Portrait of a Native Girl

“I paint because there is no other way to express the beauty of my people.”

—Arthur Shilling, The Beauty of My People. Dir. Alan Collins, National Film Board of Canada, 1977

Arthur Shilling’s Portrait of a Native Girl radiates with the joy and pride he felt for his people. The broad, loose brush strokes combine with Shilling’s bold use of colour to exemplify the impressionistic style for which he was beginning to receive national attention at the time. Shilling’s technique of black underpainting sets off his unexpected colour choices, creating an added dynamism and sense of movement that is foundational to the vibrancy and life in his paintings.

Kin and elders from his Anishinaabe community were a favoured subject for Shilling. Coming from a large family and taking pride in his role in the community and as a young father, he placed a particular emphasis on children. As a painter and artist, he centred his practice on affirming and celebrating Indigenous community, pushing back against dominant processes of cultural and historical erasure. Although primarily known as specializing in portraiture — what he preferred to call “people paintings” — Shilling’s landscapes depict daily life in the Anishinaabe community where he was born and chose to live with his family. He built a gallery there at the end of his life to support the development of other Indigenous artists.

At the age of eight, Shilling was placed in the residential school in Brantford, Ontario: the Mohawk Institute. From an early age, he experienced health issues that channelled his considerable talents towards art. The generative quality of Shilling’s paintings, vital and positive, is remarkable when one considers the history of what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said “can be best described as ‘cultural genocide’" against Indigenous peoples.

Shilling was a proud member of the Chippewas of Rama First Nation, once known as Mnjikaning and Rama Mnjikaning. The Chippewas of Rama First Nation are located in central Ontario, near what is now known as Orillia. Prior to the mid-1800s, their territory consisted of millions of acres across central and lower-northern Ontario. In 1815 and 1818, much of this territory was surrendered. In the early 1830s, Shilling’s ancestors were relocated to what became one of the first reserves in Canada, stretching over a swath of land between Atherley and Coldwater, Ontario.

Shilling’s ancestors tirelessly resisted assimilation and continued to live off the land as they had done since time immemorial. It is this land that served as the initial inspiration for Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, who often depicted these landscapes as unpeopled, excluding Indigenous presence and settlements in an effort to depict the sublime beauty of the area as wild and untouched. Although tragically short — Shilling died at the age of 44 — his artistic production fundamentally refutes this erasure. The vitality of his Indigenous community and its perseverance over systems of oppression and marginalization sings out in his paintings and urges personal reckoning with this history.

Matthew R. Hills is the Director of the Grenfell Art Gallery in Elmastukwek/Bay of Islands on the west coast of Newfoundland (Ktaqmkuk) and Curator of the Memorial University Art Collection.