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Bringing Art to LifeA Biography of Alan Jarvis |
eBook Available
The extraordinary life and tragic fate of one of Canada's most iconic cultural figures.
In 1959, Alan Jarvis - the brilliant and charismatic director of the National Gallery of Canada - was forced to resign following a disagreement with the government over the purchase of works by European Old Masters. He never fully recovered from this dismissal, or the public humiliation that followed, succumbing to alcoholism in a little over a decade.
Only thirty-nine when he took over the National Gallery in 1955, Jarvis already had an extraordinary record of achievement and social mobility at home and in England: he had trained with Canada's greatest artists, won a Rhodes scholarship, lunched at the Algonquin Round Table in New York, managed an aircraft factory, written a bestseller, produced films, run a slum settlement, and moved in a London social circle that included Noël Coward and Vivien Leigh. As head of the National Gallery, Jarvis was a provocative public educator, advocating his idea of "a museum without walls" in countless public appearances. Instrumental in bringing modern art to the National Gallery, he shook artists and the art-minded public out of a period of national complacency. This first detailed account of the controversy surrounding his time at the gallery provides an important context for the ongoing and contested role of publicly supported arts and art institutions in this country.
Tracing Jarvis' personal background and varied careers through archives, published sources, and interviews with family, friends, colleagues, and critics, Bringing Art to Life assesses his impact and exposes the formal and informal mechanisms through which Canadian culture operated in the mid-twentieth century.
Only thirty-nine when he took over the National Gallery in 1955, Jarvis already had an extraordinary record of achievement and social mobility at home and in England: he had trained with Canada's greatest artists, won a Rhodes scholarship, lunched at the Algonquin Round Table in New York, managed an aircraft factory, written a bestseller, produced films, run a slum settlement, and moved in a London social circle that included Noël Coward and Vivien Leigh. As head of the National Gallery, Jarvis was a provocative public educator, advocating his idea of "a museum without walls" in countless public appearances. Instrumental in bringing modern art to the National Gallery, he shook artists and the art-minded public out of a period of national complacency. This first detailed account of the controversy surrounding his time at the gallery provides an important context for the ongoing and contested role of publicly supported arts and art institutions in this country.
Tracing Jarvis' personal background and varied careers through archives, published sources, and interviews with family, friends, colleagues, and critics, Bringing Art to Life assesses his impact and exposes the formal and informal mechanisms through which Canadian culture operated in the mid-twentieth century.
Details
Part of the McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History Series (number 2 in series)
457 Pages, 6.25 x 9.25
31 b&w photos, 17 colour illustrations
ISBN 9780773535749
September 2009
Formats: Cloth, eBook
"Andrew Horrall's masterfully researched and persuasively written Bringing Art to Life: A Biography of Alan Jarvis [is] a book that sets a new standard for cultural biography in Canada." The National Post
"The result of Horrall's 10 years-plus of work is both a portrait of a truly fascinating, almost un-Canadian Canadian and a measure of the great distance the country's culture sector has travelled." The Globe and Mail
"Andrew Horrall's biography of a talented, unhappy man is a gripping and disturbing read." William Bothwell, The Orangeville Citizen
"The massive amount of research [Horrall] has presented here in an orderly, accessible fashion has, for the first time opened up the life of one of the most important Canadian cultural figures of the third quarter of the 20th century." Dennis Reid, The Literary Review of Canada.
"Horrall's book is rich in subtle understanding. The transatlantic bisexual milieu of which Jarvis was part, the intramural workings of the federal civil service, the very texture of both public and private life in the period 1935-55 - all these elements work together perfectly through Horrall's careful and graceful prose. This book deserves to be nominated for the Charles Taylor Prize or an equivalent award." The Quill & Quire
"Horrall’s biography remains a welcome and much-needed contribution to a shadowy period of Canadian art and cultural history. It is a biography produced with the kind of meticulous attention to personal detail and overlooked archival evidence that reminds historians of the powerful history of individual personalities and un-told stories of personal triumph and tragedy at the core of public institutions." Journal of Historical Biography
"The result of Horrall's 10 years-plus of work is both a portrait of a truly fascinating, almost un-Canadian Canadian and a measure of the great distance the country's culture sector has travelled." The Globe and Mail
"Andrew Horrall's biography of a talented, unhappy man is a gripping and disturbing read." William Bothwell, The Orangeville Citizen
"The massive amount of research [Horrall] has presented here in an orderly, accessible fashion has, for the first time opened up the life of one of the most important Canadian cultural figures of the third quarter of the 20th century." Dennis Reid, The Literary Review of Canada.
"Horrall's book is rich in subtle understanding. The transatlantic bisexual milieu of which Jarvis was part, the intramural workings of the federal civil service, the very texture of both public and private life in the period 1935-55 - all these elements work together perfectly through Horrall's careful and graceful prose. This book deserves to be nominated for the Charles Taylor Prize or an equivalent award." The Quill & Quire
"Horrall’s biography remains a welcome and much-needed contribution to a shadowy period of Canadian art and cultural history. It is a biography produced with the kind of meticulous attention to personal detail and overlooked archival evidence that reminds historians of the powerful history of individual personalities and un-told stories of personal triumph and tragedy at the core of public institutions." Journal of Historical Biography
Andrew Horrall is an historian and archivist who holds a doctorate from the University of Cambridge. He lives in Ottawa, ON.
