What can one learn from a 'dull' grey drawing dating to 1820?

Let's unpack an image

Unpacking paintings, drawings and images can be fun. A friend of mine is a art historian and I’d have to say that visiting galleries and looking at paintings, with her, is fantastically fun and I always learn a great deal. I’ve repeatedly realised that what looks like something that’s ‘dull and boring’ isn’t quite the case or perhaps is at first glance not easy to understand i.e. unpack. Images are carriers of information which are read by humans to understand them. Why say this? Well, Gombrich, one of the most well known art historians of the 20th century, (1972: 86) wrote,

“The chance of a correct reading of the image is governed by three variables: the code, the caption and the context.”

Gombrich (1972: 86)

Gombrich (1972: 87) continued his line of argument that the context of an image, being read, must be remembered otherwise difficulties in 'reading' and understanding the image in question. He asserted that,

“Where these links break, communication also breaks down.”

Gombrich (1972: 87)

Ref: Gombrich, Ernest H. September 1972 The Visual Image. Scientific American, 227 (3): 82-97

So, let’s look at one such ‘dull and grey drawing’. I’ve given you the link as I can’t provide you an image of it due to copyright and IPR. But I can say that it is entitled “Toronto Harbour in 1820” by Peregrine Maitland (1777–1854) and it’s held by the Bushey Museum and Art Gallery, England.

Now at first glance, someone might probably walk by it, if it was hanging on the wall, as it’s not colourful. The key to unpacking it, is the date and the caption. The date, 1820 and the artist is Peregrine Maitland. What’s striking is that several biographies exist of this individual - in Canada and the UK. His full name is 'General Sir Peregrine Maitland'. He was not just in the military, not just a colonial administrator in Canada and India, but the Lieutenant-Governor in Upper Canada (and a pretty good cricketer from all accounts. I’m not commenting anything cricket related as I known nothing about it, nor have I ever played it.). He also was in India, South Africa and was the brother-in-law to the Rev James Austen, brother to Jane Austen.

Now, the textual description of this drawing reveals that this landscape was used for farming.

A harbour on the shore of Lake Ontario with two towers and a shed, with rowing boats, a jetty and two people with a dog and livestock on the foreground shore.

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/toronto-harbour-in-1820-239309

In fact, at the time Toronto Harbour was a village, in Upper Canada with York as its capital. The village lay within a lush Carolinian deciduous forest broad sloping plateau interspersed with rivers, deep ravines, and fertile soils, farmland. Today, it is the heart of Greater Toronto Area, an agglomeration of over 200 ethnic groups where over 180 languages are spoken. In 1820, Ottawa, what the world knows as the Federal Capital, in 1820 was Bytown, a village. 'Canada' which exists today was in 1820: Upper Canada, Lower Canada (present day Quebec) and Rupert's Land administered by the Hudson Bay Company aka (the ‘HBC’). The year 1820, was a year before the HBC undertook a ruthless takeover of their bitter trading rivals, the North West Company, (1779 to 1821) headquartered in Montreal, Lower Canada. The HBC was incorporated in England, on 2nd May 1670, with the aim to find a northwest passage to the Pacific Ocean, occupy the lands adjacent to the Hudson Bay, and to undertake any commerce with those lands which might be profitable. In 1820 the British government was formally headed by King George IV but it was in fact led by his Prime Minister, Robert Jenkinson, the Second Earl of Liverpool. Today, it’s possible to say that this year was near the outset of the First Industrial Revolution, the collapse of the wool markets. In the area, to the south of Upper Canada, Lower Canada and Rupert’s Land, in the area that’s now called the US, most of the area west of the Mississippi River, had yet to granted statehood. In essence the United States stretched from the Atlantic Ocean, through Michigan, Wisconsin and to the western edge of the Mississippi through Florida. Maine was admitted to the union in 1820. In the southern US, slavery was widespread and the slave population, according to the 1820 U.S. Census^.. In 1820, the US government passed the federal legislation called the Missouri Compromise, often called the Compromise of 1820.

Meanwhile in Upper Canada, in 1820, Maitland proposed an economic development, through farming and education plan for Indigenous peoples who lived at the Grand and Credit Rivers, in Upper Canada.

Maitland argued that the plan—which would have included the establishment of boarding schools—would supposedly pay for itself, open land to settlement, and allow Aboriginal people to adapt to new economic opportunities.63 In the proposed boarding schools, the students were to be converted to Christianity and instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, with the boys being taught to farm and work a trade, and the girls taught in sewing and dairying. 64 Nothing was done at the time, but eight years later, the plan was revived.

Ref: Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 1 Origins to 1939 The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume 1, p.57

Maitland’s plan, which he proposed in 1820 was a precursor to the “civilization policy”, the Indian Act of 1876. It replaced pre-Confederation laws which not only administered the Indigenous people but defined the Settler's interactions. Successive Federal governments used the Act and Numbered Treaties to impose conditions on the Indigenous peoples in order that they were they were assimilated into what was emerging as Settler Canada. An agricultural lifestyle was considered crucial by those who drew up this Act as they thought that a “nomadic” people could not support churches and schools or survive the impacts of European settlement. Agriculture was implemented as it encouraged: private property, stability and industry.

This Act meant assimilation through boarding and day school systems for the children of the Indigenous peoples across the lands which became ‘Canada’. The Indigenous peoples have severely suffered from the implementation of policy by the Colonial government, Indian Residential School system under the Indian Act, and the Scoop.

So, Maitland may have “just have posited some ideas” but the consequences of these ideas have lasted for decades and continue to do so.

This drawing serves as a reminder that the past is and has consequences in the present. It reminds us not to read history backwards as the past is another country.