Cornelius Krieghoff’s work in Canada was centred on the lives of both habitants and Indigenous Peoples in Quebec. Trained in Germany, Krieghoff brought a keen eye to his images of the people of the province. During his approximately 20 years in Quebec, he drew inspiration from the lives of both Indigenous Peoples and French-Canadian settlers. His work involved considerable study of both the landscape and inhabitants of his new home but his images, despite being set outdoors, were always painted in his studio. The works therefore recall rather than depict the natural world. The fact that his images are so often remarkably compelling is a tribute to Krieghoff’s skills as an observer and visual storyteller. Krieghoff’s incisively painted images of the Québécois landscape and its people have come to define much of our understanding of life in nineteenth-century Quebec.

Indian Hunters Camping, painted in 1861, some 15 years after his arrival in Quebec, is an excellent example of one of his favoured subjects. The image depicts a group of four Indigenous hunters making camp after harvesting a boreal caribou. Krieghoff shows the four men in a variety of activities. One man is preparing to skin the caribou, and a second man carries wood towards the campfire that has been started at the base of a rock face. The third man, having put his rifle aside, converses with the individual about to butcher the caribou. The fourth man is seen reclining and smoking a pipe, at rest after their hunt. The caribou sheds blood onto the ground, suggesting how recently it was killed. The camp has been set up by a pond, seen at the right of the composition, to provide the men with water and allow for a clean dressing of the animal.

Krieghoff has placed the hunters within an open area of the forest, the whole scene illuminated by sunlight streaming from the left side of the composition. The image is an autumnal scene, reflected in the changing colours of the leaves. The presence of death may be signified by Krieghoff’s inclusion of a bare tree trunk at the right of the composition, its bent branches subtly echoing the antlers of the slain caribou. An extensive mountain landscape spreads out behind the foreground scene of the four hunters and their prey. Krieghoff has with this landscape provided a backdrop for the stage on which the hunters complete their hunt.

Indian Hunters Camping presents both the hunters and the caribou in a carefully constructed and skilfully painted setting. Although formulated in the artist’s studio, the setting reveals both the acuteness of Krieghoff’s vision and his enormous skills as a narrative painter.

We thank Ian M. Thom, Senior Curator—Historical at the Vancouver Art Gallery from 1988 to 2018, for contributing the above essay.