2014 - $20 - 1 oz. Fine Silver Coin - Emily Carr: Totem Forest

Includes a beautiful graphic beauty box with the Totem Forest painting on the front!

Legendary Canadian artist Emily Carr was born in Victoria, British Columbia, in 1871. Despite setbacks throughout her adult life—including ongoing indifference toward her work in her home province—she was acknowledged late in life as one of Canada's most important contemporary artists. Her depictions of Pacific Northwest Coast native villages and artefacts have helped to preserve these cultures' changing ways of life, while her haunting portrayals of the landscape of that region created a new mythos of the Pacific wilderness. Carr was the first West Coast artist to approach the Northwest Coastal people and their artefacts as a serious subject of artistic study.

Totem Forest, 1930: Carr's earliest encounters with the monumental totem poles of the Northwest Coast peoples began on her early forays along the coast of British Columbia. From these journeys, Carr produced sketches and on-the-spot watercolours that inspired or became many of the works for which she is now famous. She worked from life, and rarely from photos. Each pole in her work is one that she stood before in person, studying, absorbing, and becoming “personally acquainted” with (in her own words). It was on her well-known 1912 trip that Carr committed herself to preserving these First Nations artefacts through her work. She undertook a further painting trip in 1928, from which she produced several major totem works, including Totem Forest.

Specifications
No. 133647
Mintage 6000
Composition 99.99% pure silver
Finish proof
Weight (g) 31.39
Diameter (mm) 38
Edge serrated
Certificate serialized
Face value 20 dollars
Artist Emily Carr (reverse), Susanna Blunt (obverse)