18 June 2009
Artists Hired by Canadian Pacific Railway Depicted "New West"
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Artists on the Canadian Pacific Railway features works
by 20 artists who travelled west, courtesy of the CPR and William Van Horne.
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Calgary Alberta - In the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, the Canadian Pacific Railway commissioned artists to paint, photograph, and film the "new West."
The transcontinental railway, completed in 1885, used the artists as part of an effort to persuade people in Eastern Canada and Europe
to settle in the region or holiday there.
Original works by over 20 of those Canadian artists have been assembled for "Vistas: Artists on the Canadian Pacific
Railway", which runs from 20 Jun 2009 to 20 Sep 2009 at the Glenbow Museum.
"In the days before electronic media, these artists' works were the only way to share the stunning landscapes," the museum
says.
Artists including Marmaduke Matthews, Lucius O'Brien, and John A. Fraser with photographers Oliver Buell and William McFarlane Notman
travelling along the Canadian Pacific track from east of Calgary into the Rocky and Selkirk Mountains between 1885 and 1910.
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Join amazingly talented LEGO® architects from the
southern Alberta LEGO® Users Group in this family friendly exhibition as they create a scenic railroad display to rival the
vistas featured in "Vistas: Artists on the Canadian Pacific Railway".
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Their work turned out to be iconic and was "significant in helping forge Canada's national identity," says the museum.
Comprising 130 pieces from the Glenbow and other public and private collections, "Vistas" gives "a fascinating and
thorough account of what the Rockies, the Selkirks, and the railway meant to the first non-indigenous people who saw
them."
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