and style” created boundaries for him. He further posits that his life and character were “not such as lend themselves to mythic treatment,” in comparison, say, to Tom Thomson, Emily Carr, and A.Y. Jackson.

A similarity can be found with Peter and Catharine Whyte. While Phillips’ chosen media of watercolour and the colour woodcut further limited his reputation in comparison to artists who worked in oil, Cole adds that he did not produce “large and finished canvasses” which could be considered as major works. Again, here is a similarity with the Whytes, at least in the relative lack of big canvases. As far as locality was concerned, Phillips lived in Winnipeg, Calgary and finally Banff, away from metropolitan centres where “mainstream” art activities were more likely to occur. In Canada, that meant Toronto and Montreal. Phillips’ subjects and style were also mentioned by Cole as limitations to his reputation. Here again, a parallel can be drawn with the paintings of Peter and Catharine Whyte.  Cole also notes that Phillips “clung to an older (and …  no less valid) definition of beauty” and there again we recognize one more thing the Whytes and Phillips shared. Finally, Cole cites James Ackerman in stating that modern criticism gives priority to “the forces that make for change in art” and these are “praised more warmly than those that make for stability.”[xi]

That so many fine artists are excluded from the mainstream according to “the forces that make for change” is a matter of fact. When we examine the decades of the 1930s and the 1940s in Canada, we are dealing primarily with the aftermath of the Group of Seven in its expansion as the Canadian Group of Painters, followed by the post-war flowering of abstraction in the 1950s and the 1960s.

But Banff being Banff, the East came to the mountains, at least on holiday. If you lived in Banff in the 1940s, you could get to know a number of notable Canadian artists who came to Banff every summer to teach at the developing Banff School of the Arts. A summer sketching camp in 1933 led by British-born Calgary artist A.C. Leighton had been invited to join the University of Alberta Department of Extension’s initiative, creating the Banff School of Fine Arts in 1935. Another British-born artist, H.G. Glyde arrived in Canada to teach drawing at the Provincial Institute of Technology, becoming head of the Art Department the following year. He was also head of the painting division of the Banff School of Arts, a position he would hold until 1966.

The Canadian artists invited to teach the summer painting classes in Banff in 1940 were André Biéler, Arthur Lismer and Walter J. Phillips, the latter joining Glyde as a regular instructor. There followed Charles Comfort, George Pepper, A.Y. Jackson, J.W.G. Macdonald, and others. It would seem that the connections of the Whytes with these artists were purely social, although a number would become good friends. Perhaps closest among them, along with Walter J. Phillips who moved to Banff in 1948, were George Pepper and his wife Kathleen Daly Pepper.

Conclusion

I started this essay with a personal memory of Banff from the short time I lived there, so it seems appropriate to conclude with another. The Foundation’s building had opened in 1968, just four years before I was hired as the art curator in September of 1972. One of my fondest memories and one that has never left me was the afternoon tea ritual in the afternoon. A tea cart was rolled down a back hallway, and from an open door, tea and cookies were served to guests comfortably seated in a room warmed by a gas fireplace, now called the Swiss Guides Room. Also in that room were some paintings from the modest collection, consisting mostly of works by Peter and Catharine Whyte and the artists they knew and loved. There would inevitably be Peter’s Lake O’Hara of 1935 and his Bow Lake from the Summit of 1945, and one of his works from the Columbia Icefields. One or two of the Stoney portraits done by Peter or Catharine would hang there too, or in the staircase on the way down to the Gallery from the front entrance. Also, in pride of place, near the fireplace, was Aldro T. Hibbard’s Mount Biddle at Lake O’Hara of 1924-25.  Often, George Pepper’s large forest landscape was featured as well.

The tea and home-made cookies offered to museum visitors were a reflection of the hospitality extended to visitors for so many years by Catharine in her home a stone’s throw away. Another memory for me, of course, was tea and cookies with Catharine at the kitchen table in that memory-filled home. But I was not in Banff long enough to get to know her well.

At the beginning of Joan Murray’s August 1977 interview with Catharine, she modestly replied to Joan’s question “How do you feel about being an artist” with “I’m not a real artist; that’s the trouble, I’m really not.” And she goes on to say

“The trouble was that when we first started painting, Pete and I painted very much the same way. We used the same paints, with the same colour; the palette was the same, the same size canvas; same type of subject.”

One could, of course, disagree with Catharine about whether or not she was a real artist. Given the paintings she left behind, most people would. We might also disagree with her belief that Peter was the “real” artist.

