Folk Art - Canadian Needlework Queen Victoria

Illustrations for brochures which JD Kelly completed in 1892.

JK Kelly was no city boy who imagined what the wilderness experience was like.

He had been born in Gore's Landing, a tiny outpost in southeastern Ontario, on Rice Lake, so he came by his knowledge from direct experience.

Later, when he had to move to the big city to find work as an illustrator he was called on to illustrate brochures etc., with outdoor themes.

With his painter friends in the Toronto Art Student's League (founded 1886) he took part in sketching outings so as not to lose touch with the heartbeat of Canada outside the contaminated urban areas where they were all forced to stay to get work.

The group published annual calendars from 1892 to 1904 which featured Canadian life and poetry.

The Good Old Days ... Before the women were important enough to get notice, or the vote. And before all those immigrants came...

Right some of JD's friends - some of Canada's most notable Victorian aritsts - fooling about.

All the men are noted around the edge: Fred Brigden, an anonymous ?, WW Alexander, CM Manly, FS Challener, Dave Thomson, and WD Blatchley with the pipe pouring a drink for the horse skull.

Go to WD Blatchley

Mabel on the Table - The most prominent figure - a woman - is totally ignored in the notation, a mere decoration...She may have been one of the very few women artists allowed into the inner sanctum of Canada's leading painters.

Below surrounded by their wilderness paintings are more of JD's friends - all great Canadian artists who went out of their way to paint Canada's great outdoors during the Victorian-Edwardian period.

JD Kelly sits at front left of a group of entirely Anglo-Saxon males, swamping only two women artists.

Go to Owen Staples

Go to CW Jeffries

Go to Farquhar McGillivray Knowles

Now compare the exquiste painting of a Canadian campfire scene with one by Tom Thomson right.

Which is nice paint on canvas.

But where is the emotion, the intellectual content, the personal triggers that connect with so many levels of human experience with which JD Kelly has peppered his canvas?

Anyone, young or old, can stand before JD's picture and talk for ages about the activities he showed, and the multiplicty of props and symbols he used, all connected to something in the Canadian experience in camping or scouting or young people, or old, for that matter.

Tom, by contrast, has a basic tent, lit with a slash of light, and a fire in front... Ok...

Now, how long can young people - and old - country bumkins or city sophisticates alike, stand there and talk about that?

JD has all that too, presented with just as much aritstry, but then has added layers of so much, much more...

To appeal to a far broader spectrum of viewers, who are ever bit as sophistaicated in their demands for meaning in art as those Tom painted for. Probably more so.

It is exactly why JD was a highly sought after and successful artist and illustrator. Perhaps the most successful of his age.

Tom on the other hand, sought escape from his paying work as an illustrator, and pursued essentially a very lonely lfiestyle in the woods.

Tom was trying to get in touch with himself; JD wanted to connect to others.

Tom died alone and unhappy. Today his art makes rich people happy. Buth their conversation about Tom's painting hasn't improved. "Do you have any idea of what my husbnad spent to get that Thompson?" (sic) alternating with, "He spent how much on that Thomson?"

Which gave rise to the famous "The rich know the price of everything, and the value of nothing." Too much money does that to you.

JD on the other hand, second to no other artist, gave countless generations of Canadians of all ages, their everlasting view of Canada's heritage of people, places, and events. And lots to talk about of what connects Canadians to Canada.

Great Canadian Heritage Treasure	Who can conjure up a more glorious reverie of a boyhood experience, than JD Kelly has fabulously captured here. We have never seen a more wonderful painting that evokes better the thrill of what scouting and outdoor camping is all about. JD has captured a magnificent Canadian moment that countless generations of Canadian boys can remember: wonderful camaraderie with boyhood chums joking and laughing, an adventure in the real wilderness, wild animals nearby, the moon rising over the quiet lake, the fire crackling in the shelter of the rock. One boy practices his knots, another - to the joy of every parent - munches an apple from the bountiful supply on the plate. No Timbits in this pre-fast foods generation of scouts. All are robust and fresh faced. No pimply faces here, or fat boys, puffed up by overdoses of transfats of later times. The creative genius of JD Kelly is well displayed here: the placement and attitude of every figure grouped around the fire, in a magnificently framed nature setting, that is certain to make the heart ache of any boy or girl who ever went on a scouting outing.

Moonlight Magic - JD Kelly, c 1926
Orig. oil - Image Size - 61 x 71 cm Found - Toronto, ON

JD Kelly - (1)