The uniformed man stares optimistically into the uncertain future in Jack Humphrey’s 1942 work “A Canadian Sailor.” Mounted adjacent to it is Marion Long’s 1944 piece “A Portrait of a Wren,” which depicts one of the women in Canada’s naval service during World War II. She gazes straight ahead, eyes full of the seriousness of her duty.
These are the first two paintings visitors will see in the Canadian War Museum’s new exhibit, The Navy: A Century in Art.
Featuring 46 paintings by some 20 Canadian artists selected from the Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, the exhibit was created to celebrate the Canadian Navy’s centennial this year.
The exhibit has previously been shown at the Military Museums in Calgary and the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax.
The exhibit includes works on canvas and paper from the First World War through to the present day.
But in spite of its range, this exhibit should not be taken as a history of the Canadian Navy, according to Laura Brandon, the Canadian War Museum’s art historian.
“This doesn’t show the full history because artists weren’t everywhere and you don’t know how war is going to progress,” Brandon said. “That applies to the entire collection. It’s where events and artists have happened to be at the same place at the same time.”
Instead, Brandon said an exhibition like this offers an understanding of specific instances, which depend on and translate into other media.
“But it can’t be translated into a 100 per cent coherent explanation of the Canadian Navy over a hundred years because we don’t have the art to show,” she said, noting northern art as an example.
What the exhibit does show are the individuals who served in the navy and the trials and dangers they faced, she said.
“I think you get the sense of the exhibition, what the navy did, where they did it, and the extent to which it was integrated into the lives of ordinary Canadians,” Brandon said.
The war artists themselves were sometimes involved in the events they depicted. Harold Beament’s “Burial at Sea” includes himself as a saluting officer at the wartime funeral service, as he was actually captain of the vessel when the service took place.
“I think that when you look around at these paintings, virtually everything has a person in it,” Brandon said. “It’s not a show about ship portraits.”
The exhibit closes with “Olympic with Returned Soldiers,” a canvas by Arthur Lismer, one of the Group of Seven. Another interesting feature of this exhibit is that these paintings are sponsored by the navy, and there were expectations of what the artists should depict.
“These are not artists working as style,” Brandon said. “They were given instructions that they needed to be accurate.”
“There were people hanging over their shoulders, particularly during the Second World War.”
According to Brandon, the artists were even told what size the paintings had to be, which is why many of them tend to be a uniform size.
Brandon said this exhibit reminds visitors of an important part of Canada’s naval service: sacrifice.
“Some people come home, some people don’t. Some vessels survive, some don’t,” she said.
The exhibit will be on display until March 20.