CURATORIAL MEMORY

In 2003, when I was director and curator at Rodman Hall Arts Centre in St. Catharines, Ontario, I worked with my good friend the late Reverend Canon Robert C. Tuck of Prince Edward Island, writer, historian, political cartoonist, and independent curator, on a very special project titled “Growing up with Robert Harris”. During my tenure in the 1990s as director and chief curator of PEI’s Confederation Centre Art Gallery I had worked closely with Tuck on presenting many different Robert Harris exhibitions.

The pre-eminent portrait painter of the late nineteenth century, Robert Harris (1849 –1919) is perhaps best known for his iconic group portrait of the “Fathers of Confederation”, which was commissioned by the Dominion Government in 1883, and for his painting “The Meeting of the School Trustees” in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada. Along with numerous commissioned portraits, he produced many landscapes and impressionist oil sketches of the geography of Canada and captured the intimate details of daily life in PEI at the turn of the century. Harris also played a leading role in the formation of Canadian art societies, serving as vice-president of the Ontario Society of Artists in 1880, and as president of the Royal Canadian Academy from 1893 to 1906.

In the Niagara Region, the work of Robert Harris is represented in Rodman Hall?s permanent collection and in the Samuel E. Weir Collection at RiverBrink, Queenston. Also, in 1901, one of Harris? major portraits of his wife “Bessie” won a medal at the Pan-American Exposition in nearby Buffalo, New York.

As descendants of Harris, Tuck and his family members were owners of many Robert Harris paintings and had a special relationship with these works. I asked Tuck if he would curate an exhibition of Harris paintings for Rodman Hall from his relatives’ personal collections, and I also asked family members for their personal comments about “Growing up with Robert Harris”. At the time of the exhibition, which comprised 60 works, I wrote: “Appreciation for the art of Robert Harris and dedication to making it accessible to all Canadians has been the legacy of the artist?s family, as revealed in this rare presentation of selected Harris works borrowed from the personal collections of his descendants. “Growing up with Robert Harris” explores the influence of Harris? art on a remarkable family that has long recognized the significant artistic achievement of their talented ancestor, and of the cultural importance of his celebration and preservation for all Canadians.”

I was born in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. The rectory had been restored and the church beside it had been built by my grandfather Ned, and designed by his brother, church architect William Harris. The house was filled with landscapes and portraits by another brother, Robert. My earliest influences were the family paintings, including many of my mother. She had spent her winters growing up with Robert in Montreal. As children we were regaled with stories of Stephen Leacock reading to her, and Robert?s tireless efforts to help found the R.C.A. The portrait of my mother that hung above my bed had shared the Gold Medal with Renoir at the exposition where President McKinley was assassinated. Often as I knelt for prayers beneath it, at bedtime,

I would look up at the unsentimental, exquisitely rendered child, her eyes gazing directly into mine and I would thank God the assassins bullet had not punctured the canvas. I myself have been painting ever since.

One of my early childhood efforts was to paint back views of all the portraits on brown wrapping paper and affix them to the frames while the family slept.

All of us, as children, were fans of Al Capp?s ?Lil Abner. Consequently we gave the portraits names appropriate to his comic strip. There was “Sparkle Plenty”, “Cousin Weak Eyes”, “Aunt Bessie from the City”, and “Blitzplik”.

Whenever the family moved, the paintings were hung before the furniture came in. Great-grandmother Sarah, Uncle Edward and all the others were waiting to greet us and make us feel at home. I have carried this on in my own family. My mother would smile at the image of herself at the age of 18 and tell us that the hat she wore in the portrait had been made by her cousin. She had worn it to have tea with a bedridden Sarah Barnhardt in Boston. Robert called the painting, “Ruth in the Gainsborough Hat”.

Later my son Stephen, who grew up with the Harris portraits in my home, was particularly enthralled by those of Robert?s architect brother William. (Stephen won the thesis prize in Architecture at Princeton and today is a successful architect. Now Robert?s portrait of William looks down on him in his own home.)

