Four generations of Paul Kane

© 2024, Christian Cassidy

If you enjoy piecing together stories from Winnipeg's history, cemeteries are a great starting place.

I was walking past St. John's Cemetery in the North End a few days ago and saw this intriguing sight through the fence. Three generations of Paul Kane who died between 1922 and 1958 with similar headstones referencing an earlier Paul Kane.

Finding out who these Paul Kanes were revealed the interesting story of one of Canada's most famous 19th-century artists and how the large family collection of his works depicting Canada's West ended up in the hands of a Texas millionaire.

Here's a look back at four generations of Paul Kane.


Paul Kane I - The artist (1810 - 1871)

Undated portrait of Kane by F. A. Verner (Royal Ontario Museum)

The "original" Paul Kane came to Canada from County Cork, Ireland in 1819 with his family at the age of nine. He excelled at art and in 1845 came to the West to document the landscape and the daily lives of its Indigenous peoples.

Kane would make sketches on his travels and then return to Toronto to make some of them into oil paintings that he would exhibit and sell to finance his next trip. It is believed he created around 700 sketches and 100 oils in his lifetime.

Colonial life was a popular literary genre in Victorian England and Kane eventually published a diary of his travels with numerous sketches in The Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America from Canada to Vancouver's Island and Oregon through the Hudson's Bay Company's Territory and Back Again in London in 1859.

The book was republished in French in 1861 and in Danish two years later. The Radisson Society of Canada republished the book in English with a foreword by historian Lawrence J. Burpee in 1925.

Kane retired to his Toronto home with his wife Harriet in the 1860s and soon went blind. He died on February 20, 1871 at the age of 61. 

Mount Kane in the Rocky Mountains, and Kane Avenue in Winnipeg are named for him.


Paul Kane II - The son (1854 - 1922)

Winnipeg Free Press, Feb 1902 (top) and June 1910

Paul Kane II was born in Toronto in 1854, one of four children of Paul and Harriet Kane. He came to Rathwell, Manitoba in 1878 where he bought a farm and soon became a big player in the life of the small agricultural community.

Kane operated a corner store, built the community's first grain elevator in 1889, and opened a drug store in 1900. He eventually sold these ventures to get into the lumber business. In public life, Kane was secretary of the district's school division from 1889 to 1919, a justice of the peace, and was even said to have pulled teeth when called upon.

As for family, Kane married Abigail Uniacke soon after arriving in Manitoba and they had five children: Irene, Paul. William, Douglas, and Mary.

When Kane's mother died in Toronto in 1891, he inherited a collection of about 250 of his father's sketches as well as some correspondence and other memorabilia from his travels.

In the journal article Paul Kane Goes South: The Sale of the Family’s Collection of Field Sketches by I. S. MacLaren, Kane's daughter Irene said "I feel my father (Paul Kane II) was too young when his father died to have built up much appreciation of his father's talent." and that it was her mother took more of an interest in what they had received.

Fort Garry and St. Boniface, 1850s by Paul Kane (National Gallery of Canada)

There was a resurgence of in interest in Paul Kane when in April 1904 the Women's Canadian Historical Association hosted an exhibit of his oil paintings at a private gallery in Toronto. National wire stories about the exhibit, Kane's travels, and his art were picked up by several major newspapers across the country.

Some sources say that the collection included 100 oils which were purchased from the artist in the 1850s by Toronto M.P. Hon. Gorge W. Allan, likely making him the main patron of Kane's travels. The collection was sold on to Sir Edmund B. Osler in 1903 and a decade later he donated most of the works to the Royal Ontario Museum and about a dozen of them to the National Gallery of Canada.

January 5, 1907, Winnipeg Free Press

On Saturday, January 5, 1907, the Winnipeg Free Press ran a two-page feature about Paul Kane the artist that included several reproductions of sketches provided to the newspaper by Paul Kane II.

The text was a recap of Kane's travels from The Wanderings of an Artist... and was presented as a nostalgic look back at the Canadian West to a new, urban generation of Winnipeggers.

The Free Press story was carried by the Edmonton Bulletin and likely other Western newspapers.

March 18, 1922, Winnipeg Free Press

Paul Kane II was in failing health and sold off his lumber business around 1920 so that he and Abigail could retire to 893 Corydon Avenue in Winnipeg.

In March 1922, the Board of Trade hosted an expansive exhibit of Kane's sketches and other memorabilia in its exposition building on Main Street. The items were provided by Paul Kane II and it was said to be the first most of the works had ever been displayed in public.