Their place in the context of Canadian art is a difficult one to determine. Who were their peers? They had many friends and acquaintances made over the years, but these were more often social. An interesting document from 1945, annotated by Catharine in 1949, contains short comments about the artists they knew (or with whose work they were most familiar).[xii] But they did not exhibit with them, apart from Peter’s participation in the large Art Association of Montreal’s spring exhibitions of 1932 and 1947. They did not attend these exhibitions and they were not members of any of the eastern Canadian art societies, including the Canadian Group of Painters formed in 1933. This meant that there work remained unknown with the exception of the successful touring exhibition organized by Clare Bice in 1948-49. They did not attend the Kingston Conference held in 1941organized by their friend André Biéler since Peter had by then enlisted in the Armed Forces.

Peter and Catharine remained relative outsiders to Canadian art’s system, which Lisa Christiansen so clearly describes in her essay in the book that accompanies the exhibition. They did not really see themselves as part of it, perhaps because of their relative isolation, their special subject matter, and a worldview which always crossed borders naturally and easily. The international destination that was Banff always defined their world and their place in it, as much as their many travels abroad. But Banff for much of the year was an isolated community. That isolation made their works less present and less familiar to the broader Canadian art public. Their physical and spiritual distance from Toronto and Montreal meant that they were out of the mainstream.

This is not necessarily to the detriment of an appreciation of their work today. Their work must be considered on its own merits. A comparison of their work to that of their contemporaries, many of them more “modern,” re-enforces their unique contribution, which is above all, a celebration of place.

Canadian art history is under constant revision and correction. Strong western voices, past and present, are constantly emerging and are celebrated, and with the emergence of strong western voices, not least of which are the proud voices of Indigenous artists, there is no doubt that more people will come to appreciate the very special and unique contribution Peter and Catharine Whyte made to Canadian art. At the very least, their love of the Rocky Mountains and their generosity of spirit should be celebrated.

© Roger H. Boulet
Summerland, BC
3 March 2018

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Notes to Part II

^[i]. Peter’s best man was fellow artist and Boston School student Gardner Cox. Cox had also visited Banff in the summer of 1929 at the same time as Catharine.

^[ii]. Works exhibited in 1932 were “Lake O’Hara,” and two sketches “Yoho Valley” and “A Lake in the Rockies”. Works exhibited in 1947 were “Stonies” and “Mountain Solitude.” Evelyn de R. McMann. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts formerly Art Association of Montreal Spring Exhibitions 1880-1970. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988., p. 399.

^[iii]. Catharine’s frank reaction to the whole adventure, on their way home aboard the Empress of Australia, was that “We think it best to call this trip a scouting trip; we have learnt a heap about travelling and have decided that the thing to do is to stick to painting Indians and mountains.” In Whyte, p. 86.

^[iv].  Caught in the bureaucracy of the Armed forces, when Peter arrived in Ottawa on 30 October he had not been informed of the requirement that he would have had to be in Ottawa the previous 20^th of September when the Canadian War Records office had sent the designated “war artists.” For more information on Peter’s service, see Nancy Townshend, A History of Art in Alberta 1905-1970. Calgary: Bayeux Arts Inc., 2005, pp. 63-66.

^[v].Whyte, p. 42.

^[vi]. Whyte, p. 40.

^[vii]. Whyte, p. 52.

^[viii]. Whyte, p. 89.

[ix] Lawren P. Harris to Catharine Whyte, 4 April 1949. M36.318.

^[x]. Whyte, Jon. “Mountain Painters” in Mountain Glory – The Art of Peter and Catharine Whyte  Banff: Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, 1988, p. 29.

^[xi]. Douglas Cole “Out of the Mainstream: Walter J. Phillips and the Context of Canadian Art” in Manitoba History, Number 3, 1982. (http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/03/phillips_wj.shtml) (28 January 2018).

[xii] Author unknown. The development of painting in Canada, 1665-194.  Toronto: Ryerson Press,  1945, 65pp. Catharine’s hand-written notes appear in the margins of biography section.  06 D49 Pam.

The writer acknowledges the financial support of the Whyte Museum and its archives for the research associated with the texts in this blog. Opinions in this blog text are the author’s own.

The Whyte Museum in Banff will feature an exhibition entitled Artistry Revealed: Peter Whyte, Catharine Robb Whyte and Their Contemporaries. June 17th to October 21st, 2018. A book, accompanying the exhibition, will be published. The exhibition and publication are supported by the Museum Assistance Program of the Government of Canada.