However, in rural Nova Scotia during the Depression, most of the surrounding homes hung calendars on the walls and we overheard the villagers commenting on how awful it must be to have all those dead and gone folk hanging on the wall with their eyes following us. One cleaning woman suggested they be taken to the attic. We were as outraged as if it had been suggested that a living member of the family be banished, perhaps more so.

Jean Renoir grew up with his father absorbed in producing works of great art. Renoir?s son made film images his medium. Robert Harris had no children but the work he left behind affected a number of his relatives through three generations.

In retrospect, I should say that growing up with the paintings resulted in my life-long love of painting and a thirty year teaching career at the Ontario College of Art. As well it affected how I looked at paintings in the great world galleries. Good portraits, historically and as metaphors of the human condition, are not only architecturally marvelous on a wall, they can also have great creative influence, even when no family connection exists. I believe we are fortunate indeed that Robert Harris left all of us this legacy and that growing up with them was a marvel

— Mary (Tuck) Corelli

In my family you can become an Anglican cleric, a journalist or an artist - or you can marry one. There are no other (recognised) possibilities. The result after five generations in this land of prosperity has been a persistent penury in spite of the attainment of professional respectability and, occasionally, a small measure of fame. My branch of the family features a long line of rectorial refugees who have spent ten years here and five years there, camping out in borrowed drafty houses with crooked floors, generation upon generation. For me, there has been no fixed point of real estate, no gabled homestead to return to, not even through the pages of an old photograph album. Nonetheless, there has been one abiding point of reference which few families in this forward-looking country can boast of. Heinrich Heine, the great German-Jewish poet once said, “the Torah is the portable fatherland of a Jew.” My paraphrase, respectfully intended, is “the Robert Harris paintings are the portable fatherland of my family”.

— Elizabeth (Tuck) Eayrs

While growing up in Charlottetown, one of my favourite places was the Robert Harris Art Gallery and the Legislative and Public Library. The Art Gallery was housed on the second floor of the Library and the building was built mostly with funds from the estate of Bessie Harris, the widow of Robert Harris. Books and libraries later became my life?s work and the paintings that were hung in the Gallery and in our home on Greenfield Ave. strongly influenced my time away from work. There were copies of the works of the Spanish painter Velasquez; there were paintings of Montreal, Bic, Metis, Percé and Gloucester and there were paintings of “Tough” the little mixed breed dog that was owned by Robert and Bessie.

When I later visited Madrid and saw the originals of these Velasquez paintings I thought I was seeing old friends. Montreal and the other places mentioned above in Quebec also became my favourite places to visit. “Tough” influenced my love of hairy dogs and I have owned Tibetan Terriers for over 30 years. These are not of mixed parentage like “Tough” was, but still when I saw the first photos of Tibetan Terriers, his shaggy appearance came to mind.

— Mary Beth Harris

In 1940 when I was 5 years old I lived in rural Nova Scotia in a big draughty old Anglican rectory. It was wartime, candy was rationed; my parents were as poor as the mice in the three churches where my handsome dad took services.

But we were rich in another way. All through our house fascinating faces looked down on us, and lovely land and seascapes brought beauty to the rooms. I pretended I was a princess, and that the high-ceilinged shabby house with portraits was a palace.

As a child I collected pictures of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret in a big scrapbook. They had portraits and wonderful paintings on their walls too. I was convinced I was a royal princess like them because of the paintings.

Forty years later, when my mother and I met Queen Elizabeth at an exhibition of Robert Harris portraits we talked about living with paintings. The queen and mum shared painful stories of sitting still for hours while their portraits were being painted.

Recently my seven-year-old grandson glanced around my living room and said, “We?ll never be alone as long as we have these pictures on the walls.”

When my brothers and sister got scholarships and went away to boarding school I missed them. But the portraits kept me company. The people in the pictures were always there, eyes following me about. I talked to them when no one was around. I asked them what their life was like in the “long ago.” Sometimes, I swear, we had two-sided conversations

I gazed for long times at a small painting of Robert and Bessie on a misty island beach, huddled together before the incoming tide. I imagined what they had felt, how Robert in making the painting had recaptured a romantic memory on canvas.

The largest portrait in the house was also of great aunt Bessie, gorgeous in her perfect golden gown, plumed hat and dainty white gloves.

