Paul KaneLife & Work

Born in Mallow, County Cork, Ireland, Paul Kane (1810–1871) immigrated to Canada, where he became the country’s first and only artist to embark upon a series of paintings documenting the country’s Aboriginal peoples and their land, using the medium of portraiture in a time before the dominance of photography. In doing so, Kane created a cycle of one hundred paintings that collectively revealed the vitality of the country’s indigenous cultures.

Paul Kane: Life & Work documents this unique nineteenth-century painter from his early career as a furniture painter and portraitist in Ontario to the start of his epic journey west, beginning in late May 1846. It explores how and why Kane came to travel for two years along the routes of the Hudson Bay Company, venturing as far north as Fort Assiniboine and as far south as Fort Vancouver in the Oregon Territory, exploring that vicinity and northward on Vancouver Island. Throughout the trip he encountered the First Nations and Metis people, whose likenesses and daily lives, customs, and cultural artifacts he sketched, along with the landscape.