How N.W.T.'s Legislature building became home to a collection of A.Y. Jackson works

Windows stretch overhead in a circular meeting room of the N.W.T. Legislative Assembly building in Yellowknife, casting a natural light on a collection of works by one of Canada's most renowned and celebrated painters, A.Y. Jackson. 

Jackson was a member of the Group of Seven, a collective of Canadian painters that formed in the 1920s and became famous for their unique depictions of Canadian scenes.

Members of the Group — Jackson in particular — frequently visited the North during the mid-1900s to paint the landscapes and also its mining industry.

Ten of Jackson's oil pieces are on permanent display in the Muskox Room of the N.W.T. Legislative Assembly building and they continue to inspire people. 

The Group's influence has undoubtedly stood the test of time. To put it into perspective, consider that an exhibition a few years ago in Ontario consisted of works made from the bacteria found on some of the Group's painting tools. 

John Geoghegan is an associate curator for the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and has worked on numerous Group of Seven exhibits. He says the works that reside in the N.W.T.'s Legislative Assembly were from Jackson's second trip to the territory in the late 1940s.

"A.Y. Jackson painted every province and territory in Canada and was really showing the Canadian public places that many of them had never seen before, through his paintings," said Geoghegan.

He believes Jackson was inspired by the North with the expressive colours in his works being a testament to that.

N.W.T.-based artist Darrell Chocolate says the colours seen in Jackson's works resonate for him as well.

"To see all the landscapes, especially the fall scenery when all the tundra leaves start to turn red and orange, it brings a sense of warmth," said Chocolate.

"The sunsets, the orange sky with the clouds. You see the purple, You see the blue. This is the uniqueness of being Dene. We have a lot of history here and I like to capture what I see."

Chocolate grew up in Gamètì, N.W.T., and he said he remembers seeing Jackson's pieces during visits to Yellowknife when he was younger.

"Even looking at them now, it reminds me, it's the inspiration that I've seen growing up," said Chocolate.

Chocolate wonders whether Jackson's paintings might be better suited for an art gallery or other public space where more people might see them.

'It's almost hidden away from the public. It's such beautiful art to be isolated. For people to see it, it's really a remarkable thing to see, all the beauty in the art, the originality in the art."

Geoghegan said that the N.W.T. collection of Jackson's paintings is special because the artist's oil sketches made out on the land are displayed alongside the final canvas pieces. 

The paintings and sketches were held for years at the National Gallery in Ottawa and shown in exhibits in Toronto and Montreal before they started to be returned to the territory in 1967. After years of effort, the works ended up in the Legislative Assembly building in Yellowknife when it opened in 1993.

While not in a gallery, the pieces can be seen during tours held at the Legislative Assembly throughout the year.

Portraying culture and the land 

Jackson's work was done at a time when Indigenous perspectives and creations were largely excluded from the art world in Canada and elsewhere. 

Geoghegan said the Group of Seven's work is a part of a much larger discussion around how the land was depicted during the early and mid-1900s.

Some of the Group's work has been criticized for depicting landscapes as essentially empty, and therefore erasing the presence of Indigenous people there at the time.

Geoghegan said that Jackson's N.W.T. paintings complicate those discussions.

"While the majority of Jackson's works render the landscape as empty, there are bodies of work like this one that do show various aspects of contemporary Indigenous life," said Geoghegan.

"That is something that I think scholars are still just coming to and unpacking and trying to understand, exactly the scope of Jackson's engagement with Indigenous communities."

Jackson and N.W.T. mines

Jackson's N.W.T. paintings also show that he was interested in more than just natural landscapes. 

In 1948, Jackson was invited by the federal deputy minister of mines and resources to do sketches of Yellowknife and the surrounding areas.

"It reveals a side of A.Y. Jackson that a lot of people maybe don't think about, and that is his paintings of industry," said Geoghegan.

W.J. Bennett, vice president of the former Eldorado Mining and Refining, a federal Crown corporation that funded Jackson's trips to the N.W.T., wrote in a booklet published in 1988 that the company's board of directors had decided to donate their nine sketches and a canvas painting by Jackson to Yellowknife's Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.

Two finished canvas pieces from Jackson's Eldorado mining trip sketches, depicted in Bennett's booklet, are in the N.W.T. Legislative Assembly collection: Consolidated Mine, NT, and West Bay Fault, NT, both dated 1949.

Where the other sketches Bennett refers to are currently stored is not clear. CBC News called the Prince of Wales Heritage Centre and the N.W.T. Legislative librarian but did not receive a response by deadline.