UNTITLED PORTRAIT

pastel on paper

25 x 17.5 in. (63.5 x 44.5 cm)

Price Realized:

11700.00 CAD.

INCLUDES BUYER’S PREMIUM

Notes:

signed lower left

Literature: History in Their Blood: The Indian Portraits of Nicholas de Grandmaison (Hugh A. Dempsey; Douglas & McIntryre Ltd.; 1982); “Drawn from the Past: Nicholas de Grandmaison” (Gordon Snyder; Snyder Fine Arts; 2007)

Note: Nicholas de Grandmaison’s artistic legacy lies in the creation of an impressive visual record of Canada’s Western First Nations people. This is a task he began in 1930, during a trip to The Pas, Northern Manitoba, and which he continued for decades. On p. 34 of “History in their Blood: The Indian Portraits of Nicholas de Grandmaison” Hugh Dempsey writes:

“When NIcholas de Grandmaison made his first painting tour of the prairies in 1930, the Plains Indians were generally a depressed and indigent people who had suffered neglect and privation for half a century. With a sense of urgency the artist dedicated himself to recording the faces of the Indians. ‘All the sorrow, oppression and history of their race is indelibly written on their faces,’ (de Grandmaison) said. ‘I must work quickly if I am to capture this on canvas before the race dies out or it commingles with that of the white man.’”

De Grandmaison held a romantic vision of the Plains people as the nobility of North America; he felt a strong affinity with them, perhaps as a result of having experienced his own cultural destruction during the Russian Civil War. De Grandmaison was particularly drawn to the expressive, mature faces of the older members of the community, faces with character that reflected a lifetime of experiences, love, and suffering. Additionally, he selected subjects who bore the features that, for him, best embodied a “once-proud race”.