A Free Press art critic wrote: "The two hundred or more pictures made on the spot by Paul Kane will be a revelation to those who visit this exhibition as presenting one of the only two original pictorial records of the early days of this country."  (The other was well-known American artist George Catlin, who in 1830 began travelling the American Midwest, sometimes venturing into Western Canada, to draw and paint the scenery and Indigenous peoples of the region.)

A follow-up Free Press editorial column stressed that the Kane collection should be bought by the provincial library or the Winnipeg Foundation so that it could be part of the province's public record. This did not happen and Paul Kane II died three months after the exhibit closed.

This 1922 exhibition again put Kane and his work into the spotlight and every few years the Free Press or other papers across the country would write about him and publish images of his work. This renewed interest prompted the Radisson Society of Canada to republish Kane's 1859 book The Wanderings of an Artist in 1925.


Paul Kane III - The grandson (1889 - 1958)

When Paul Kane II died, the art collection was left to his wife and five children, including Paul Kane.

A lawyer by trade, Kane III was the long-time secretary of the Manitoba Electrical Association. He lived with his wife Evelyn and their two children, Harriet and Paul, in the 938 Corydon Avenue family home as his mother moved in with one of his sisters until she died in 1940.

In MacLaren's Paul Kane Goes South..., Kane III is described as a "prickly pear".  His sister Irene said of the collection that "... he (Paul)  just took over and we had no say".

MacLaren details how the federal government, first the National Archives then the National Gallery, reached out to Kane on several occasions after his father's death to inquire about obtaining some or all of the collection. In one communication, Kane said that he had already been offered $12,000 for the collection but was coy about allowing officials from either institution to examine, catalogue, and appraise the collection for themselves.  By the mid-1920s the communications ended.

September 24, 1926, Winnipeg Tribune

Kane then took on the Radisson Society for their 1925 republication of Wanderings of an Artist....

A column in the September 24, 1926 edition of the Winnipeg Tribune reported that Kane III released a long statement slamming J. W. Garvin who provided notes, and historian Lawrence J. Burpee who provided a new forward for the book.

The column states that Kane "... challenges messrs. Garvin and Burpee to battle because of what he calls misinformation to be found in this new edition". He was particularly harsh towards Burpee claiming that he "made a number of mistakes and has been careless and and contradictory in dealing with the life and work of the artist."

November 10, 1957,  Paris (Texas) News

Another slow round of communications resumed with the National Archives in the late 1920s. Kane informed the archives officials that he had an offer from the U.S. for $50,000 for the collection but they were still willing to assess the value for themselves. Negotiations to see the collection came to an end around 1935 after a letter was sent to the institution by another member of the Kane family stating that Paul did not have sole authority to dispose of the collection. Also,

In 1957, an ageing Paul Kane III finally sold his grandfather's collection to Texas millionaire Lutcher Stark and they are still part of the Stark Museum of Art collection. News stories from the time estimated the sale price to be $100,000.

MacLaren concluded in Paul Kane Goes South... that, "Though the sale netted Kane some money, it all but killed him", noting that even his daughter told her that "the saga of selling the collection ruined his personality and ended his life."

Paul Kane III died less than a year after selling the collection at his Corydon Avenue home on August 25, 1958.


Paul Kane IV - The great-grandson (1928-1954)

Paul Kane IV was a 25-year-old second year arts student at St. John's College when he was struck by a train on Sunday, August 15, 1924 along Waverley Street.

At around 9:30 p.m., the crew of a passenger train spotted Kane walking on the track with his back towards the train. The engineer blew the whistle several times but "the man paid no attention". His body was thrown 320 feet from the track. An ambulance was called but he was pronounced dead on arrival at General Hospital.

A later inquest exonerated the train's crew and ruled the death an accident.


More about Paul Kane the artist:

Articles and books:
- The Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America from Canada to Vancouver's Island and Oregon through the Hudson's Bay Company's Territory and Back Again by Paul Kane (1958)
- Paul Kane's Frontier, J. Russell Harper (1971)
- Paul Kane Goes South: The Sale of the Family’s Collection of Field Sketches by I. S. MacLaren (1997)

Websites:
- Paul Kane Life and Work Art Canada Institute
- Paul Kane collection National Gallery of Canada
- Paul Kane Collection Royal Ontario Museum
- Paul Kane Canadian Encyclopedia
- Paul Kane Albert H. Robson