Charles Comfort

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Charles Comfort
Painter
Notable workTadoussac, 1935, Captain Vancouver, 1937, BC Pageant 1951
AwardsCompanion of the Order of Canada

Charles Fraser Comfort,

sculptor
, teacher, writer and administrator.

Career and biography

Early life

Born near

Winnipeg School of Art
.

Comfort saved money to attend the

Arts and Letters Club, taking life-study classes and meeting members of the Group of Seven. Comfort visited the Group's inaugural 1920 exhibition, which inspired Comfort to work on landscape paintings, a theme he continued throughout his lifetime.[2]

Comfort returned to Winnipeg in 1922 for his first exhibition of

Le Coq d'Or in the background (painting now in the Art Gallery of Hamilton).[3]

Mid-career and work as a war artist

Tadoussac
of 1935.

Comfort was commissioned to design a mural for Toronto's North American Life Building in 1932, the first in many he completed. The following year he met the American Precisionist Charles Sheeler. One of the artist's most celebrated works, Tadoussac of 1935, suggests the influence of Sheeler due to its clear crisp colours and shapes.[2]

In the 1930s, Comfort worked in commercial illustrator as well as a teacher at the

Ontario College of Art and Design from 1935 to 1938. In 1936, Comfort rented a studio next to a room occupied by A. Y. Jackson, in the Studio Building, a building made famous by the Group of Seven artists, and the following year he designed the exterior frieze and interior murals for the Toronto Stock Exchange
.

Toronto Stock Exchange facade, with Comfort's frieze

In 1937, he was commissioned by the

International Nickel Company to produce a 2x6m centrepiece work entitled "The Romance of Nickel" for the Paris Exhibition; it now hangs in the National Gallery of Canada.[4]

Comfort was one of the organizers of the 1941 Kingston Conference, a meeting of Canadian artists to discuss the role of art in society as well as other issues facing the arts at the time. He also helped to initiate Canada's World War II War Art program, serving as an

Official Second World War artist
. He joined the Canadian Army (Active) in February 1943. During this time he painted widely in the south of England before joining the 1 Canadian Infantry Division in Italy, travelling by sea in November 1943 with the field historian Samuel Hughes. He served as a war artist from that date until July 1946, holding the rank of major. There he painted principally the Ortona and Liri Valley battles before returning to the United Kingdom in August 1944. He visited North-West Europe for some weeks in 1945.[5] In 1956, he had published Artist at War, a book he wrote about his experiences.

He returned to academic life after the war teaching mural painting at the Ontario College of Art, and later became Professor of Art and Archeology, University of Toronto until 1960.[6] He taught primarily painting techniques, including mural-painting, and other studio courses later in his career at the university.

Comfort was a founding member of the

Canadian transcontinental train. Each of the murals depicted a different national or provincial park; Comfort's was Banff National Park.[7] He also created murals for the Canadian National Railway Montreal Central Station.[8]

Director of the National Gallery of Canada 1960-65

After the war, Comfort served on the Board of Directors and various committees at the

Art Gallery of Toronto, and was Director of the National Gallery of Canada from 1959 until 1965. During his time as the Director of the National Gallery of Canada, he helped the National Gallery of Canada move into the Lorne building in 1960.[9] He was also a member of the Canadian Society of Graphic Art, Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour, and Canadian Group of Painters, and held executive positions in a number of art organizations. He received an honorary doctorate from Mount Allison University in 1958. He was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.[10] His extensive involvement during his life with artists' organizations indicates his strong belief in the importance of art integrated with society.[2] In 1972, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada
.

Commissions

Charles Fraser Comfort was commissioned to paint a posthumous 3/4 length portrait of No. 1557 Colonel William Reginald Sawyer, Director of Studies 1948-1967 standing in front of the Mackenzie Building and the Stone Frigate in his academic robes for the Royal Military College of Canada.[11]

First Nations criticism

Comfort's now controversial Captain Vancouver, completed in 1939.

The

Captain George Vancouver and an unnamed Indian chief at a potlatch ceremony. Comfort researched the clothing of the era and consulted Aboriginal anthropologist Dr. Marius Barbeau and others. The painting was removed in 1969 when the hotel was renovated. The wife of Governor General of Canada Roland Michener discovered the work after it was briefly misplaced and donated it to the University of British Columbia. From this time aboriginal viewers have raised concern over the representation of the First Nations people, as Captain Vancouver physically stands triumphantly over the aboriginal men.[12]

In 1997,

Kwakiutl artist David Neel made the Captain Vancouver Portrait Mask, a carved mixed-media mask of the captain. Neel made this work to critique the mural and its depiction of First Nations history and society.[13] Also in 1997, Edmonton-based artist Jane Ash Poitras
painted a new mural representing the same scene with the intention to critique and re-negotiate Comfort's depiction of First Nations people. [14]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Gray, 4.
  2. ^ "Interview with Charles Comfort, 3 October 1973, Canadian Painting in the Thirties Exhibition Records, National Gallery of Canada Fonds, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 March 2012. Retrieved 15 August 2010.
  3. ^ "Charles F. Comfort - The Romance of Nickel - 1937". National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 3 April 2021.
  4. ^ Wodehouse, R. F. (1968). "A Checklist of the War Collections of World War I, 1914-1918, and World War II, 1939-1945". archive.org. National Gallery of Canada, 1968. Retrieved Dec 3, 2023.
  5. ^ Reid, 186-187.
  6. ^ "The 50th Anniversary of the CPR Stainless Steel Passenger Fleet" (PDF). Canadian Rail (503): 211–223. November–December 2004. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-09-24. Retrieved 2015-02-07.
  7. ^ "Canadian National Railway Central Station", Canada's Historic Places Archived 2016-01-12 at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ "400,000th Visitor For Gallery". Ottawa Citizen. 27 September 1960.
  9. ^ "Members since 1880". Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Archived from the original on 26 May 2011. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
  10. ^ Kamille Parkinson, PhD 'An Impressive Art Collection at RMCC' (Kingston, E-veritas, June 25, 2012
  11. ^ Gray, 20-22.
  12. ^ "Telling Stories: Narratives of Nationhood". Confederation Centre Art Gallery. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
  13. ^ MacAndrew, Barbara (23 June 1997). "Native Art Honoured at Festival". The Globe and Mail: Arts Section. p. C1.

References

External links

Further reading

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