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Introduction: Banff, as an International Destination

When I lived in Banff (1972-74) locals used to say that if you waited long enough, you would meet someone you knew on Banff Avenue no matter where they lived. Banff was an international destination. Everyone eventually visits Banff. And this proved true, but what was also true is that a lot of people you won’t know come to Banff and you might get to meet them there, and connect.

What made Banff the international destination that it was is an interesting story, and it inevitably affects those who live there and those who visit. It is a unique place. For those few actually born in Banff, it provides a different world view because from early on, they have an expansive view of community.

The history and development of Banff National Park are linked to the tourism amenities made available from its early history. Added to these, the development of mountaineering and skiing communities would bring even more visitors to Banff. The creation of the Alpine Club of Canada in 1906–in Winnipeg of all places– promoted mountaineering in the ranges in Alberta and British Columbia. Another endeavour, in Banff, was the Banff Winter Carnival, the result of an effort Austrian skier Conrad Kain who built a ski jump down Tunnel Mountain and organized a winter sports festival in 1911, which evolved into the Banff Winter Carnival in 1917.

These events attracted young people in Banff, and the ski industry developed as a result. Cliff White, the eldest son of pioneer merchant David White, helped the fledgeling ski industry to develop. His brother Peter was an avid skier from a young age. But he was destined for an artistic career, rather than an athletic one.

2. Peter Whyte in Banff

Born on 22 January 1905, he manifested some interest in drawing. He attended high school in Banff but never graduated. While in his teens, he took a correspondence course in cartooning, and developed his artistic interests on his own, without any encouragement from his parents.

Peter had been inspired by the first professional artist who settled in Banff. Nora Drummond-Davies (1862-1949) is known to have settled in Banff as early as 1916. She taught art classes in the local schools where one of her students was Peter White.

The year 1916 also brought a very illustrious visiting artist from Boston in the person of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925).  He usually travelled to Switzerland for the summers, but given the dangers to commercial shipping wrought by the Germans, Sargent decided to come to Canada instead. The Brewster Company helped Sargent set up his camp in Yoho Park, just across the Continental Divide, first to paint Twin Falls in the Yoho Valley, and later at Lake O’Hara. The result was one of the most extraordinary landscapes of Lake O’Hara ever painted. The first Canadian artist to visit the area was probably Bell-Smith who had visited both lakes O’Hara and McArthur in 1904.

In 1921, five years after Sargent’s visit, two American artists coincidentally decided to establish summer studios in Banff. They were Belmore Browne (1880-1954), who purchased a house on Spray Avenue, and Carl Rungius (1869-1979) who purchased a lot on the road to the upper hot springs where he built a house and studio. Both were already well-known artists of landscape and wildlife. Both were hunters familiar with the mountains from previous excursions to American mountain ranges. Rungius had first visited Banff in 1910 at the invitation of outdoorsman and outfitter Jimmy Simpson.

Peter Whyte, who was 16 in 1921, soon met these two artists, just when his interest in art was growing. He was often employed by the Brewster Company as a chauffeur for visiting tourists, many of whom were from the eastern United States. Belmore Browne especially encouraged Peter’s interests and provided him with art materials, the younger artist accompanying him on some sketching trips. It was Browne who suggested to Peter that he should attend art school at the recently opened Otis Art Institute in Westlake near Los Angeles. Peter travelled to California in 1923 and attended classes at Otis in 1923-24. Returning to Banff in 1924, he met the New England landscape artist Aldro T. Hibbard (1876-1972) who was visiting and may have painted in his company. Hibbard returned to the area in 1925 on his honeymoon. Hibbard suggested that Peter attend a more established school, the Boston Museum’s School of Fine Art, which he had himself attended from 1909 to1913.

2. Catharine Robb in Concord, Mass., 1906-1925

Catharine Robb was 19 when she first attended the Boston School of Fine Arts in 1925. She came from a prominent wealthy family living in Concord, Mass., where art and culture were very much part of the environment. Her grandfather was Edward Sylvester Morse, a noted scholar and collector with previous associations with the Peabody Museum of Salem and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Her father, a prominent engineer with Stone & Webster, a pioneering firm of electrical engineers, prospered with the company.

