Canada, Oh Canada!
Today is Canada Day, our northern neighbor's national holiday celebrating its confederation in 1867.The Smithsonian American Art Museum collection features many depictions of Canada—and other countries—by American artists.
Canada, Oh Canada!
Today is Canada Day, our northern neighbor's national holiday celebrating its confederation in 1867.The Smithsonian American Art Museum collection features many depictions of Canada—and other countries—by American artists.
Landscape painter Robert Duncanson painted this colorful autumnal view, On the St. Anne's, East Canada, in Montreal between 1863 and 1865.
The photograph below of the Canadian Falls at Niagara was taken by an unidentified photographer in the late nineteenth century, a time when Americans flocked to Niagara to enjoy the awe-inspiring views.
With the tourists came enterprising photographers. These photographers produced hundreds of ambrotypes, tintypes, wet glass negatives, and stereocards. Ambitious young "scenic" photographers used shots of the falls to demonstrate the breadth of their experience.
Pictured top: Robert S. Duncanson, 1821/1822–72, On the St. Annes, East Canada, 1863, 1865, oil, 9 1/8 x 15 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Drown.
Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Sharing Traditions: Five Black Artists in Nineteenth Century America. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1985). and Merry A. Foresta. American Photographs: The First Century (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996).
Pictured bottom: Unidentified, active 19th century, The Canadian Falls, Winter, about 1890, albumen print on paper mounted on paperboard, 13 3/4 x 18 1/2 in. , Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment.