By: Pamela Casey

I spent the winter semester in a tucked-away part of Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) processing a collection of late 19th-century travel photographs as part of my practicum towards a Master’s in Library and Information Studies. Most of the photographs in the collection are unidentified, but a selection bear signatures of their photographers, including Antonio Beato, Francis Frith, and Samuel Bourne, while others carry donor markings. Recently, a donor name caught the attention of Dr Virr, Head of RBSC and Curator of Manuscripts. While showing him a collection of Cambodian photographs, he recognised one of the names on the donor label. The collection had belonged to Anna Leonowens, of King of Siam fame, a Victorian widow who worked as a governess at the Siamese court in Bangkok, teaching English to the king’s many wives and 87 children from 1862-1868. After a bit of digging, I discovered that Avis S. Fyshe, the actual donor of the photos to the library, was Leonowens’s granddaughter.

Avis Selina Fyshe was born in 1886 near Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1897, she and her family settled in Montreal, and we know Fyshe attended Royal Victoria College in 1903-1904[1]. After her parents died, Fyshe was her grandmother’s caregiver after her stroke until her death in 1915[2]. Later, Fyshe lived abroad and became an artist. She studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, as well as illumination and lettering in England, Germany and France. In 1933 she was back in Montreal, where she was active in the Montreal and Canadian artist communities and designed bookplates and Christmas cards[3].

 

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By Pamela Casey*

Currently on display in the reading room are sixteen photographs from our Underwood & Underwood Press Agency Collection. These sixteen are a selection from about 100 photographs recently included in the exhibition Van Gogh to Kandinsky: Impressionism to Expressionism, 1900-1914 which ran at the Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts from October 2014 to January 2015.

Choosing the sixteen to place on display was difficult, as it was no doubt difficult for the curators from the Museum of Fine Art to make their selection. These are wartime photographs of scenes from European battlefields and civilian life during the First World War. It’s hard to articulate why these particular photographs of trench warfare and bombed-out cathedral towns are so striking. Perhaps it’s that so many of these images feel utterly unfamiliar, like the soldiers sleeping in the streets of Paris, using bales of hay as make-shift shelters, or the German platoon on bicycles. But perhaps it’s that each photograph here seems to tell an elaborate and complicated story, which is only made stranger by the original captions the collection came with, newspaper headline-style, jaunty or grave in tone depending on the scene.

The captions, like the photographs, are unsigned. Underwood & Underwood was founded in Ottawa, Kansas in the early 1880s by two brothers, Elmer and Bert. Initially the business sold stereoscopic views door-to-door, employing an army of college students as their salesmen. By the 1890s, Underwood & Underwood had moved to New York and started producing their own photographs, eventually establishing themselves as a news photography agency. The Underwood & Underwood Collection includes over 420 photographs, arranged by country (Russia, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, and Great Britain), each with its own caption. The collection will no doubt deliver yet more striking stories with further exploration and research.

*Pamela Casey is studying the RBSC photograph collection for her winter 2015 practicum at the McGill School of Information Studies.

The No. 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) in the First World War 1915-1919 & The Lighthalls: A McGill Family at War

Arthur Lismer artist, educator (b Sheffield 27 June 1885; d Montreal 23 Mar 1969)
Arthur Lismer lived and worked in Montreal from the 1940s until his death in 1969. A founding member of the Group of Seven (with Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Franz Johnston, J.E.H. Macdonald and F.H. Varley), Lismer dedicated his life to art education. Still relatively unknown and with little teaching experience, Lismer began his career as Head of the Victoria School of Art (today NSCAD University) 1916-1919. From Halifax, he spent the next 20 years in Toronto, first as Vice-Principal, Ontario College of Art (OCA) and later as supervisor of art education, Art Gallery of Toronto (today Art Gallery of Ontario). He moved to Montreal in 1940 to join the Art Association of Montreal (today the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), where he established the MMFA School of Art and Design as one of the premier Canadian art training centres.

Lismer joined the McGill School of Architecture as a sessional lecturer in 1943 at the invitation of John Bland, the School’s director, and was appointed assistant professor in 1945. There he taught: the History of Art and Theory of Design; Freehand Drawing; and led the Sketching School with Gordon Webber. Lismer retired from McGill in 1955 at the age of seventy.

The exhibition
Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University holds some 30 sketches by Arthur Lismer, executed between 1940-1969, during his McGill tenure and into his retirement. Lismer sketched throughout his life, filling dozens of sketchbooks, but also captured the world and the people around him on scraps of paper, in the margins of flyers and programs, and on paper napkins.

The McGill sketches originated primarily in the Faculty Club, where Lismer stopped most days en route between the campus and his office at the museum. Many drawings are annotated by Richard Pennington, University Librarian, with whom Lismer dined regularly.

Additional McGill sketches, of and by Lismer, hang in the Faculty Club. These are part of the McGill Visual Arts Collection, which also holds several Lismer paintings. Caricatures drawn on the plaster walls of the Arts Building East Wing, before renovations, are also documented in the McGill Archives.

Exhibition prepared by Jennifer Garland, Assistant Librarian, November 2014

Further reading: McGill News

On view in the Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Room. Extended to 1 March, 2015.

Exhibition opening today, November 11, 2014: The Patriotism of Death: Propaganda posters from WWI at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Graphic Arts Centre, Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion.

Read more about our collaboration with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and about McGill Library & Archives events commemorating the centenary of the First World War here.

 

A small selection of seed catalogues from our Commercial & Industrial Catalogue Collection

Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, as dominions of the British Empire, went to war one-hundred years ago today when Britain declared war on Germany.

[War] Memorial Windows for Medical Building
McGill University, Strathcona Medical Building, Montreal, QC, Canada
Educational, Memorial windows; stained glass.

Client: McGill University
Architect: Nobbs and Hyde

Description: The memorial is a handsome stained glass window of three lights placed in the main hall of the first floor, over the main entrance to the building. It was designed by Prof. P.E. Nobbs, and executed by the Bromsgrove Guild, Leeds. The memorial was a gift of the teaching staff of the faculty of medicine. Each light represents a scene recalling the service of one of the men whose memories are honored. The center one, dedicated to Lt. Col. John McCrae, shows row upon row of crosses amid blood red poppies. A jeweled plaque bears a book and quill. The left light, dedicated to Lt. Col. R.P. Campbell, shows a section of the Thiepval Front, where he was killed. The plaque bears a surgeon’s knife, scissors and bandages. The right one, dedicated to Lt. Col. H.B. Yates, shows the town of Boulogne. The plaque bears a microscope. In the center light a radiant sun is rising on the horizon, its rays spreading upward and to each side through the other lights. At the far left is a group of poplars with strings of red maple leaves entwined. At the far right is a similar group of poplars with sprigs of laurel. “Memorial to the Members of the Teaching Staff of the Faculty of Medicine who Died on Active Service,” McGill News 4 (December 1922) : 5.

 

 

 

By Tyler Hyde*

Once again, McGill University Library is proud to be hosting the international exhibition of the winning books of the 2014 Alcuin Society Book Design Awards, on display in the McLennan Library Building lobby for the month of July.

These books have been carefully selected by the Alcuin Society as this year’s best and most beautifully produced Canadian publications. If you would like to get up close and personal with some of these books we encourage you to explore the following titles, available from the McGill Library collection:

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For the young, or young at heart, you may want to spend some time with How To and Wild Berries, which took first and third prize for children’s book design. Also don’t forget to check out honourable mention, Little You.

If you love art, you will love the whimsical works of Mélanie Rocan: Souvenir involontaire. This second prize winner for pictorial design is a beauty to behold. So too is honourable mention, Irene F. Whittome: Room 901, which will inspire anyone stuck in a creative rut.

Another visual delight is the second place winner for prose non-fiction illustrated, The Seghers Collection: Old Books for a New World. This book is a must see for anyone with an interest in religious studies.

If you’re in for a deeper read, check out these other non-fiction titles: Jeremiah Bancroft at Fort Beauséjour & Grand-Pré, first prize winner, and Métis in Canada and The Writing Life: Journals, 1975-2005, which tied for third prize. If you are a serious book lover, honourable mention, The Pope’s Bookbinder, should not be overlooked.

Second prize winner for fiction, Petriot, blends fact and fiction through the eyes of Marcus, a teacher in a Northern-Canadian native community, and his relationship with the writings of real life missionary, Émile Petitot. Moving from the north, experience life on the Eastern shores in the short stories that comprise Someone Somewhere, third prize winner, and honourable mention, Son of a Certain Woman.

Finally, go west and learn all about the architecture of Vancouver in this aptly named book, Exploring Vancouver: the Architectural Guide, which holds the second prize in the reference category of the 2014 Alcuin Society Book Design Awards.

For more information on the Alcuin Society, and on the international circulation of this exhibition, visit www.alcuinsociety.com

Continue reading for a full, categorized list of the 2014 award winners; including links to the books on loan at McGill. Continue reading →

The RBSC print collection includes over one hundred cartoons by Quebec artist Arthur George Racey (1870-1941). After studying at McGill, Racey worked as a cartoonist for the Montreal Witness and the Montreal Star. His work was also published internationally.