Image credit: Harold Mortimer
Emily Carr was born in Victoria, B.C. She studied first at the San Francisco School of Art (1889 - 1895), then at the Westminster School of Art, London (1899 - 1904), returning each time to teach painting and to visit native villages of the West Coast. From 1910 to 1911 she studied at the Colarossi in Paris, sketching in Brittany, and traveled for her health in Sweden.
When she returned to Victoria she held her first exhibition and again began to paint the coastal villages. Discouraged by years of neglect, she had almost ceased to paint when in 1927 she first saw the work of the Group of Seven in Toronto. She then adopted a different, more austere manner and began her most characteristic work. From 1932 until her death in 1945, Carr’s works shifted to soaring interpretations of the West Coast landscape.
Emily Carr became a member of the Canadian Group of Painters in 1933 and began seriously to write several autobiographical books.
Carr died in 1945.