Bringing Art to Life: A Biography of Alan Jarvis (Volume 2) (McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History)

Alan Jarvis - the brilliant director of the National Gallery of Canada - resigned in 1959 following a disagreement with the government over the purchase of works by European Old Masters. He never fully recovered from this dismissal, and succumbed in little over a decade. This book is a portrait of his colourful life and tragic death. MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict Contents 8 List of Illustrations 10 Acknowledgments 12 Selection of Work Acquired during Jarvis’ Time as Director 15 ONE: “A Walking Work of Art”: Introduction 18 TWO: “A Curiously Mixed Background”: Family and Childhood, 1915–1934 23 THREE: “Douglas Duncan Invented Me”: Undergraduate, 1934–1938 42 FOUR: “I May Come Home with an Accent – God Forbid”: Europe, Oxford, and Dartington, 1938–1939 70 FIVE: “The Dead Days”: Toronto and New York City, 1939–1941 100 SIX: “Up to My Ears in the Business World”: England, 1942–1945 120 SEVEN: “To Build a New Kind of Society”: The Council of Industrial Design, 1945–1947 151 EIGHT: “A Break in a Million”: Pilgrim Pictures, 1948–1950 174 NINE: “I Certainly Hope 1950 Will Be Different”: Oxford House, 1950–1955 204 TEN: “A Museum without Walls”: The National Gallery of Canada, 1955–1956 232 ELEVEN: “A Chamber of Horrors”: The National Gallery of Canada, 1957–1959 279 TWELVE: “Canada’s Most Outspoken and Witty Man About the Arts”: Toronto, 1960–1968 314 THIRTEEN: “We Have Lost Our Sheep Dog”: The Last Years, 1968–1972 352 Conclusion 365 Notes 370 Bibliography 442 Index 462 A 462 B 462 C 463 D 464 E 464 F 465 G 465 H 465 I 466 J 466 K 467 L 467 M 468 N 469 O 469 P 469 Q 469 R 470 S 470 T 471 U 471 V 471 W 471 Y 472 Z 472 Only thirty-nine when he took over the National Gallery in 1955, Jarvis already had an extraordinary record of achievement and social mobility at home and in England: he had trained with Canada's greatest artists, won a Rhodes scholarship, lunched at the Algonquin Round Table in New York, managed an aircraft factory, written a bestseller, produced films, run a slum settlement, and moved in a London social circle that included Noël Coward and Vivien Leigh. As head of the National Gallery, Jarvis was a provocative public educator, advocating his idea of "a museum without walls" in countless public appearances. Instrumental in bringing modern art to the National Gallery, he shook artists and the art-minded public out of a period of national complacency. This first detailed account of the controversy surrounding his time at the gallery provides an important context for the ongoing and contested role of publicly supported arts and art institutions in this country. In 1959, Alan Jarvis - the brilliant and charismatic director of the National Gallery of Canada - was forced to resign following a disagreement with the government over the purchase of works by European Old Masters. He never fully recovered from this dismissal, or the public humiliation that followed, succumbing to alcoholism in a little over a decade "Tracing Alan Jarvis' personal background and varied careers through archives, published sources, and interviews with family, friends, colleagues, and critics, Bringing Art to Life assesses his impact and exposes the formal and informal mechanisms through which Canadian culture operated in the mid-twentieth century."--Jacket