Paul Kane's Journal of his Western Travels, 1846-1848 - History and ...

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of North Dakota and outhem Manitoba capture the
impre ive event in the wide-open prairie. ven 0,
hi ' range of vi uaJ art does not entirely repre ent
Kane s talent. The journaJ of hi trip pre ent an
understated, droll chal~acter who had taken the measure
of the world and could view it with both curio ity
and equanimity in a tone of dry, laconic wit. With
characteristic self-effacement, he writes that he is
known by his French-speaking traveling companion
a ' .. Bushway" 4; certainly he was the colorful type
who attracts nicknames, and perhaps the type who
can both play and take a joke. On the buffalo hunt,
after forgetting to load his gun at the first opportunity
for a kill, he wounds a bull on the second. but as he
describes the events, he too pays a price, albeit not
the price paid by the bull. Laying his gun on the
pommel of his saddle, he takes up his sketchbook to
draw the bull while its wounds have left it stunned,
though still standing: -but then "the Bull made a furious
charge on me[.] I let go gun [ ]cetch b[ 0 ]ok and
aD, " managing to fire a few more rounds into him.
These, he dryly puts it, 'stoped him[;] he tud long
anph [enough] for me to take a [s]cetch and [then he]
fe1e [fell]. " Such are the perils and rewards of painting
en plein air.
As the late Russen Harper, the eminent historian
of Kane's art, has stated, Paul Kane was the son of
Michael Kane, an English career soldier with the
Royal Horse Artillery, and Frances Loach, a young
woman whom he had apparently known in every sense
during his posting in County Cork, Ireland. The Kanes
emigrated from Ireland to York (which became Toronto
in 1834), Upper Canada, in 1819 when Paul was
eight or nine years old; there, Michael Kane set up
shop as a. wine merchant. S And there Kane grew up.
According to Maude Allan Cassells, the daughter of
George William AJJan - who would become Kane's
patron in the 1850s - Kane was sent at an early age
to learn "carpentering" in the employ of a fumirure
maker. Cassells conjectures that such work must have
gained Kane entrance to the houses of the town, and
thus, access to the few examples of European painting
then in existence in the parlors of "muddy York."6
What is clear is that Kane taught himself painting,
showing more interest and aptitude in it than in such
school subjects as composition. Years later. he wrote
his western journal phonetically, dictated his letters,
and had his wife write the fair copy of the manuscript
of his book about those travels. 7 In 1847. Mary
Richardson Walker, the wife of a missionary in Oregon,
judged Kane '"a clever artist but an ungodly man,
of not much learning. " 8
Wanderings of an Artist Among the Indians of
8
North America from Canada to Vancouver' lland
and Oregon through The Hudson's Bay Company's
Territory and Back Again w as in trom ntal as th
painting in preading the fame of Paul Kane throughout
the Eogli h- peaking world, and to urope as
well. Issued by the nglish publisher I
Brown, Green ngmans & Robert in March 1859
it was the first book on the ubject of all the lands
northwest of the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean that
was not written by an employee of the fur trade. For
thi reason - the Hud on Bay Company was in the
news that year because it still . oUght a renewal for i
exclusive right to trade in those vast lands' - and for
others, Kane's book old particularly well enjoying
tran lations into French (Paris, 1861) German
(Leipzig, 1862), and Danish (Copenhagen 1863 .
The idea for the book, like the idea for the travel
them elves probably came to Kane from George Catlin
(1796- ]872), the celebrated American painter
whom Kane met in England. 10 After fifteen years in
York and nearby Coburg Kane went to the ruted
States in 1836. For five years he worked as a portrait
painter (first in Detroit where he probably met John
Mix Stanley [1814-1872], who would become another
renowned painter of Native Americans and of the
Oregon Territory ll), and in Mobile, Alabama. Little is
known of his life or artistic development in these
years, but presumably he was earning enough to get
by, for he sailed to Europe from ew Orleans in June
1841. Following periods of study in Rome and aple
Kane spent the winter of 1842-1843 in London. There
he met Catlin and saw Catlin s art. The American s
famous exhibition of Indian paintings, the product of
six years (1830-1836) spent on the American plains
and in the foothills of the Rockies, was on display in
the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, in early 1843. By that
time, Catlin had also published hi best-selling OOok
Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and
Conditions of the North American Indians (1841) in
London, and had reached the apogee of the fame that
he would enjoy for such a short period during his
lifetime.
Not only did Catlin's paintings and book inspire
Kane but so too it seems, did other aspects of the
American's career. Besides trying to organize a westward
trip as soon as he returned to North America in
1843. Kane followed Catlin in his attempts to bring
notice to his work. As Catlin. though oot successfully
had urged his art on the American Congress so Kane
endeavored, successfully to gain a commission: a
dozen oil paintings to what was known as the Parliament
of Canada in 1856,12 and one hundred to a newly
found patron, George William Allan, of Toronto. 13 As
MacLaren/ Kane