Painting
Aboriginal Camp in Lower Canada
Cornelius Krieghoff (1815-1872)
1847, 19th century
Oil on canvas
35.5 x 50.9 cm
Gift of Sir Frederick Williams Taylor
M19893
© McCord Museum
Description
Keywords:  Genre (188) , Painting (2229) , painting (2226)

Description

Aboriginal people constitute a recurring theme in Krieghoff's work, Aboriginal figures being featured in over 450 or one third of his documented paintings. Krieghoff lived in Longueuil and Montreal between 1846 and 1853 and on his daily walks would almost certainly have seen Mohawks from the nearby community of Kahnawake. In this relatively early work, he has chosen to depict an encampment with bark wigwams in the background. A number of the details - such as the woman holding a pair of moccasins and the canoe paddle with its chevron design - were re-used in later paintings. This painting served as the basis for a lithograph that Krieghoff had executed by A. Borum (1799-1853) and printed by Thomas Krammerer in Munich, in 1848. It was dedicated to Lord Elgin, then the Governor General of Canada. This lithograph was one of a set of four advertised in Montreal's The Morning Courier on October 13, 1848.