Emily Carr’s People’s Gallery was a deeply personal and innovative initiative she launched in late 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression. At the time, she was living in her boarding house, the House of All Sorts in Victoria which she operated as a sole source of income. She had given up her annual pottery sales and was letting her paintings go for $5 or $10 a piece. She had almost stopped breeding griffons, though an occasional litter of puppies still brought in a few extra dollars.

Struggling financially, she needed a way to support herself without taking on more boarders who were getting increasingly difficult to find. The gallery would serve as both as a practical means of income and as an effort to bring art to the wider public, making her work accessible to the community.

Her dream was to create a small, community-focused “People’s Gallery” in the two lower suites of her House of All Sorts. Not an ordinary commercial gallery –at that time, there were no public galleries in Victoria — but a gallery that was an extension of Beacon Hill Park next door that would attract families who walked there and people of “all classes, nationalities and colours.” She saw it a warm place to visit, rest by the fireplace and view the paintings.

She imagined that paintings would change every few weeks and special effort would be made to present emerging artists. She also wanted to present short lectures and organize study groups. A small entry fee would be charged during weekdays, Saturday mornings would be reserved for children, Sundays would be free for everyone.

Although Emily and her art were already well known in Victoria’s art circles by that time, it took the People’s Gallery proposal to introduce her and her art to the general public. She managed to make the prospect of opening a public gallery the talk of the town for months. She was so absorbed in publicity and planning for the opening exhibition, she declined to take her usual fall sketching trip.

Emily Launches a Fundraising Campaign

During the campaign, Carr approached all the municipal council, the mayor, the superintendent of parks, the lieutenant governor , the Woman’s Canadian Club and others for their support. To finance the public gallery, Carr proposed the city administration could provide the funds to cover the operating expenses. She would be the curator and live-in caretaker. To generate to generate publicity for the opening of the gallery scheduled for December, she held a number of multi-author exhibitions

In early 1932, Carr presented the idea to supporters with the help of a number of modernist painters, Jack Shadbolt, Max Maynard and Edythe Hembroff (her current sketching partner who would go on to write Emily Carr: The Untold Story in 1978 that includes an entire chapter on the People’s Gallery project).

On December 14, the day after her 61st birthday, some forty people met to view the exhibition and consider the gallery idea, many of them city councillors. Emily gave a short speech and asked for donations after which a committee was formed to look into financing and operations. The Victoria press was positive and published this announcement:

A plan for the creation of a people’s gallery, which would be open to the public seven days a week and in which pictures of all types, conservative, progressive, oriental, children’s and many others would have impartial opportunity for exhibition was considered by a representative group of Victoria citizens that met last evening at the studio of Miss Emily Caarr, 646 Simcoe Street, at her invitation. At the end of the lengthy discussion, Jack Shadbolt, chairman of informal proceedings, was named convenor…others taking part in the discussions were Miss J Crease, Mrs. Fitzherbert Bullen, Miss Agnew, Max Maynard, Miss Hembroff, Mrs. Nairn…The cost of ninety-five dollars to be the approximate cost of operating such a gallery. ~from the House of All Sorts

The “People’s Gallery” Opens to the Public

Encouraged by the response from the response from supporters including Eric Brown the Director of the National Gallery who promised to send travelling exhibitions once the gallery was established, she went to work converting her two lower rental units into one gallery.

Willie Newcombe, her friend and loyal handyman, cut a door between the two units which provided six well lighted rooms to display the artwork. She displayed hers in the kitchens and the other four invited artists in the living rooms. Then she worked on a invitation list deciding against inviting members of the Island Arts and Crafts Society (IACS) or the young modernist painters including her artist friends that she aligned with — Jack Shadbolt, Edythe Hembroff, Ina Uhthoff and Max Maynard — and decided instead to invite emerging artists who were as conservative as the IACS but popular and well-connected in the community.

At the last minute, one of the painters she invited refused to exhibit when they found out the exhibition was not sanctioned by the society. Carr quickly filled the slot with Lee Nam a Chinese watercolourist who had been refused membership. because of his ethnicity. She continued to support his work long after the exhibition

She opened with a multi-artist exhibition and hoped the space would be an informal, welcoming place where “ordinary people” could come in, sit by the fire, and see Canadian art — outside the exclusive networks of the Island Arts & Crafts crowd. The gallery showcased her own paintings alongside the work of local artists, creating a space where creativity and community could meet. She personally oversaw the organization and display of the works, sometimes enlisting young artists like Myfanwy Pavelic to help catalog and prepare exhibitions.

The gallery showcased her own paintings alongside the work of local artists, creating a space where creativity and community could meet. She personally oversaw the organization and display of the works, sometimes enlisting young artists like Myfanwy Pavelic to help catalog and prepare exhibitions

When she approached Mayor C. H. Davie Jr. (Charles Henry Davie Jr.), who was mayor of Victoria at the time, after the gallery opening, she asked the city to fund or help support her initiative. The mayor’s response was negative. He declined her request, saying in essence that the city could not afford to fund such a project and did not see it as a municipal responsibility. The tone of the rejection was bureaucratic rather than sympathetic; there was little recognition of the cultural or social value Carr envisioned.

Undeterred, Carr went ahead and operated the People’s Gallery herself in one of the ground-floor rooms of her boarding house, using her own resources. The project folded soon after a few exhibitions because Carr could not raise enough money or institutional backing to keep it going.

The venture was a short-lived but pioneering endeavor— an early attempt to create the first public art gallery in Victoria—demonstrating her vision of art as a communal experience rather than a purely commercial pursuit.

Quote from Emily Carr:

The people’s gallery did not materialize. The everyday public were disappointed. The wealthy closed their lips and their purses. The Arts and Crafts Society smiled a high-nosed superior smile. Lee Nam, the Chinese artist, many boys and girls and young artists were keenly disappointed.

I closed the connecting door between the suites and again rented Lower East and Lower West as dwellings.

The wise, painted eagles on my attic ceiling brooded—sorry for my disappointment. The Indians would say, “They made strong talk for me.” Anyway they sent me down to the studio to forget my disappointment and to paint earnestly.

Eric Brown wrote, “I am sorry the people’s gallery did not go through.” He spoke kindly about my own work. I was now an invited contributor to art shows in the East. Sympathetic criticisms were unnumbing me; I desired to paint again. “After all,” wrote Mr. Brown, “the people’s gallery might have further crippled your own work. Victoria just is not art minded. Go ahead, paint, don’t give way to discouragement. Paint, paint!”

Carr wrote a poem to express her disappointment:

A Poem by Emily Carr, January 1933 | from the Untold Story“

Young Ideal was seeking a lodging
Any by my luck she came my way
“May I come in? Do you want me?
I’d love to stay.”

Her face was as fair as the morning
Eyes blue as the Heaven above
For the Father of her as Vision
and the Mother of her was Love

And when we were well acquainted
My Ideal and I
I called to folks about me
The lowly, the middle and high

The took my simple Ideal
and decker her out in gaudy gear
The swathed her in convention
and bound her with doubt and fear

Like bulbs in a winter garden
Tucked safe in their sodden black bed
Little Ideal lies silent and dormant
Sleeping safe till spring comes —
No! Not Dead!

She writes about the People’s Gallery experience decades later in the short story publication: Opposite Contraries (2006)
https://emilycarrchronicles.ca/a-peoples-gallery/