In the first session of my ten-part series on Emily Carr at Cook Street Activity Centre on October 8, I asked participants to name their favourite Carr painting. Each had a different choice—proof of Carr’s broad and lasting appeal. I shared mine: Happiness (1938–1939). A week later, I received an email from a participant: “Where can I see Emily Carr’s Happiness painting?” That simple question sent me on a fascinating journey—discovering not only Happiness at Legacy Art Galleries, which I had never seen in person, but also two remarkable women connected to Carr and the Legacy Art Galleries at the University of Victoria: Katharine Emma Maltwood and Myfanwy Spencer Pavelic. They both befriended Carr and donated paintings to the Gallery.

Katharine Emma Maltwood (1878–1961) arrived in Canada in 1938 with her husband John. Living in Victoria, she continued as an artist and patron to such artists as Emily Carr and her contemporary Ina Uhthoff, one of the women in Emily Carr’s life I will be introducing in the second part of the Emily Carr presentation series on November 17. eflecting the tastes and travels of the Maltwoods, their collection grew to include Asian ceramics, textiles, 17th century English furniture, Canadian paintings and Katharine’s own sculptures.

Katharine Maltwood occasionally visited Emily Carr at her studio or at day long summer sketching locations around Victoria. It was in this period, 1938-42, that these two Emily Carr’s in the Maltwood Collection were purchased. Both are in the thinned down oil on paper sketching technique Carr developed in the early 1930’s.

Windswept Trees is a rough sketch with loose brushwork and free flowing colours. The swirling organic forms are full of energy and intense with the spirit of nature. A Chill Day in June (1938-39, a more fully finished work, shows the dense blue-green forests of the West Coast set beyond the reeling airy images of single trees in a logger’s clearing.The sky is particularly dramatic, pulsating with a hallucinatory, cool white heat. Throughout sweeping rhythmic lines suggest the infinite depths of nature. By the 1930’s Emily Carr had given up her Indian themes and turned deep into the land itself to search life’s rhythms.

“Painting was her way of worshipping God, wrote Maltwood. “She equated movement with spirit and among the cedars and on the beaches of Southern Vancouver Island, she found such animation that her paintings rock and sway in joyous celebration.”

Myfanwy Pavelic (née Spencer, 1916–2007), who donated Happiness to the Legacy Art Galleries, was a Victoria-born painter and portraitist of a later generation. She was also granddaughter to John and Emma Spencer, founders of the largest department store in early Victoria and Western Canada, and niece to Sara Spencer who bequeathed the Spencer family mansion to the future Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in 1951. Myfanwy was just eight when her mother introduced her to Emily Carr, a meeting that would quietly shape her life.

Carr began to tutor Pavelic and in return she helped organize and catalogue her paintings, learning not just about art but about Carr’s passionate, unyielding spirit. When Pavelic was fifteen, Carr gave her a remarkable gift of confidence: she invited Myfanwy to exhibit her own drawings in the People’s Gallery in 1932—a gesture that spoke volumes about their bond as mentor and protégé.

As their friendship progressed, so did Pavelic’s involvement in art. Carr provided her protégé with experience in cataloguing works and preparing them for shipment to Carr’s dealer, Max Stern, at the Dominion Gallery in Montreal. By this time, Carr had already suffered a series of heart attacks and Pavelic was aiding her in her studio regularly. The story goes that one day she told Pavelic that she wanted to thank her for her help by giving her a piece of her work: any painting she wanted. Myfanwy choose “Happiness.” When Carr asked her why, she replied, “It’s one of your happiest paintings.”

Happiness (1939) by Emily Carr is a joyful celebration of the Pacific Northwest forest. Towering, windswept trees stretch across the canvas in vibrant greens and warm earth tones, their rhythmic lines conveying movement, energy, and life. More than a landscape, the painting captures the emotional and spiritual thrill of being immersed in nature—a perfect reflection of its title.

The two artists corresponded until Carr’s death in 1945. Her works, exhibitions and Carr’s letters to her are also part of the Maltwood/UVic collections.

The next session of the Emily Carr Chronicles World of Emily Carr presentation series takes place on November 17 at the Cook Street Activity Centre from 1:30 to 3pm. More details and tickets available on the Events page of this website.