Their hands made peculiar gestures, and they held out their thumbs after the manner of Romance emperors to the gladiators – thumbs up meaning “spare it” – thumbs down, “kill it.”

By Gregory Clark, December 13, 1919.

Toronto is the artistic centre of Canada.

Also musical and dramatic. We have for proof of this the statements of concert and theatrical managers in their advertising. Of course, cynical people say that these managers make the same statements in Whitby, Hamilton, and Shakespeare, Ont. But we Torontonians recognize the ring of truth in such statements in regard to the Queen City.

We haven’t a Symphony Orchestra like Huntsville, Ont., nor a Dramatic Society like Galt. But we at least have the exhibition of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

The investigation of the artistic spirit of Toronto is a puzzling undertaking for the ordinary citizen.

Here, for instance, is this exhibition in the Grange1. Here, surely, we will find the artistic spirit almost tangibly materialized. We will find artistic people, Toronto’s literati, artists, perhaps.

We asked a sharp and successful young bond dealer, who knew everything and everybody, where the Grange was.

“Why,” says he, “that’s Home Smith’s old residence up in behind the north-west corner of McCaul and Queen streets!”

Shades of Goldwin and ancient secessionists, how are the mighty fallen2!

However, we found the Grange, in its wide old-fashioned park set in the crowded midst of the boarding-house and foreign section. It is no longer the Grange. It is the Toronto Art Museum. A fine grey-bricked box has been built on the back of Goldwin Smith’s old residence. And in this box, are three rooms containing a hundred and seventy-two pictures by Canadian artists.

There are two knockers and three different kinds of bell handles on Goldwin Smith’s front door – a kind of an historical exhibit in themselves, possibly. We knocked and pulled all five, and a young lady opened quickly to admit us. Apparently, Goldwin Smith’s front door is the back door of the Toronto Art Museum. Anyway, we had to hasten through the privacy of the late Mr. Smith’s study (family portraits and all) to reach the box at the back.

Here we found a hundred and seventy-two pictures, twenty sculptures, six architects’ plans, thirty-six etchings, and seventy-three citizens.

And the rooms were sizzling with the artistic spirit!

Silence brooded over the place, except for the deep-breathing of a middle-aged lady of very artistic appearance, who sat back on a bench and stared intently at a picture entitled “The Beaver Dam.”

Here and there were men and women, young and old, who seemed hypnotized by some one picture. They walked slowly towards the picture of their desire, eyes half-closed. Then they would back slowly away from it. Then to one side and to the other. Their hands made peculiar gestures, and they held out their thumbs, after the manner of Roman emperors to the gladiators – thumbs up meaning “spare it,” thumbs, down, “kill it.” After going through this ritual, they heaved an expressive sigh, and moved on to another picture.

There was a plenty of long hair, steel-rimmed spectacles, English rain coats and other marks of the artistic temperament. There were untidy old ladles and elaborately dowdy young ladies in tweed suits and flat-heeled boots. Long-haired young men, with dreamy eyes and the detached, eccentric manners of poets and artists. And here and there an old man, with a feverish air, who wandered from wall to wall murmuring “Good, good!” or “bad, bad!”

In fact we saw only five perfectly ordinary people in the whole place. They looked like bank managers or brokers. They were strikingly out of place. They seemed lost. We wondered who they were and what they were doing here.

Suddenly we came upon Smivvers3, our old family plumber, sitting dejectedly on a bench.

“Hello!” we cried. “What are you doing here? Trying to spend some of your war winnings on pictures?

“No,” groaned Smivvers. “I’m with my wife!”

And be pointed to the middle-aged artistic-looking lady who was still sitting and breathing passionately as she looked at the picture of “The Beaver Dam.”

“Your wife has the artistic temperament?” we asked.

“Only recently,” groaned Smivvers.

So we sat down beside Smivvers for a rest.

“How do you like the exhibition?” we asked.

“Well,” said Smivvers, a tone of exasperation in his voice, “I’ve been around the rooms three times, and there are only twenty-seven pictures out of the whole lot that would make a decent Christmas card or calendar. The rest wouldn’t stand a chance with a good publisher.

“I’ll tell you what! Patriotism has ruined art in Canada. Apparently most of these artists have come home from the war with their hands, all calloused from digging trenches and have started right in to paint, pictures Well, you can see the results! Just look at some of them! Whoever saw a sky that color, or a tree that shape, or a purple and pink forest! My son is doing better work than that and he’s only in the senior second book. Patriotism is all right, but it shouldn’t be used to make fun of these artists before they’ve got their hands in. A lot of my plumbers that were at the war had to have a lot of training when they came back. You bet, I didn’t send them out to put in comic taps and amusing furnaces just for patriotism. The public wouldn’t stand it. I think the manager of this exhibition ought to have a heart!”

“You don’t think it’s the new art?” we asked.

“New art!” exclaimed Mr. Smivvers. “New gas pipes! The lads that did those unfinished pictures there are recovering from wounds or shell shock! The Government ought to take a hand in re-establishing our artists. Otherwise our calendars, gift cards and parlor pictures are going to the dogs!”

“Let’s mingle with some of these artists” we whispered, “and get some information on the subject.”

So the three of us began to break in on the meditations of the long-haired and untidy ones, We picked the most artistic-looking ones first. We discovered the first three to be respectively a grocer, a bank clerk and a hotel manager. The next dozen or so included salesmen, butchers, journalists, boot and shoe dealers, bill collectors, dentists and retired gentlemen.

Divil4 an artist did we find! Out in the corridor we held a council.

“What do you know about that!” gasped Smivvers.

So we decided that we would start from the other end, avoiding the artistic-looking people and picking on the least likely looking ones in our efforts to find an artist.

Right then we spied those five ordinary looking men whose close hair cuts, blue serge suits and polished shoes proclaimed them bankers or brokers. They were standing dejectedly in a group out in the corridor below us.

“There,” whispered Smivvers, “Let’s start with them!”

Yes, they were artists!”

In fact, they were the only artists in the building. They were just on they way out to go and play a game of golf.

They didn’t want to talk about art. They laughed, at us and shyly referred our questions to some of the experts inside. And before we could ask about the unfinished pictures, and whether they were painted in the dark as a sort of stunt, or by soldiers blinded in the war, they hustled into their coats, and fled.

So Smivvers took us around the three rooms and showed us the twenty-seven pictures he had selected as suitable for calendars or Christmas cards.

Editor’s Notes:

  1. The Grange is a historic Georgian manor and was the first home of the Art Museum of Toronto. Today, it is part of the Art Gallery of Ontario. ↩︎
  2. Goldwin Smith was the last resident of the Grange, and died in 1910, only 9 years before this article. He is called “Home Smith” because of his opposition to Irish Home rule. He was also against Prohibition, female suffrage and state socialism. He was also an antisemite. ↩︎
  3. The headline says Snivers, but the rest of the article says Smivvers. ↩︎
  4. Divil is slang for devil. It says that in the original article, perhaps a typo? Or meaning that they could not find any artists? Maybe using “devil” was discouraged at the time? So many questions…. ↩︎