Ben Dick Henry Speck Charles Dudoward Lloyd Wadhams Tommy Speck Marshall Speck Godfrey Hunt George D. Wilson

Other contributing artists: Tom Wallace Allen James Danny Cranmer William Walker Robert Whonnock

The artists whose works are represented in The Kwagiutl Collection were able to participate in and refer to aspects of traditional Kwagiutl culture that had remained viable, such as ceremonial dancing and the representation of crest in two-dimensional form. Most the artists were not trained in the traditional way, nor did they (with the possible exception of Henry Speck) experience the strength of Kwagiutl culture and social organization that such artists as Willie Seaweed and Mungo Martin experienced in their youth. However, their paintings served to carry Kwagiutl traditions forward through the 1960s, but with reformulated meanings that reflected the new audience for their work: an audience consisting not only of Kwagiutl people, but also the interested non-Indian public.

Excelling in three-dimensional sculpture, Kwagiutl artists also traditionally worked in flat design, using brush and pigment to embellish canoes, paddles housefronts, boxes, drums, hats, masks and other objects. Most of these paintings portrayed the crests of their owners, often declaring the owner’s lineage, wealth and status; other paintings had mythical or spiritual meanings. Probably very few painted designs had ornamental value alone, although a love of decoration is shown by its use on almost every available surface.

Work on paper is a relatively new development in Kwagiutl art, and has been produced primarily for non-Indians. The materials were known to the Kwagiutl since contact with the Europeans but were not immediately used by them in their artwork. The first known use of paper was in the early 1900’s when drawings on paper were done for ethnographer Franz Boas.

Artist/carver Charlie James (Yakuglas), who grew up in Fort Rupert on the Northern end of Vancouver Island, started doing water colours around 1913. James' granddaughter Ellen Neel, who was also a carver, worked on several of these paintings with him. Also in the 1920's, a young Charlie George Jr., who later became a well known carver, produced a number of drawings on paper while in hospital.

The first important paintings were done by master artist Mungo Martin, who produced a series of watercolours during a brief period of hospitalization in Vancouver. These initial paintings were purchased by the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology, where he was working at the time. In 1952, while working for the British Columbia Provincial Museum, he produced a second set of paintings depicting crest figures, which were purchased by that museum.

It was inevitable that other graphic artists would adopt this new means of expression, especially as a commercial market developed for this art. Anthropologist Wilson Duff wrote in 1965, "The painting of Indian designs on paper … has enjoyed a recent revival among Indian artists." The artists represented in this collection, particularly Henry Speck, Marshall Speck, Ben Dick, Lloyd Wadhams and Allen James, are the artists to whom Duff was referring. Each of these artists developed his own distinctive style of graphic presentation, and can be considered forerunners of contemporary Northwest Coast graphic art. Henry Speck also had silkscreen prints of twelve of his paintings published by B.C. Indian Design Ltd., and so was one of the first (perhaps the very first) Northwest Coast Indian artists to enter the silkscreen print market.

The medium of painting on paper allowed certain innovations to occur in Kwagiutl art. A flat piece of paper offered a freer design field than an object whose entire surface had to be embellished with a particular crest animal. In addition, the fact that paper was a new, non-traditional medium freed artists from some of the cultural restrictions that would have been more closely connected with carving ceremonial and crest objects.