Scarlet Hunters: Pre-Raphaelitism in Canada

first volume of Studies in Canadian Culture

Edited by David Latham

Studies in Canadian Culture series edited by Robert Stacey

SHOWCASED HERE are a variety of Canadians who pursued their work in the spirit of the Pre-Raphaelite tradition, which had an indisputable influence on Canadian art and architecture, poetry and politics, printing and bookbinding, and culture and scholarship. Started by a group of rebel painters and artists in England, Pre-Raphaelitism denotes the Victorian aesthetic movement that led to the decadence of Oscar Wilde and the Rhymers' Club and to the socialism of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts guilds.

The title of Scarlet Hunters is taken from Bliss Carman's poem "The Grave-Tree," and refers to the sense of death. D.M.R. Bentley, Karen Herbert, and Karen Kitagawa focus on Canadian poetry.

Angela E. Davis, Robert Stacey, and Gwendolyn Davies shift attention to the ideological re-definition of art as craftwork, with these examples: Frederick Brigden's work as the founder of the Toronto Engraving Co.; J.E.H. MacDonald's work as a Group of Seven painter, designer, and teacher; and Minnie Prat's work as a bookbinder with her sisters from Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

W. Douglas Brown identifies the domestic Arts and Crafts principles of the progressive architect Eden Smith. Lisa Panayotidis discusses how the political-econonmy professor James Mavor fashioned himself as an Arts and Crafts cultural authority. And David Latham shows how the poet and socialist Phillips Thompson emerged as a dissident intellectual from the literary Bohemia of Victorian Toronto. William E. Fredeman concludes with his survey of the vast wealth of original Pre-Raphaelite collections and scholarship in Canada.

This is the first volume in the Archives of Canadian Art and Design's new Studies in Canadian Culture series, edited by Robert Stacey.

David Latham

Editor, Essay

David Latham teaches English at York University, edits The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, and most notably has published, with Sheila Latham, Magic Lies: The Art of W.O. Mitchell.

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