PROVENANCE
E.M. Knights Jr.
Dominion Gallery, Montreal
Canadian Paintings, Drawings, Watercolours, Prints and Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries, Sotheby Parke Bernet (Canada) Inc., May 3, 1983, lot 20, cover lot
Kenneth G. Heffel Fine Art Inc., Vancouver
Peter and Joanne Brown Collection, Vancouver, 1983
The Peter & Joanne Brown Collection, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 23, 2016, lot 220
Private Collection, Toronto

Cornelius David Krieghoff, although of German ancestry, was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He trained in Germany and later Paris, settling in Quebec in approximately 1846. The move to Canada was of enormous consequence to the young Krieghoff. He quickly found a ready market for his work, and the canvases he produced during his time in Canada are among the most vivid depictions of Canadian life in the mid-nineteenth century. Although Krieghoff did not paint his canvases outdoors, his close attention to specifics of landscape, costume, weather and narrative give modern viewers exceptional insight into the lives of nineteenth-century Canadians.

Gentlemen and Indian Hunting Caribou is a wonderful example of Krieghoff’s enormous skill both as a painter and as a chronicler of life in early Canada. Three men—two gentlemen and their Indigenous guide—are hunting. Krieghoff has minutely depicted this scene by detailing their clothing, weapons, the landscape they inhabit and, in the distance, on the left side of the composition, the caribou they hunt. The scene, although conceived in his studio, demonstrates Krieghoff’s acute observational skills and his instinctive command of narrative.

Krieghoff has been careful to accurately include details of costume and nature to build up a convincing portrayal of this hunt. We see the hunters’ arrow sashes (ceintures fléchées), striped trousers, fur hats and heavy wraps. Their Indigenous guide has a handsome feathered hat atop his head and snowshoes strapped to his back. In the case of the hunter on the left, his snowshoes support him. The second hunter rests on a mat of dry foliage. Each man has a rifle, with the two rear hunters pointing theirs at the distant caribou. A precise and clever detail is the left-hand hunter’s glove discarded on the stone to his left, which gives the composition a telling immediacy.

Aside from the hunters themselves, Krieghoff’s depiction of the trees and rocks around them serves to highlight their importance and reveals the artist’s command of natural landscape elements. The source of light is unseen from the left, but Krieghoff’s decision to use strong shadows gives the whole image a striking vitality. The sky above is richly animated with clouds and a bright patch of blue, allowing, by implication, the bright sunlight that illuminates the whole scene. Krieghoff has succeeded in suggesting that the enormous artifice of his composition is, in fact, reality. Gentlemen and Indian Hunting Caribou is a remarkable testament to his skills as an artist.

We thank Ian M. Thom, Senior Curator—Historical at the Vancouver Art Gallery from 1988 to 2018, for contributing the above essay.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars