A LOOK BACK AT THE WORK OF A CANADIAN ART PATRON - DOUGLAS DUNCAN
EACH GENERATION HAS HAD A CHAMPION OF THE ARTS
ANTIQUE AND OLD BOOK DEALERS ARE HOBBY, AND SOMETIMES, FULL HISTORIANS, UNDER THAT CASUAL, NONCHALANT SHOP DEMEANOUR. THE FIRST STORY THEY WOULD HAVE READ THIS MORNING, IN THE DAILY PRESS, WAS THE REVELATION THAT AN EXCAVATION BELOW A PARKING LOT, IN ENGLAND, CONTAINED THE LAST REMAINS OF A COURAGEOUS WARRIOR, FROM THE LEGENDARY I5TH CENTURY WAR OF THE ROSES. IT HAS BEEN PROVEN, BY RESEARCHERS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER, THAT THE SKELETAL REMAINS, FOUND IN THIS RATHER COMMON, URBAN LOCATION, WERE THOSE OF KING RICHARD III; WHICH, ACCORDING TO A REPORT IN TODAY'S TORONTO STAR, (FEB. 4, 2013, PAGE 8), WAS "THE LAST ENGLISH MONARCH TO DIE IN COMBAT." THE NEWS ARTICLE IDENTIFIES AS WELL, THAT DNA TESTING OF THE BONES, WAS ASSISTED BY CANADIAN RELATIVES OF RICHARD'S SISTER, "ANNE OF YORK," WHO ACCORDING TO THE NEWS TODAY, WAS A POSITIVE MATCH. WHAT A GREAT HERITAGE DISCOVERY. AND BELIEVE ME, IT FUELS US HOBBY ARCHAEOLOGISTS, WHO WOULD HAVE GIVEN ANYTHING TO BE ON THE LIP OF THAT EXCAVATION, WATCHING HISTORY UNEARTHED. WHILE IT PROBABLY APPEARS, WE ANTIQUE TYPES ARE BEST SUITED FOR INDOOR STUDIES, MOST OF US STARTED IN THE FIELD, HUSTLING FOR OUR DINNER. SO EVERY NOW AND AGAIN, THE URGE ARRIVES TO GET BACK TO HOW IT ALL BEGAN……AND THAT'S ALWAYS A CASE OF, WELL, A SINCERE, HONEST LOVE FOR HISTORY. IT'S ALWAYS AN EXCITING DAY WHEN HISTORY COMES OUT ON TOP FOR A CHANGE.
REVELATION AND CONTEMPLATION ABOUT BEING A PATRON OF THE ARTS
I AM A TRIED AND FAILED ARTIST. MY WIFE DENIES THIS, WHEN AT TIMES I SKETCH SOMETHING INTERESTING, ON A BLANK PIECE OF PAPER, WHILE I'M TALKING ON THE PHONE. SUZANNE HAS SEEN SOME OF MY WATERCOLOR LANDSCAPES, AND KEEPS ASKING ME TO PAINT MORE. I'VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO READ MY WIFE, IN THIS REGARD, BECAUSE IF ALL OF A SUDDEN I QUIT EVERYTHING ELSE, TO BECOME AN ARTIST, SHE'D LOSE CONSCIOUSNESS……AND THEN, UPON AWAKENING WITH A START, COMMENCE TO BEAT ME OVER THE HEAD WITH ONE OF MY ABSTRACTS, THAT I GUARANTEE, SHE WON'T UNDERSTAND. MY LANDSCAPES, BY THE WAY, LOOK LIKE ABSTRACTS. I GUESS SHE IS REALLY JUST ENCOURAGING ME TO DOODLE FOR THE FAMILY ALBUMS.
SOME OF MY CONTEMPORARIES THINK I AM A FAILED WRITER. THERE ARE MANY WHO WISH THAT I WOULD TAKE UP ART INSTEAD, AND LEAVE WRITING ALONE. SUZANNE TELLS ME TO CARRY ON, AND LIKE THE BLINKERS THEY PUT ON RACE HORSES, THAT I SHOULD FOCUS ON THE TASK AT HAND. THAT I WATCH INSTEAD, FOR THE FIRST SIGNS OF THE FINISH LINE; AND PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE PEOPLE GIVING ME THE FINGER FROM THE GRANDSTAND. IF ANYTHING I RECEIVED FROM MY UNITED EMPIRE LOYALIST ANCESTORS, IT WAS A DEEP SEEDED STUBBORN CHARACTER THAT DOESN'T THWART EASILY. AS I HAVE ADMITTED MANY TIMES IN MY LIFE, IF I CAN'T PAINT, THEN I SHALL WRITE AS A SECOND CHOICE. THE COMPROMISE HAS BEEN MY DESIRE TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH ART AND ARTISTS, AND TO WRITE OF THEIR EXPLOITS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS. I AM ENVIOUS WHICH, IN THIS CASE, I HOPE IS AN ATTRIBUTE, UNLESS OF COURSE, I WAS TO BECOME SICKLY SWEET WITH MY REVIEWS, AND PROMOTE SOMETHING THAT IS OF A MUCH LESSER QUALITY…..JUST BECAUSE OF AN INFATUATION WITH ARTIST-TYPES.
AT UNIVERSITY, IN TORONTO, I USED TO SIT AND WATCH MY ARTIST MATES, WORK AT THEIR PAINT BOARDS, IN A VARIETY OF ARTISTIC ATTEMPTS, AND ON EACH OCCASION, AT BED TIME, THEY HAD TO ASK ME TO GO HOME…..AND CEASE AND DESIST BOTHERING THEM. I WOULD BE BACK THE NEXT DAY AND THE DAY AFTER THAT, AND IF THE PAINT BOARD HAPPENED TO BE A STUDY, OR A PRELIMINARY WORK, I'D ASK IF I COULD HAVE IT TO DECORATE MY ROOM. WHEN I GRADUATED, THE HARDEST PART OF THE MOVE BACK HOME TO BRACEBRIDGE, WAS ACCOMMODATING THE FIFTY OR SO PIECES OF ART I HAD BEEN GIVEN BY MY ARTIST FRIENDS. I'M THAT KIND OF ART HOARDER EVEN TODAY, BECAUSE OF MY UNCEASING RESPECT FOR THOSE WHO ARE UNAFRAID OF USING A PAINT PANEL, AS I WOULD THIS COMPUTER SCREEN, TO AIR OPINIONS OF THE WORLD THEY SEE…..
I AM ALWAYS ENCOURAGED WHEN I READ OR QUOTE FROM THE MEMORIAL BIOGRAPHY, OF LEGENDARY CANADIAN ART PATRON, DOUGLAS DUNCAN. LET'S RETURN TO THAT WONDERFUL LITTLE BOOK, AS WE LOOKED AT IN YESTERDAY'S BLOG. NOW HERE WAS AN INTELLIGENT, FAIR, AND ENCOURAGING PATRON OF THE ARTS IN CANADA. FEW WOULD DENY, WE NEED MANY MORE LIKE DOUGLAS DUNCAN, TO BOLSTER AND INSPIRE THE ARTS COMMUNITY.
"The opening page of Evelyn Waugh's 'The Loved One,' introduces an Englishman, exiled in California, who is trying to make sense of an article in 'Horizon,' on Scottie Wilson. Scottie Wilson was, of course, one of that very large group of painters whose careers owed much of their success to a friendly push from Douglas Duncan, at a crucial stage. The 'Horizon' article speaks of Douglas Duncan as a 'refined and charming man.' The author of the article obviously did not know him, and the phrase is oddly out of keeping with the general tone of the article. It looks as though the phrase had been supplied by Scottie Wilson himself, or perhaps that he had insisted on some such phrase being inserted," wrote revered Canadian author, Northrop Frye, as published in the text of the short memorial biography, entitled "Douglas Duncan - A Memorial Tribute," edited by Alan Jarvis, 1974, University of Toronto Press.
Frye adds, "If this is true, as it may well not be, it would be a good example of the way in which those who were fond of, or grateful to Douglas, might struggle for phrases to describe him, only to have the right one elude them. Of course he was a refined and charming man, but so have a lot of other people been, who never got anywhere near being Douglas Duncan. The phrase suggests something of a dilettante, which he was far from being. My own association with him professionally, was through Victoria College, where my wife was for years chairman of the Art Committee. The year's activity usually began by getting hold of Douglas. When suggestions for exhibitions did not come from him, they almost always referred to painters he knew about and had done something to help. Whenever he spoke, his encyclopedic knowledge came out in a context of complete simplicity and candor. He seemed to be a still centre in the swirling egotisms and aggressions and intrigues which characterizes the art world in all cities, and his critical judgements had the kind of impartiality that only a genuine sympathy can produce.
"We all tend to like what is like ourselves; if we try to be objective, we may eventually come to like, what is like our best self. Canadian history and politics have always been polarized between two tendencies; one aggressive, exploratory, and romantic; the other reflective, observant, and pastoral. The same polarization occurs in Canadian literature and painting. In painting, the aggressive and romantic tendency is represented by (Tom) Thomson, the Group of Seven, and Emily Carr; in the second group I think particularly of David Milne and LeMoine Ftizgerald. Tolerant and catholic as Douglas' tastes were, he had a strong temperamental affinity with the second group, and he had an extraordinary genius for discovering painters of crisp, delicate, and precise drawing and coloring, whose work was close to a kind of pictorial calligraphy," writes Northrop Fry. "I never go into Alumni Hall, in Victoria College, where he had arranged so many exhibitions, without thinking of him, in the centre of a great mass of paintings, with his little pieces of green felt for twisting the screws, hanging the pictures, arranging them, disregarding the very considerable pain that his disc trouble often gave him. It is a picture of extraordinary selflessness; hard, conscientious, and almost anonymous work done so that the artist would have another exhibition to chalk up on his record, and Victoria students would have pictures to look at. Paradoxically, the memory of him is far more vivid than the memory of even the finest of the pictures."
"In 1936 the Picture Loan Society was founded, with Douglas at first one of a committee and then, after awhile, solely responsible," notes his friend Norman Endicott. "This soon redirected practically all special book buying into picture buying (he was a trained book binder, and avid book collector), and gradually his own profession (book binding art) was put aside for the time consuming activities of a gallery and exhibitions. He bound no books after 1944. His own aims as a collector were expressed in a brief statement, based on an interview, in 'Canadian Art,' May-June, 1961. One sentence runs, 'I have no mission. I have merely assembled a large collection of oils, water colors, drawings, and prints that I have liked and that I continue to enjoy.' Save for a few pictures sold, without profit, to the National Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario. I think he never resold pictures he had himself bought, so that, as his collection grew, so did the storage problems. Until his father's death head had lived in the large family home, where, as the family and its activities dwindled, he had taken over more and more rooms (the billiard room being especially useful). When the house was sold in 1964, he moved into two adjoining apartments, but soon overflowed into a third, all three naturally equipped with hardly necessary kitchens, save that one could be used as a dark room for photography. He made an attempt to house the framed pictures neatly in racks, the unframed ones on shelves or in wooden boxes. He intended to buy more bookcases for his books. But at the time of his death two of the apartments still presented an engulfing scene of shelves, stacks, trunks, boxes, and cartons - primarily of books, pictures, and gramophone records, but also of correspondence, old programs. Christmas cards going back to childhood, and various objects accumulated over a long time."
Endicott notes that, "For many years, in all weathers and in at least three of the four seasons, Douglas spent quite a few weekends, and in the summer longer periods when he could, in Muskoka. There were also expeditions to the handsomer shores of Georgian Bay. With the pride of an amateur, he took a full and competent share in building his own cabin, carefully planned, and even painted a gallery gray inside. But as usual making no distinction between himself and others as victims of procrastination, the pipes to bring water to his sink were still not connected twenty years later, despite the necessity of carrying pails of water after more than once suffering from a slipped disc."
He writes of Duncan, "Not in any scientific sense a naturalist, he was nevertheless very observant and knowledgeable about wild flowers and ferns, some of which he brought back to chosen locations in his own woods - and in his searches for these he came to know the maple and beech valleys, and the cedar swamps of at least a few miles of Muskoka, in topographical detail, as well as with a most accurate eye for every effect of shape and texture, especially, perhaps, the more delicate; lichen on old logs, maidenhair spleenwort in a crevice of rock, the shades of color in a hillside of hepaticas in early spring. The photographs he made of veined rocks and whaleback islets in Georgian Bay, stumps and roots in the water in Algonquin Park, patterns of lines and shadows in winter woods etc., or, at close range, of his colony of round-leaved orchids in full but delicate bloom, are very good standards. Naturally (artist) David Milne's feeling, for the same effects and landscape was a link between them, but Douglas also liked Milne's comments on his Hepaticas; 'Do you like flowers? So do I. But I never paint them. I didn't see the Hepaticas. I saw, instead, an arrangement of the lines, spaces, hues, values, and relations that I habitually use. That is, I saw one of my own pictures.' Unlike the Group of Seven, Milne did not reach epic rhythms or alien harshness and grandeur, but painted like an intimate and old inhabitant of the scene, and this, without making any invidious comparisons, appealed I think, to Douglas. But Milne also painted from whatever might be in front of him, from paper bags as willingly as from Hepaticas, and Douglas did not buy pictures for their sentimental associations."
Endicott concludes, "Most of what I have been recalling is in some ways related to Douglas as a collector and bibliophile. A collector with admirable taste and judgement, an ardent bibliophile, may be a bore, or a man of little personal feeling, or attractiveness of character. Those who knew Douglas did not think of him first as the owner of pictures or books or other objects. His best books are now available in public libraries, his pictures a part of galleries across Canada. Douglas' friends remember the imaginative awareness of people as individuals, the sense of humor and the sense of the absurd which made him good company as well as a good friend."
There is a lot more to explore, in the life and times of Douglas Duncan, Canadian Patron of the Arts. Please join me again tomorrow, for a continuation of this brief biography, of a man I deeply admired……and who greatly influenced my love of books and art. Thanks so much for visiting today. I always appreciate your company for these stories about collecting, conserving and respecting antiques, books, art and heritage relics. Farewell for now. See you again soon.
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