Woman's Hood
Eastern James Bay
ca. 1840
commercial wool cloth, glass beads, hide
height: (with fringe): 22 ½"
width: 9"
Inventory # CW4314-125
Sold
acquired by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON
PROVENANCE
Collected by the Bishop of Montreal George Jehoshophat Mountain, Anglican Bishop of Quebec (1789-1863), in 1844 at Fort Garry, Manitoba
By descent to Mountain's great grandson, Colonel A.J. Kerry, O.B.E. of the Royal Canadian Engineers (1906-1996)
In his travel journal of July 10, 1844 Mountain notes: "the day was spent loading specimens of Indian workman-ship and formed no trifling addition to our baggage...Indian women were busy up to the last moment in finishing some trifling token of remembrance...they work in beadwork, embroidery with silk, dyed hair of moose, porcupine quills...The Fire-bags, which are sometimes of leather and trimmed with fur, are usually very richly and minutely wrought...The beauty, nicety, and correctness of the fancy-work executed by the women, contrasts strangely with the extreme rudeness of performance which I have seen..."
Phillips, London, 7/1/96, lot 273
Donald Ellis Gallery, Dundas, Ontario
Private collection, Toronto, Ontario
RELATED EXAMPLES
Benndorf Helga and Speyer, Arthur. Indianer Nordamerickas 1760-1860. Offenbach: Roland Mayer & Co., 1968, pl. 11
McCord Museum, Montreal, Cat. No. M7069 - See: Glenbow Museum - The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada's First Peoples, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1987, pg. 44, 0p. W30
Donald Ellis Gallery catalogue, Toronto, 2003, pg. 21