Book chronicles changing views of the Bow River valley

When British spy Henry James Warre sat down in a meadow in 1845 and created the first painting of the Bow Valley, he would have had no idea he had just initiated what is now a long-standing tradition.

Today, according to environmental historians and authors Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles in their newly released The Painted Valley: Artists Along Alberta’s Bow River, 1845-2000, the Bow River valley is one of the most heavily painted regions in Canada.

Just as the Bow River region has been a focal point of national importance for transportation, this region has a similar status in the history of Canadian and Western Canadian art.

With the hopes of answering a simple question: how had people pictured the Bow River over time, the authors set out to gauge how the perception of the Bow River valley has changed in the more than 150 years artists have been drawn to paint the river, its valley and its mountainous backdrop.

“The history of a river is written not just along its banks; it can be read too in the culture and memory of the people who share the valley,” they wrote. “Our interest as environmental historians is in this aspect of art, rather than the aesthetic and theoretical concerns of contemporary art historians.

“Artistic representations provide one vantage point to observe shifting broader cultural perceptions of nature.”

As the authors sifted through the holdings of all of the major Alberta archives as they searched for their answers, five distinct topics emerged that ranged in time from Warre’s 1845 paintings through the periods of Impressionism and Modernism.

Along with 200 black-and-white and colour reproductions, these chapters form the backbone of the 160-page book, which adeptly explores the thought process of each group of artists who painted the river and its surroundings.

Explorers, fur traders and geographers, for example, tended to see the land as a
European possession and the subjects within the paintings reflected that belief. Red-coated Mounties, log-palisade forts and early settlements were prominent elements in the landscapes, while native people – mirroring how Europeans saw them – often appeared as small and insignificant.

Artwork, as the authors said, was enlisted in the service of the Empire. Railway artists, meanwhile, tended to make the Bow River region look like their European homes. As a result, the river and especially the mountains appear to be a calm, pastoral setting. Surprisingly, these artists, riding the rails in relative luxury on free passes, tended toleave the railway and its steam and smoke-belching locomotives out of their paintings, opting instead to pretend the industrial age had not reached the Bow Valley.

The Impressionists of the early 1900s, including famed wildlife painter Carl Rungius, began to give the Painted Valley – especially its mountains – its own distinct appearance as they began to move away from established conventions and explored their own vision.

Following in the path of the Impressionists, a new generation, artists who called the Bow valley home, began to edge away from the British watercolour traditions, paving the way for the next group who would hone a distinct sense of art in the Bow River region.

While the history of the Bow Valley region obviously plays an important role, as those were the circumstances, ideas and philosophies of the time, the authors only used that as the peg to hang the rest of the book on.

Those looking for more history of the region might be disappointed as the book is sparse in those overall historical details, but for those seeking to understand how the region has been painted and perceived over the years, it is quite rich and does a wonderful job of filling that niche.

But both artist and historian will find the authors’ insights valuable, such as why the mountains in Warre’s Bow Valley watercolours look so exaggerated or why so few painters chose to portray the river as it passes through Calgary. It also provides insights into the painters themselves, such as Rungius,who enjoyed shooting the animals he painted.

Beyond the art and history schools, The Painted Valley will have some appeal to local readers looking to see how the Bow Valley has changed over the years. In so many ways, this is a book about Canmore and Banff, more so than any other part of the river, as the majority of artists gravitated to the mountains, rather than the burgeoning city of Calgary or the prairies that line the river for the bulk of its course.

Like other University of Calgary Press titles, this book will appeal to book lovers who enjoy a tactile experience when reading: it has a nice feel and a nice look. The Painted Valley retails
for $54.95.