Treasures of the National Gallery of Canada (review)

Treasures of the National Gallery of Canada is certainly the 'handsomely produced volume' described on the inside of its dust jacket. The resplendent cover image depicts one of the most important Canadian paintings in the gallery's collection, Lucius O' Brien's Sunrise on the Saguenay (1880), which, in its shimmering luminosity, rivals Turner. Interestingly, the painting is not shown in its entirety; rather, a detail is magnified and overprinted with the book's title - both practices beloved of graphic designers but generally frowned upon in the museum world (and in theory at the NGC). They're believed to undermine the integrity of the art work - the visual equivalent of altering a quotation's original meaning.

The beautiful cover reproduction is matched by the large, indeed luscious, images inside. It's a great pleasure to reacquaint oneself with old favourites from Bronzino's Portrait of a Man (c. 1550-55) to Tom Thomson's The Jack Pine (1916-17) to Fernand Léger's The Mechanic (1920). It's at least as exciting to discover previously little known pieces, Canadian F.M. Knowles's Are you ready, lads? (1891) or Samuel Palmer's glorious Oak Trees, Lullingstone Park (1828). Overall the reproductions are of excellent quality, with a few exceptions - Corot's The Bridge at Narni (1826), famous for its precociously light palette, appears far too dark. Following the recent trend that makes galleries as much the destination as the art they contain, Moshe Safdie's building is showcased at the outset in a series of gorgeous exterior and interior shots. A standout among them is the frontispiece depicting the rotunda ceiling. The kaleidoscopic patterns formed by the architecture and triangular floating battens evoke the geometric abstract art of Islam, beautiful, if surprisingly un-Canadian. Is this a conscious rival to the lustrous neo-Byzantine mosaics of Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum?

Following director Pierre Théberge's preface outlining a succinct history of the gallery, the catalogue proper is divided into seven discrete sections of varying length: 'Canadian Art to 1945' (twenty-three entries); 'Asian Art' (three entries - a recent collecting priority?); 'European Art to 1945' (thirty-five entries); 'Canadian and International Art since 1945' (forty entries); 'Inuit Art' (five entries); 'Photography' (fifteen entries), and 'Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography' (five entries). Within each section the works are presented chronologically across two pages, text on the left, image on the right. They average four to five hundred words and follow a standard format - biographical detail about the artist, a description of his/her importance, and a discussion of the 'treasure' and its place in the artist's œuvre. This format provides all the basic information, but is both restrictive for the writer and repetitious for the reader. General editor David Franklin has orchestrated a consistency of tone throughout the volume, no mean feat given twenty-two contributors, but no individual voice stands out among the 126 entries. While enlightening, even entertaining to dip into, it's a real slog to read from end to end. Nor is this the place to look for exciting new scholarship or heated controversy. Instead we are offered a competent, if standard, rehash of art history, sans notes and bibliography. Thus, Charles Hill's entry on the cover painting, O'Brien's Sunrise on the Saguenay, while useful and elegantly written, eschews mention of, for example, British imperialism, issues of tourism versus industry, land ownership, or environmental degradation.

The catalogue's final entry has been carefully chosen as emblematic of the present while connecting to the past. The 1991 photograph Souvenirs of the Self (Lake Louise) references the heroic tradition of Canadian landscape from Cornelius Krieghoff to Lawren Harris. But its author is a woman, of obviously non-Western descent (Korean-born Jin-me Yoon), who places herself within an iconic winter wilderness. Yoon's work, as its title implies, interrogates both personal and national identity, along with colonialism and gender relations. The photograph reflects the changing ethnic make-up of Canada...