Before her society debut in December of 1924, she had attended a private school since 1921, the Wheeler School, in Providence, RI, a school focused on the arts and liberal arts, where she graduated in 1924. She excelled in art and art history. The family commissioned her portrait by Frederick Bosley (1881-1942), a Concord resident, who taught painting at the Boston Museum School.

The summer of 1924 was spent travelling abroad, on a grand tour of Europe. Departing from Boston on 9 June 1924, Catharine and her family arrived in Liverpool nine days later. Visits to the National and Tate galleries in London are mentioned in her journal, as well as the British Museum. Cathedral visits are also mentioned, including Gloucester, Wells, Salisbury and Winchester. In Holland and Belgium by mid-July, she visited The Hague, Haarlem, Amsterdam, Brussels, Brugge and Ghent where she mentions seeing the great Van Eyck altarpiece, The Adoration of the Lamb.

In Paris, the family attended performances of Faust at the Opera and Carmen at the Opéra Comique. They visited the Louvre, Versailles, and Fontainebleau as well as the village of Barbizon where Millet’s studio was located. Back in Paris, there were visits to the Eiffel Tower, the Bois de Boulogne and Montmartre, as well as a dinner at La Tour d’Argent. A motor trip to the Loire Valley afforded some visits to famous châteaux such as Chenonceaux, Amboise, Azay-le-Rideau, Chinon and Ussé. From Tours, they travelled to Nantes and into Brittany, visiting Pont-Aven, Concarneau and Quimper, then on to Mont St-Michel before returning to Paris and visiting the Luxembourg galleries where Catharine noted in her journal there were “some awfully good modern pictures we enjoyed.”[1] In 1925, the Musée du Luxembourg housed collections of Realist, Barbizon and Impressionist paintings as a result of various gifts and acquisitions at the turn of the 20th century.[2]

They then travelled to Switzerland by way of Dijon, stopping at Geneva, Lausanne and Lucerne before crossing the border into Italy, visiting Como and Verona. In Venice, they stayed at the famous Hotel Daniele, taking in a performance of Puccini’s La Bohème at the Fenice Opera house. The trip continued with a stay in Florence and in Perugia before moving on to Rome where all the major landmarks were visited, as well as the Villa Borghese and the Vatican Museums. They finally reached Naples, by way of the Campania, and after a visit to Pompeii, they boarded a ship at Naples on 2 October, arriving in New York on 11 October.

At the very beginning of her tour in London, she wrote in her journal (30 June): “I was so glad to see such famous pictures I studied about in school,” and that statement could be applied to the entire tour, when one remembers that the study of art history at places such as Wheeler at the time would be through black and white lantern slides, illustrations in black and white or chromolithographs.  Of course, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was not too distant and offered a very fine collection. Catharine notes in a later interview, “My mother wanted me to be an artist more than I did” adding that her mother had gone to the same school in Boston.[3]

Nevertheless, few first-year students arriving at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the fall of 1925 could have boasted of recent visits to some of the great museums of Europe.

3. School of Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1925-30)

One of the best American art schools in New England was the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, founded in 1876. Boston was noteworthy for the presence of a number of artists who had trained in Paris, most notably at the Académie Julian. The School’s teaching was modelled on that of the Académie des Beaux-Arts of Paris, which meant a rigorous academic training based on drawing and the human figure. Nevertheless, the early faculty at the School was very interested in modern French painting, such as represented by the Barbizon, Realist and Impressionist schools. It is the influence of this French aesthetic that set the school apart from others in the area. As Christopher Volpe has written:

“The Boston School aesthetic blended sophistication, exacting skill, and draftsmanship with mastery of light and dedication to representing the “truth” of the visible world; it was driven by an earnest faith in the ideal of beauty and in the act of painting as an essentially good and worthy contribution to humanity. At the same time, the Boston artists’ embrace of loose, spontaneous methods appalled traditional academics, ignited a whirl of exhibitions and acquisitions, and best of all, disgusted New York, at least at first.”[4]

The Boston aesthetic was avant-garde when compared to the Hudson River School aesthetic that prevailed in New York in the 1870s and 1880s. This would change substantially in the first two decades of the 20^th century, when Boston ceded its leadership position in modern art to New York, as a result of its reaction to the International Exhibition of Modern Art held in New York in February 1913, when about 1,250 works of art, by 300 American and European artists, were shown at the 69^th regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue. Organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, the majority of works were by contemporary American artists, but the exhibition included an overview of the more modern tendencies in art by French artists, from Impressionists such as Monet, Postimpressionists such as Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, works by Fauve artists Henri Matisse, Cubist artists such as Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. It also included work by Symbolists such as Puvis de Chavannes and Odilon Redon. Among the American artists featured in the Armory Show were those associated with New York’s Ashcan school.

