ABSTRACT
Emblems of Identity: An Introduction to
the Painting of Indian Portraits in
Canada
Lisa Henderson
1991
The painting of Indian portraits is examined as a cultural phenomenon and historical theme
in Canadian art. From the time of first contact Indians were represented by European
artists, but in colonial Canada representation often took the form of portraiture, because
the first professional artists were usually portraitists and native leaders were initially
accorded the honours of statesmen. Later, individual Indians came to be viewed as symbolic
representatives of abstract human qualities and of Canada, itself. The late nineteenth
century belief that Indians were members of a vanishing race and the accompanying
popularization of ethnographic study encouraged artists to make Indian portraits in large
numbers. Many of these artists lived in Western Canada in the early twentieth century.
Their paintings and working methodologies are identified and compared to trace an
inheritance of layered, stereotypical imagery and thought about the Indian in
Euro-Canadian society. The process of making the portraits, what they represented and how
they were perceived after they were made all suggest that they are emblematic of the
identity of those people who painted and appreciated the portraits, not the ones they
purport to represent.
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