She was my loyal audience for singing, acting, scribbling, drawing, imagining. Her large dark eyes watched me solemnly wherever I moved. Her dignified Victorian presence, looming over me from ceiling to floor, made any mischief unthinkable. And when my busy parents had to leave me to go to some parish function or emergency, aunt Bessie was my babysitter. Today she resides in the National Gallery of Canada as part of its permanent collection.

But my favourite painting, then and now, was the portrait of my mother, Ruth Harris, as a winsome 14 year old. The presence of “Little Ruthie” continues with me since her death in 1984 in this painting,

and I continue to be blessed, not only by living with the beauty of the painting but by the memory it evokes of the warm and wise woman who was our mother

—Barbara (Tuck) MacAndrew

Growing up in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia in a poor country parson?s rectory during the ?dirty thirties?, we had walls and closets filled with treasures of Canadian heritage: paintings by Robert Harris. Yet on one occasion we had our phone (number 72 ring 6) disconnected because of a too long unpaid phone bill. That was something of a contrast! I remember a local woman visting our home and saying, “What?s all them there dead people staring down from them walls. I couldn?t stand that!” Our father once referred to the paintings as “Skating Rinks for flies”, perhaps to soften the intense lauding of our celebrity relative by our mother. We lived in a cultured place . . . agricultured that is. In summer hordes of house flies crawled over everything

But no matter: read Robert Harris?s poem, “When Poverty Said Goodbye”. The talent for art (and poetry, I suppose) is in the genes. The family poetic genes got me into trouble as a 10 year old when for several days I recited to anyone and anything a two word poem regarding Aunt Bessie which I thought at the time had rhyme and cadence. It was getting to be a Mandelbrot Set when my father put a stop to it. He declared, “If you say that again you can?t go to the movie with us in Middleton this afternoon!” It was a long and lonely afternoon, for of course the brat said, this last time just to myself but unfortunately aloud, “BESSIE?S BLOOMERS!”.

There was no TV in those far distant days but I remember one evening when one of the siblings, likely sister Mary, discovered that the eyes of a large portrait of great Aunt Bessie seemed to follow you around. No matter where you moved she was looking right at you. We had a spooky time testing this discovery. I suppose this was my first art lesson. We children didn?t realize how freshly dead Robert and Bessie were to our mother (who was their niece), nor the grief she must have felt when they died.

Later on I grew to appreciate the paintings themselves. There is value in belonging to a family with such a heritage; a sort of pride comes with it that helps one not to behave unseemly. The paintings, yes, but there was something else too. Robert Harris had the strength of character to suffer through long decades of work and study to develop the genetic talents to the skill he achieved. He remains one of the great builders of our nation

— Edward Layton Harris Tuck

Growing up with Robert Harris seemed perfectly natural at the time, and living with him has seemed so ever since. One of my earliest recollections is of the large portrait of Robert?s wife, whom we knew as “Aunt Bessie”, that apparently inspired my brother to speculate on her bloomers. She was dressed in black from head to foot, in mourning for her mother, as I have learned since, who had been run over by a tram in Kingston, Ontario. As a youngster I thought it was a portrait of father, who as a clergyman, was also dressed in black!

We were poor, and years later, when I was attending College in Halifax just after the War, my mother sent me to Zwicker?s Art Shop - the only one in the city at that time - with one of the many small Robert Harris landscapes she had to see what it might be worth. Mrs. Zwicker was not much interested in it, and she estimated its value at $25. My mother would not sell it for so little. So she kept it, and all the others too. Over the years she occasionally gave one to a Church auction, but that was all.

I remember how fiercely loyal she was to Robert Harris?s memory. She was unhappy when her Charlottetown relatives pressured her in 1958 to join them in signing over title to the Robert Harris Collection to the incipient Fathers of Confederation Trust in Charlottetown.

She held out for a long time before she gave in. The Gallery/Library that the family had helped build in 1930 to accommodate the Collection was demolished and the 5000 Harris pictures became just a part of the Confederation Centre?s “Permanent Collection.”

— Robert Critchlow Tuck