Name/Title
Vera as the Virgin MaryEntry/Object ID
2015.04.22Description
Photograph
Photographic reproduction (2015) from the 1928 b/w photograph by John Vanderpant.
This black and white Pictorial-style image shows Vera (Olivia) Weatherbie (1909-1977), an artist and the second wife of photographer Harold Mortimer-Lamb, in the role of the Virgin Mary. It is a 3/4 head and shoulders view, both of which are modestly covered with a cloth shawl and she is gazing downward.
In 1928, in her last year as an undergraduate at the Vancouver School of Decorative Arts and Applied Design (VSDAA, now Emily Carr University of Art and Design), Weatherbie played the role of the Virgin Mary in the school’s Christmas play entitled “The Christmas Pageant of the Holy Grail”. John Vanderpant attended the play and later photographed Weatherbie in her costume at his studio.Photograph Details
Type of Photograph
Reproduction, black and white photo on paperSubject Place
Region
Cascades and PlateauContinent
North AmericaContext
Vera Weatherbie was a Vancouver painter and one of the first graduates of the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (VSDAA, now Emily Carr University of Art and Design). She won a number of awards during her studies, and was well-known both as a model and muse for such artists as Frederick Varley and her spouse Harold Mortimer Lamb. In particular, she was recognized for her connections with the Canadian Group of Seven Painter, Frederick Horsman Varley RCA (1881-1969), who painted his sometime lover, Vera, a number of times. One of his portraits, an unsettling blue-green portrayal entitled "Vera" done in 1931 is considered iconic in Canadian art.
Weatherbie completed her post-graduate studies at the Royal Academy in London, England after graduation from VSDAA, and was later hired as an instructor teaching drawing, composition and painting at the B.C. College of Arts, founded in part by Varley, until it closed due to financial troubles in the mid 1930s. She exhibited her work in the B.C. Artists exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery from 1932 to 1952, winning the Beatrice Stone Medal in Painting in 1934. She also exhibited at other venues in Vancouver, Seattle and at national exhibitions into the 1950s.
Of note, like other Canadian artists of Modernism at the time, Weatherbie was interested in religions and religious philosophy, educating herself in mysticism and auras, and her portraits and landscapes embraced spiritual connections in a way that set her apart from her contemporaries.
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Pictorialism was an international style and the predominant aesthetic movement in photography during the later 19th and early 20th century, and beyond into the 1940s in some areas. It began in response to the advent of the amateur Kodak camera in 1888 and claims that a photograph was easily taken, simply a record of reality, and it later transformed into a movement to advance the status and principals of photography as a true art form. Pictorialists believed that photography should be understood as a means of personal expression and creativity equal to other fine arts like painting and printmaking.
Pictorialism had its roots in England with the establishment in 1892 of the Linked Ring Brotherhood by Henry Peach Robinson (1830-1901), George Davison (1854-1930) and Henry Van Der Weyde (1838-1924). This invitation-only British pictorialist group seceded from the Royal Photographic Society. And similar groups were formed in Paris, Berlin, Hamburg and Brussels. In 1902 Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) formed the American Pictorialist photographers group, the Photo Secession movement, with Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966), Frederick Holland Day (1864-1933), Frank Eugene (1865-1936), Gertrude Käsebier (1852-1934), Edward Steichen (1879-1973) and Clarence White (1871-1925). In 1916 Coburn, Käsebier, White and others formed an organization called the Pictorial Photographers of America (PPA) to continue promotion of the pictorial style. A year later Stieglitz formally dissolved the defunct Photo Secession group.
Pictorial photographers were dedicated to conveying an emotion, thought or sentiment through their careful choice of subject matter, composition, tonal balance and technique. There is no standard definition of 'pictorialism', but overall it refers to a style in which the photographer has "created" rather than just accurately "recorded" an image. Typically, such photos have a soft focus, and may be printed in colours such as warm brown or deeper blue, and may have visible surface treatments that were created in the darkroom.Made/Created
Artist Information
Artist
John A. Vanderpant, RPS (1884-1939)Role
PhotographerArtist
Royal B.C. Museum and ArchivesRole
PrintmakerDate made
2015Time Period
20th Century, 21st CenturyNotes
PHOTOGRAPHER BIOGRAPHY
Born in the Netherlands, John A. Vanderpant was a Dutch-Canadian photographer, a significant member of the International Modernist photography movement in Canada. Also a gallery owner and author, he was a champion of the arts and forceful catalyst in Vancouver and beyond during the 1920s and 1930s.
From 1905 to 1912, Vanderpant studied at the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University. He also published poetry and worked as a photojournalist. With his wife, he immigrated to Canada in 1911, and opened three photographic studios in Alberta. In 1919 he settled in New Westminster, B.C. running a successful portrait business. During the interwar years his portraits were considered among the best in Canada. In these early years he met photographer Harry Upperton Knight (1873-1973), whose pictorial style inspired him to strive for a “painterly" effect, and he began to photograph landscapes and ordinary objects. Vanderpant strongly advocated for photography as art, and he became an active and successful participant in international salons. In 1920, he founded the New Westminster Photographic Salon as part of the Fine Arts Gallery of the British Columbia Annual Provincial Exhibition, which ran from 1923 to 1929. This was the only international salon in Western Canada during the 1920s. In addition, he promoted the exhibitions of art by B.C. and Canadian artists, including the Group of Seven. From 1925 to 1934, solo exhibitions of his work toured Canada, the United States, and Europe.
In 1928, Vanderpant, in partnership with Harold Mortimer-Lamb, opened the Vanderpant Galleries at 1216 Robson Street in Vancouver, BC (the partnership ended in 1929). Under Vanderpant’s influence, the gallery became a centre of art, music, and poetry for the city. Painters such as Emily Carr (1871-1945), A. Y. Jackson (1882-1974), Max Maynard (1903-1982), Frederick Varley (1881-1969), and W. P. Weston (1873-1973) exhibited there. And arts groups, such as the British Columbia Art League, the Vancouver’s Arts and Letters Club, and the Vancouver Poetry Society (Vanderpant was a member of all three) met there. And in 1931, Vanderpant organized the probable first Canadian showing of prints by the American “Group F/64” photographers Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976) and Edward Weston (1886-1958).
Vanderpant stated that his main influences had been the works of the American photographers Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966), Edward Steichen (1879-1973), and Clarence Hudson White (1871-1925). Vanderpant began as a pictorialist photographer; however, over time, he developed a unique style as his work moved from soft focus to bolder and more modernist compositions. During the mid-1920s he began photographing grain elevators, which have come to be seen as unique representations of Canada’s industrial architecture.
In 1926, Vanderpant was honoured to be named a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. The Vancouver Art Gallery held displays of his prints in 1932 and 1937 and a retrospective in 1940. In 1976 the National Gallery of Canada sponsored a cross-country exhibition tour of his work. Today, Vanderpant’s work is held in collections across Canada, the Netherlands and the United States. As a result of financial difficulties and ill health, Vanderpant stopped making photographs around 1937, and he died in Vancouver at age fifty-five.Dimensions
Dimension Description
SupportHeight
24.1 cmWidth
19 cmAcquisition
Acquisition Method
GiftDate
2015Notes
Image PH 983.1.39 courtesy of Royal B.C. Museum and Archives.Relationships
Related Entries
Notes
Reproduction photos after photographs by John A. Vanderpant:
2015.04.14 Portrait of Harold Mortimer-Lamb
2015.04.22 Vera as Virgin Mary