The outrage was centred on the avant-garde European artists, some of whom had already been shown at Alfred Stieglitz’s “291″ gallery. An equally outraged reaction occurred when a reduced version of the Armory show consisting of 634 works was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago 24 March to 16 April. By the time Boston’s Copley Society Gallery hosted it for a three-week duration, a very different exhibition was presented, reduced to 300 works, all by the European artists. Attendance was modest, compared to New York and Chicago. At the closing of the exhibition, a newspaper critic could write:

“Without an apparent ripple on the surface of the stream of daily life in Boston, the Fauves are departing from ‘among us,’ unwept, unhonored and unsung. The international exhibition of modern what-do-you-call-ems at Copley Hall is over.” [5]

That the response in Boston was so tepid was due to its relative indifference to avant-garde European developments. Boston’s artists were not affected by the Armory Show, compared to those in New York and Chicago. Was this complacency? It seems to have provided an opportunity for them to reaffirm their adherence to the solid values based on French academic standards, touched with the freshness that Impressionism had brought to painting in the latter part of the 19^th century, as well as its celebration of upper middle-class elegance and sophistication.

A little more than a year after the Armory Show, World War I began to ravage Europe putting an end, for the time being, to the frantic experimentation that had characterized French and German art in cities such as Paris, Munich, Vienna and Prague. By 1918, artists and intellectuals began to express a nostalgia for more stable times perhaps best expressed by the expression “a return to order” or a “call to order.”[6] For Boston, this meant a kind of reaffirmation of the values it had upheld since the late 1880s. By the time Peter White and Catharine Robb arrived for their first semester at the end of September 1925, the School retained its reputation. Its adherence to traditional values was reflected in its academic teachings which would go unchallenged until the late 1930s. In contrast to New York, where an interest in modern art developed, Boston preferred painterly scenes of elegance and gentility.

The semester started on 28 September 1925. Peter White’s most significant art experiences would have been the works of Carl Rungius and Belmore Browne. With money earned between 1924 and 1925 (as his parents were not about to support him in this endeavour), he registered at the Boston School.

All of the instructors at the School in 1925 were established academic artists, most of them having studied in Paris. The youngest was Leslie P. Thompson (1880-1963) who was 37 years old. He had already been teaching at the school for twelve years and was a follower of Edmund C. Tarbell (1862-1938), one of the pillars of the Boston School. He was one of Peter and Catharine’s first teachers, the instruction of that year consisting of drawing from plaster casts in charcoal. Catharine’s first mention of Peter occurs on 11 November 1925 where she mentions his skiing abilities. “Peter White, a Canadian, is one of the best of skiiers and was in the Canadian circuit last year, which goes all around trying the various jumps. He’s been over all the highest.” [7] They both did quite well during their first year, Catharine even winning the year-end Concours for a figure study. Portraiture would remain her preferred genre, as she would later admit.[8]

During that academic year, they would get to know each other, Catharine described him in her journal (March 17, 1926) as “a perfect, blue-eyed innocent boy, kind and good and ought to paint well one day.”[9] At times they visited Boston exhibitions together. There was an exhibition of Belmore Browne’s Rocky Mountain pictures at the Casson Gallery, one of which she bought. Another exhibition was that of Aldro T. Hibbard who was exhibiting at the Boston Artists’ Guild Gallery.[10] Catharine wrote of Hibbard’s pictures as “wonderful” with “so much strength and color.” Peter was able to introduce Catharine to Mr and Mrs Hibbard.

There is no record that either did much work during the summer of 1926. Peter had the opportunity to sketch with Belmore Browne, if he had spare time from working for Brewster’s, chauffeuring hotel guests or accompanying them on excursions to the Lake Louise area and the Yoho Valley. This was the first summer that the new Lake O’Hara lodge was open for business. Guests that year including the etcher Herbert Raine from Montreal, Lawren Harris and his family in mid-July and later J.E.H. MacDonald from Toronto, the latter’s third summer trip to the Rockies. In mid-to-late August, three artists from Winnipeg were camped on Lake O’Hara, at some distance from the lodge. They were Walter J. Phillips, Thomas Wesley McLean and Eric Bergman. The Rocky Mountains were a popular destination for artists during the 1920s.

