Expanding Horizons: Painting
and Photography of American and Canadian Landscape 1860-1918
June 18 - September 27, 2009
Chronology
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- 1860
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- Canada
- Founding of the Art Association of Montreal. The Association's
goal was to foster appreciation of the fine arts, in keeping with a widespread
philanthropic tradition in North America. It organized exhibitions and
drawing classes.
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- The United States
- Abraham Lincoln, an antislavery Republican, elected president.
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- Europe
- Advances in the science of meteorology. Synoptic maps
were being drawn up, and forecasts became a daily occurrence. Many artists
began working out of doors, since the weather could now be predicted.
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- 1861
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- The United States
- April 12, outbreak of the American Civil War due to the
opposition between the North and South over slavery. The South hoped to
win the support of future western states, while the North wanted to stop
the expansion of slavery into the western territories.
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- For the first time, photography was used systematically
as a journalistic tool.
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- 1863
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- The United States
- July 1 to 3, the decisive Battle of Gettysburg, at Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania turned back the Confederate Army's invasion of the North.
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- 1865
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- The United States
- April 9, Robert E. Lee, commander in chief of the Confederate
Army, was surrounded after the siege of Petersburg, Virginia. He surrendered
to Ulysses Grant, bringing the Civil War to an end.
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- April 14, Abraham Lincoln assassinated by a Southern
sympathizer at a Washington theatre.
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- 1867
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- Canada
- In March, British Parliament passed the British North
America Act. This law established the Dominion of Canada and defined how
the government was to function. Charles S. Monck was named the first Governor
General of Canada and John A. Macdonald, the first Prime Minister.
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- July 1, the creation of the Canadian Confederation (Ontario,
Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia).
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- The United States
- Russia sold Alaska to the United States for seven million
dollars.
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- 1869
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- Canada
- Canada's first crisis since Confederation occurred when
the politician Louis Riel, chief of the Metis, defended his territory in
the Canadian prairies, a centre of the fur trade that had just been sold
to Canada by the Hudson's Bay Company.
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- The United States
- May 10, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads
came together at Promontory Point, Utah, to create the first transcontinental
railroad in the United States.
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- Elsewhere in the World
- Opening of the Suez Canal.
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- 1870
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- Canada
- With the passing of the Manitoba Act, Manitoba became
a province in the Canadian Confederation.
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- The United States
- The American geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden explored Colorado
and Wyoming on behalf of the U. S. Geological and Geographical Survey,
with a view that a transcontinental railway was soon to be built. He was
accompanied by the photographer William Henry Jackson. The two men catalogued
and photographed natural sites. These images helped promote legislation
supporting the creation of protected areas-the future national parks, like
Yellowstone.
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- In the following years, other large-scale explorations,
for example those headed by John W. Powell, Lieutenant Wheeler and Clarence
King, led to the discovery of natural resources in Utah, Nevada, Arizona,
the Grand Canyon and the Rockies. Enthusiasm for the West grew more intense
as the region developed.
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- Europe
- Beginning of the Franco-Prussian War, between Second
Empire France and the Kingdom of Prussia.
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- Proclamation of the Third Republic after the defeat of
Napoleon III at Sedan.
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- 1871
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- Canada
- Fearing the annexation of British Columbia by the United
States, the Dominion of Canada promised to link the Pacific Coast to the
eastern provinces by rail. On July 20, British Columbia joined the Confederation
and became a Canadian province.
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- Europe
- Founding of the German Empire by Wilhelm I.
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- 1872
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- Canada
- Founding of the Ontario Society of Artists.
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- The United States
- Creation of Yellowstone, the world's first natural park.
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- Opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,
with John Taylor Johnston as its president. His father, James Boorman Johnston,
had founded the Tenth Street Studio, where Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church
and Winslow Homer worked.
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- 1873
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- The United States
- Inauguration of Central Park, New York, after thirteen
years' work by four thousand men.
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- 1874
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- Europe
- First Impressionist exhibition. Monet, Pissarro, Renoir,
Sisley, Cézanne, Berthe Morisot and Degas were the main organizers.
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- 1876
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- Canada
- Inauguration of Montreal's Mount Royal Park, laid out
by Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who had designed Central
Park (18581861), Prospect Park (18651873) in Brooklyn and later
the landscaping of the Niagara Falls State Reserve on the American side
of the falls. The Reserve was reclassified as Niagara Falls State Park
in 1885.
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- The United States
- June 25 and 26, the Battle of the Little Bighorn ("Custer's
Last Stand") in southeast Montana. Sitting Bull, the Lakotas and Cheyennes
defeated the troops of General George Armstrong Custer, who was killed
in the fighting.
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- 1879
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- Canada
- Inauguration on Phillips Square of the Art Association
of Montreal's Art Gallery, the first building in Canada designed to house
artworks.
