That Green Ideal:
Emily Carr and the Idea of Nature at the Vancouver Art Gallery
On February 6, 2026, the Vancouver Art Gallery opened That Green Ideal: Emily Carr and the Idea of Nature, the largest exhibition of the artist’s work in Vancouver in more than twenty years. The exhibition, curated by Dr. Richard Hill, numbers more than one hundred paintings spanning all periods in Carr’s career. The sensitively curated exhibition encourages us to look at some of our own Carr holdings in a new light, illuminated by Dr. Hill’s research and insight into Carr’s process.
When Carr returned to British Columbia from France in 1912, she was one of the most daring painters working in Canada. Her Fauvist representation of the industrial shore of Vancouver uses a prismatic colour palette with rhythmic paint application. This style is evocative of the popular European artists Henri Matisse, André Derain, and Raoul Dufy, and would fit in well alongside them. But Carr is not imitating the trends she saw in France; rather, she adapts the style to suit her subject and interests.
In 1933 Carr travelled to Pemberton, BC, and made a series of mountain studies—for the first and last time. She struggled with the subject, hoping to achieve a maternal quality, with the mountain appearing as a protector over the village below, but had difficulty achieving the effect of tenderness that she sought. About the experience she wrote, “Oh, these mountains! They won’t bulk up. They are thin and papery. They won’t brood like great hens, squatting immovable, unperturbed, staring, guarding their precious secrets.”
The best word to describe this painting might be “impenetrable,” as Carr‘s composition permits the viewer to see only the dense forest of the foreground and midground. The highly compressed organization evokes the feeling of being immersed in a BC rainforest. In the 1930s, Carr oscillated between this brooding, immersive composition style and the wide–open ocean and sky landscapes such as Strait of Juan de Fuca. Whether they are intimate and close or sweeping and grand, there is much wonder to behold in Emily Carr’s landscape paintings.
Installation view of That Green Ideal: Emily Carr and the Idea of Nature, exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, February 6 to November 8, 2026, Photo: Courtesy of the Vancouver Art Gallery
Installation view of That Green Ideal: Emily Carr and the Idea of Nature, exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, February 6 to November 8, 2026, Photo: Courtesy of the Vancouver Art Gallery
Installation view of That Green Ideal: Emily Carr and the Idea of Nature, exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, February 6 to November 8, 2026, Photo: Courtesy of the Vancouver Art Gallery
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