As for Catharine, she spent the summer in Concord (MA) and Seal Harbor in Maine, enjoying the social set that summered there. On 31 August, she wrote in her journal of her resolution: “I want to be a great artist. I have every advantage, can buy the best material and go abroad,” yet recognizing that “when you have the wherewithal it is harder to set to work.”[11]

Over the next three years, undergoing an academic training, both Peter and Catharine would begin to mature as artists. In one sense, Peter matured more quickly due to his returning to Banff every summer, often leaving before the end of term when opportunities for employment came his way. A number of times, he accompanied Chinese workers travelling through Canada under bond ensuring their return to China after working in Caribbean countries. Despite his early spring departures, the School awarded him scholarships so he could return. The relationship between Peter and Catharine developed, especially after the death of Catharine’s father in February of 1927. It seems that as a result, she found Peter’s company comfortable. He was unpretentious, honest, genuine and easy to talk too, a refreshing change from the Boston social circles with which she was familiar. They encouraged and believed in each other.

In the fall of 1927, before returning to Boston, Peter met J.E.H. MacDonald (1873-1932) at Lake O’Hara. MacDonald was visiting the Rockies for his fourth consecutive year. Their acquaintance would be renewed there every year through 1930. This meant that Peter Whyte was getting varied experience in landscape painting. A few sketching trips with Belmore Browne boosted his confidence in his abilities. He noted on one trip in April of 1928 how he had produced a sketch, “the first sketch I made that he raved about and said he really liked, and it gave me much encouragement. … My colors are not quite right yet, but that will come later on.”[12]

There is no evidence that Catharine painted much landscape until she visited Banff during the summer of 1929. Catharine’s trip to the mountains was of critical importance for her. She not only loved the mountains but was also given some idea as to what life in the mountains would be like. She took to it easily.

Peter did not attend the Boston School for the 1929-30 term. In the fall, he was at Lake O’Hara sketching first with J.E.H. MacDonald, and also Richard Jack (1866-1952). Jack was a British-born artist, originally one of Canada’s War Artists at the end of the First World War. He had immigrated to Canada in 1927, settling in Montreal. Peter’s two sketching companions could not have been more different in their approach to the landscape.

Jim Brewster had suggested he work in the company’s Honolulu office for awhile, and Peter found a way to sail to Honolulu by way of China and Japan. From Honolulu he then took a boat back to the Orient, then on to Indonesia, through the Red Sea and to Europe, thus going around the world before joining Catharine again in London, where the couple planned to marry. By the time the wedding date approached, Catharine had thought it better to go through with a social wedding in Concord, as would have been expected of her, and to which Peter agreed. They reunited in Edinburgh and sailed back to New York, arriving on 1^st of June.

(to be continued)

(c)  2018. Roger H. Boulet

To A Shared Love of Canada’s Rocky Mountains, Part II

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Notes to Part I

[1]. Catharine’s travel diaries are preserved, along with much of her extensive correspondence at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, providing the primary source for biographical details in this text.

[2] The Musée du Luxembourg collections would not be transferred to the Louvre until 1928.Later, these collections were housed at the Musée du Jeu de Paume after 1947. Most of these collections were subsequently transferred to the Musée du Quai d’Orsay after its creation in 1977 where they remain to this day. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%A9e_du_Luxembourg and http://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/collections/histoire-des-collections/peinture.html (7 February 2018).

[3] Joan Murray, “Catharine Robb Whyte 1906-1979” in Canadian Collector, May-June 1979, p. 25-26.

^[4] Chrisopher Volpe. “A Legacy of Beauty: Paintings in the Boston School Tradition” in The Boston School Legacy. Portsmouth, NH: Blue Tree publishing. 2006. Text online at:    http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/7aa/7aa740.htm 19-01-2018)

^[5] http://armory.nyhistory.org/the-armory-show-lands-with-a-thud-in-boston/(18 January 2018)

^[6] See http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/r/return-order (20 January 2018)

^[7]. Jon Whyte. Pete ‘n’ Catharine, their Story, Banff: The Whyte Foundation, 1980, p. 26.

[8] Joan Murray, op. cit. p. 27.

^[9] Jon Whyte, p. 29.

^[10] This 1926 exhibition in Boston, included 13 paintings done in the Banff and Lake O’Hara area.

^[11] Jon Whyte, p. 32.

^[12] Jon Whyte, p. 46.