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CANADIAN LANDSCAPES/ PAYSAGES CANADIENS
ON-LINE VISUAL RESOURCES
Only by seeing the works of Canadas war artist can they be fully appreciated.
Thousands of images can be found on the Web, only a few clicks away, but in
many cases the quality is very bad. This is a brief guide to the most useful sites
for those wishing to view at least some of the paintings, and perhaps learn
more about the artists themselves.
Canadian War Museum - https://www.warmuseum.ca/. There is probably more material
on this site devoted to Canada’s war art than anywhere else on-line, and a quick search
for “war art” reveals this richness. However, there is one caveat. The articles are fascinat¬
ing and very informative, but — something hard to comprehend given the specific remit
of this museum - the images are often very small and faulty in their colouring.
Art Canada Institute — https://www.aci-iac.ca/. Again, a quick search for “war art” pulls up
links to a host of lively and informed sites. And the quality of the reproductions is superb.
Mount Allison University — https://www.mta.ca/library/courage/. This is the link to a pro¬
ject at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, entitled “Courage Re¬
membered”, a comprehensive overview of Canada in the two world wars.
“Canada’s War Artists” offers a wealth of information about artists from both wars and
images of their works. It is, however, a slightly tricky site to navigate.
Wikimedia - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paintings_in_the_Canadian_
War_Museum_by_artist. A list of links to high-quality images of paintings by twenty-two
Canadian war artists in the Canadian War Museum, four of whom were official war
artists in World War II: Alex Colville, Lawren P. Harris, and Molly and Bruno Bobak.
Canvas of War — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GM_l4cWuBE. A documentary film
from 2000 about the World War II war art programme, which explores the context and
includes amusing and enlightening interviews with sixteen of the official artists, then
in their seventies and eighties.
Don Sparling attended the University of Toronto and the University of Oxford.
After coming to Czechoslovakia in 1969 he lived and taught in Brno and Prague,
first at language schools and from 1977 at the Department of English and
American Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, where he taught courses in
Canadian and American literature and cultural studies and was twice Chair.
From 2000 to his retirement in 2009, he was Director of the University’s Office
for International Studies. Founding President of the Central European Asso¬
ciation for Canadian Studies, he is currently its Treasurer. Co-author of ten
English-language textbooks and author of the cult handbook English or Czen¬
glish: How to Avoid Czechisms in English, he has also published numerous
articles dealing with Canadian literature (historical fiction), multiculturalism,
Native studies and cultural semiotics.
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