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- 1880
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- Canada
- Inauguration of the first exhibition of the Royal Canadian
Academy of Arts (RCA), at the Clarendon Hotel in Ottawa, by the Governor
General, the Marquis de Lorne, and his wife, Princess Louise, the daughter
of Queen Victoria. Lucius O'Brien was named president of the RCA, which
became the National Gallery of Canada in 1913.
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- 1881
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- Canada
- Beginning of construction of Canada's first transcontinental
railroad by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. The rail link between
Vancouver and Montreal fostered the development of the Canadian West.
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- 1882
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- Canada
- Oscar Wilde visited Toronto and formed a friendship with
Homer Watson. The writer compared him to the great English landscape painters,
calling him the "Canadian Constable." At about the same time,
Queen Victoria commissioned works from Watson.
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- 1883
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- Europe
- The Orient-Express made its first run from Paris to Giurgiu,
Rumania.
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- 1885
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- Canada
- Banff National Park became Canada's first national park.
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- The Red River Rebellion broke out after Louis Riel, who
had returned from exile in the United States, presented the Canadian government
with the Metis people's demands for an independent state. The new railway
allowed rapid deployment of the army. Riel was arrested, tried, found guilty
of treason and hanged.
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- The United States
- The American portion of Niagara Falls became the first
state park in the United States.
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- 1886
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- Canada
- Creation of Yoho National Park.
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- The United States
- In April, the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel organized an
exhibition of thirty-six paintings and pastels by Renoir in New York, giving
Americans its first look at Impressionism.
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- Inauguration in New York of the Statue of Liberty, a
gift from France commemorating the centennial of American independence
and a symbol of the two countries' friendship.
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- 1888
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- The United States
- George Eastman introduced the Kodak, an easy-to-operate
camera that used the gelatin-paper roll film he had invented four years
earlier. By replacing glass plates, he revolutionized the world of photography.
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- 1889
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- Europe
- World's Fair in Paris. One of the designers of the Statue
of Liberty, Gustave Eiffel, erected a three-hundred-metre-tall iron tower
that is now named for him.
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- 1890
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- The United States
- December 29, the massacre at Wounded Knee. This confrontation
between the Seventh Regiment of the U. S. Cavalry and the Lakotas was the
last armed conflict with the Aboriginal people, putting an end to long
years of warfare.
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- In California, Yosemite classified a national park.
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- 1893
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- Canada
- Algonquin Park, in Ontario, became Canada's first provincial
park.
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- 1894
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- Europe
- Alfred Dreyfus, a French army officer of Alsatian-Jewish
origin, accused of handing information over to the German military attaché
in Paris, setting off what came to be known as the Dreyfus Affair, a scandal
tinged with espionage and antisemitism arising from a judicial error. Four
years later, Émile Zola published an open letter, "J'accuse,"
denouncing the flaws in the Third Republic. It caused a stir on the political
and social scene in France.
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- 1896
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- Canada
- Wilfrid Laurier became the first French Canadian to serve
as Canada's Prime Minister. He held office from July 1896 to October 1911.
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- Discovery of gold in the Yukon, in several tributaries
of the Klondike River. The Gold Rush drew more than a hundred thousand
people to the region.
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- The United States
- Henry Ford road-tested his first motor car.
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- 1898
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- The United States
- Formation of an Impressionist group, the Ten American
Painters, also known as The Ten. Childe Hassam, John Henry Twachtman and
Julian Alden Weir were among its members (William Merritt Chase joined
in 1902, after Twachtman died). An exhibition of their work opened on March
31 at the Durand-Ruel gallery, where they would exhibit frequently until
1919.
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- In April, onset of the Spanish-American War, which led
to Cuban independence and the taking over of control of various Pacific
and Caribbean colonies by the United States.
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- 1901
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- The United States
- In September, William McKinley, twenty-fifth president
of the United States, assassinated. Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him. From
an eminent New York family, Roosevelt was a nature lover known for his
prowess as a hunter. A strict naturalist, he preached the conservation
of fauna and the dissemination of knowledge about animals. Roosevelt was
very popular with the American people because of his key role in the preservation
of forests and nature reserves, now overseen by the National Parks Service,
as well as for his remarkable stand on foreign policy.
- Europe
- Death of Queen Victoria. Her son acceded to the throne
as Edward VII.
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- 1902
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- The United States
- Construction of the Flatiron Building in New York.
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- The National Arts Club of New York presented Photo-Secession,
an exhibition of the new group formed by Alfred Stieglitz to gain recognition
for photography as an art in its own right. With other members, including
Alvin Langdon Coburn, Edward Steichen, Clarence H. White and Fred Holland
Day, Stieglitz founded the magazine Camera Work.
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- 1905
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- Europe
- A group of young European painters using strong, "wild"
colours in an exuberant style exhibited at the Salon d'automne in Paris
and adopted the term "Fauvism." Emily Carr was strongly influenced
by them.
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- 1907
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- Canada
- Creation of the Canadian Art Club, made up of members
of the RCA. Homer Watson was its first president.
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- Europe
- Pablo Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon,
considered to be the starting point of Cubism.
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- 1908
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