(The Canadian Press circulated the following on June 18, 2009.)
CALGARY — In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Canadian Pacific Railway commissioned artists to paint, photograph and film the “new West.”
The transcontinental railway, completed in 1885, used the artists as part of an effort to persuade people in Eastern Canada and Europe to settle in the region or holiday there.
Original works by over 20 of those Canadian artists have been assembled for “Vistas: Artists on the Canadian Pacific Railway,” which runs from June 20 to Sept. 20 at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary.
“In the days before electronic media, these artists’ works were the only way to share the stunning landscapes,” the museum says.
Artists including Marmaduke Matthews, Lucius O’Brien and John A. Fraser and photographers Oliver Buell and William McFarlane Notman travelled along the Canadian Pacific track from east of Calgary into the Rocky and Selkirk Mountains between 1885 and 1910.
Their work turned out to be iconic and was “significant in helping forge Canada’s national identity,” says the museum.
Comprising 130 pieces from the Glenbow and other public and private collections, “Vistas” gives “a fascinating and thorough account of what the Rockies, the Selkirks and the railway meant to the first non-indigenous people who saw them.”