In celebration of the centenary of the Province of Alberta and the 100th anniversary of the birth of Peter Whyte, the Banff’s Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies presents two complementary exhibitions exploring the art and lives of Peter and Catharine Whyte.

The story of the Whyte Museum founders brings together Boston socialite Catharine Robb and Banff born Peter Whyte in a vibrant tale of painting, world travel and community building. With the inspiration of magnificent mountains all around, their lives parallel the growth of the Canadian Rockies as a place where artists live, work and display their creations.

Catharine Robb grew up surrounded by intellectual and artistic stimulation, in an age when museums were being founded against the backdrop of a world exploring its various cultures. As a student at the Museum School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the late 1920s, she left a romance with John Rockefeller 3rd, having fallen in love with fellow student Peter Whyte. A budding artist, Whyte had worked in Banff as a driver for the Brewster Transport Company, guiding celebrities and teaching skiing.

Peter was influenced by the growing artistic reputation of his hometown. He admired local painters such as Nora Drummond-Davis, as well as visiting artists who set up summer studios such as American wildlife painter Carl Rungius. During the 1920s, Group of Seven painters Arthur Lismer, Lawren Harris and J.E.H. MacDonald worked in the Rockies. Whyte guided MacDonald to Lake O’Hara in 1927, and flourished in the company of the older, seasoned painter.

Peter and Catharine married in 1930. They moved to Banff where Catharine’s expectations, fuelled by Peter’s vivid letters describing the mountains, were wholly fulfilled. The couple built a log cabin beside the Bow River, now a historic home at the Whyte Museum. They painted at Lake O’Hara, Bow Lake, Mt Assiniboine, Lake Louise, Yoho, Wenkchemna Pass, Skoki Valley, and around Banff, creating sparkling landscape studies of lakes, peaks, glaciers, larches and Rockies weather as it played out season to season. These same venues are popular today amongst sightseers, photographers and painters.

Peter Whyte also drew cartoons. He had a keen eye for the humorous, and conveyed social mannerisms of the 1930s and 40s that were at odds with real life in the mountains. One scenario depicts his grandmother skiing in a dress, a telling comment on a time when wearing pants, even to participate in a trouser-requiring sport, was unseemly for women.

The Whyte’s home became a focal point of Banff where Peter and Catharine entertained artists and collected paintings, prints and miniatures. Pioneers Jimmy and Billie Simpson were next-door neighbours and Philip and Pearl (Brewster) Moore were close friends. The Moores made Banff their home in 1907, shared the Whyte’s collecting passion, and later donated their artifact-filled log home to the Whyte Museum.

The Whytes had longstanding friendships with the Stoney Indians through Peter’s father, who had helped found Banff Indian Days in 1889. Catharine admired Native crafts (examples of which today can be purchased at museum and craft shops), and both she and Peter asked Stoney individuals to sit for portraits. A financial supporter of their cultural efforts, Catharine was made an honorary chief in 1973, and Peter was adopted into a Stoney family.

In the mid 1930s, Peter and Catharine travelled to Europe and Asia. During World War II, Peter joined the army reserve. After the war, the couple revisited the backcountry to paint.

The Whytes began planning a museum that could house their own and collected documents, recordings, photographs and art objects. With Catharine’s spirit of philanthropy guiding them, they established what became known as the Peter and Catharine Whyte Foundation in 1958 to house the Library and Archives of the Canadian Rockies. After Peter died in 1966, Catharine and archivist Mary-Alice Stewart planned a new building that opened in 1968. Fittingly, the first Peter Whyte Gallery exhibit was of Peter’s work.

Catharine continued to paint, travel, attend to her collections, and contribute time and financial resources to Alberta cultural institutions. Her commitment to the institution now called the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies never waned. Catharine died in 1979, a year after she was named to the Order of Canada.

Peter and Catharine Whyte’s accumulation of works by Cana-dian Rockies artists, printmakers and craftspeople is the backbone of the Whyte Museum collection. Visitors are immersed in the art history of the Canadian Rockies—Belmore Browne, Carl Rungius, Walter Phillips, J.E.H. MacDonald, Lawren Harris, Aldro Hibbard, Leonard Richmond are all represented. Documents and photographs the Whytes created and collected now enrich the understanding of Canadian Rockies subjects.

Inspired by the Whytes, others continue to make wonderful gifts of historic and contemporary art, and archival record. The remarkable legacy of Peter and Catharine still drives the effort of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies.

COMMUNITY OF ART
The same rugged mountain beauty that moved Peter and Catharine Whyte to a lifetime of achievement in-spires painters today. Contemporary artists such as Canmore’s Donna Jo Massie, Susan Elkins of Banff and Jasper’s Wendy Wacko follow in the footsteps of their Group of Seven predecessors. 

Many talented painters of Canadian Rockies landscapes work ‘en plein air’. ‘Extreme’ painters Dominik Modlinski, Paul Gauthier and Neil Patterson make the outdoors their studios. Dramatic canvases result—they are at their best working at -10°C with wind whipping, light changing and dramatic views shifting.

The Canmore Artists & Artisans Guild (CAAG) operates a gallery above the library and the Jasper Artist Guild (JAG) displays works in the old firehall. But most exceptional landscape art produced in the Rockies is shown at better commercial galleries in Canmore, Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper. Many galleries “go beyond helping visitors acquire a nice memento,” explains Barbara Pelham of Can-ada House Gallery. They match clients with works to cherish for a lifetime, and provide ongoing information on new arrivals by clients’ favourite artists, upcoming exhibitions and opportunities to meet the artists.

The joy of art can include an exploration of visual history at the Whyte, Walter Phillips, Canmore and Jasper-Yellowhead museums, the purchase of a contemporary work, or simply a visit to inspira-tional places that artists have captured on canvas for 100 years.
— JN

Publication Date: 5/2005