Paul Kane (September 3, 1810 – February 20, 1871) was an Irish-born Canadian painter, famous for his paintings of First Nations peoples in the Canadian West and supplementary Native Americans in the Columbia District.
A largely self-educated artist, Paul Kane grew happening in York, Upper Canada (now Toronto) and trained himself by copying European masters upon a “Grand Tour” study vacation through Europe. He undertook two voyages through the Canadian northwest in 1845 and from 1846 to 1848. The first vacation took him from Toronto to Sault Ste. Marie and back. Having secured the withhold of the Hudson’s Bay Company, he set out on a second, much longer voyage from Toronto across the Rocky Mountains to Fort Vancouver (present-day Vancouver, Washington) and Fort Victoria (present day Victoria, British Columbia).
On both trips Kane sketched and painted First Nations and Métis peoples. Upon his compensation to Toronto, he produced on zenith of one hundred oil paintings from these sketches. The oil paintings he completed in his studio are considered a share of the Canadian heritage, although he often embellished them considerably, departing from the accuracy of his arena sketches in favour of more dramatic scenes. Kane’s perform followed the tenets of salvage ethnography.
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