Nouvelle-France’s Seigneurial System

28 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Canadian History, History

Tags

a Reponsible Government, Canadien, Company of One Hundred Associates, Louis-Joseph Papineau, New France, The Seigneurial System

Aubert de Gaspé’s Manoir, Saint-Jean-Port-Joli (south shore of the St Lawrence River)

In an earlier post, I suggested that a responsible government could rectify the problems that had led to the Rebellions of 1837-38. In other words, the Parliamentary system could bring about responsible government.

The British Constitution had been a blessing to Canadiens. Let me quote, once again, my anonymous Canadien praising Britain in Le Canadien, a newspaper created on 22 November 1806. On 4 November 1809 or anonymous Canadien, i.e. French-speaking Canadian, wrote:

“Depuis cette époque le règne des lois a graduellement établi son Empire, et nous jouissons maintenant d’une Constitution où tout le monde est à sa place, et dans laquelle un homme est quelque chose.”[i]

(Since that time when the rule of laws has gradually established its empire, and we now enjoy the benefits of a constitution where everyone has a place and where a man is something.)

Consider, for instance, what might have happened to Nouvelle-France, New France, if New France had still been under French rule during the French Revolution. Many French priests had sought refuge in England to escape the guillotine, but there was not much for them to do in England where Catholicism was not the only religion. That problem was resolved when England offered to send them to ‘its’ French colony in North America where they could be Good Shepherds, as priests, educators and organizers, not to mention that they felt validated by their work. (See Related Articles, at the foot of this post.)

Le Bon Pasteur by François Baillairgé, circa 1775, guilded and painted wood sculpture. (photo by Patrick Altman/courtesy Musée du Québec and The Canadian Encyclopedia).

Remember Thomas Chandler Haliburton and l’abbé Sigogne (father Jean-Mandé Sigogne) organizing Nova Scotia. L’abbé Sigogne had learned English during the years he had spent in England and he and Haliburton were both refined and well-educated gentlemen. (See Related Articles, at the foot of this post.)

But what of the seigneurs? Louis-Joseph Papineau was a seigneur. Would he have been guillotined? However, let us examine the Seigneurial System.

The Seigneurial System

We are acquainted with one seigneur: Louis-Joseph Papineau, but we know that Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé, the author of Les Anciens Canadiens, 1862, had been a seigneur. However, the Seigneurial System had been abolished, when Aubert de Gaspé published his novel, perhaps the most popular work written by a Canadien whose purpose was to prove that Lord Durham wrong in his assessment of French-speaking Canadians. They had a literature and a history, which they did not have in Lord Durham’s opinion.

The Seigneurial System (Wikipedia) or Seigneurial System was abolished in 1854 by the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada and was assented to by Governor Lord Elgin, on 22 June 1854, in An Act for the Abolition of Feudal Rights and Duties in Lower Canada which was brought into effect on 18 December of that year.

Back to the Early Days of Nouvelle-France

You might remember from earlier posts (See Related Articles) that, in 1628, Cardinal Richelieu of France had founded the Compagnie de Cent-Associés (The Company of One Hundred Associates [Wikipedia]), and had the land divided into narrow but deep lots on the shores of the St Lawrence River which was Nouvelle-France’s highway. The following is copied from the Company of One Hundred Associates entry in Wikipedia:

“From 1629 to 1635 Champlain was the company’s commander in New France. Under the Ancien Regime in France, every community was governed by a lord and a priest plus a magistrate appointed only with the lord and priest’s concurrence. As such, a component of the charter given the company provided for Roman Catholic priests to be part of all settlements and explorations and priests were given governing authority in conjunction with any appointed intendants. The charter also required the company to bring an average of 160 settlers to New France over the next twenty five years and to support their settlement for the first three years.”

Seigneurial System: land division (please click to enlarge the picture)

The Seigneurial System

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia’s entry on the Seigneurial System,[ii] the system was established in 1627, and abolished in 1854. The seigneur, usually leased his land from a member of the Company of One Hundred Associates founded by Richelieu) and, in turn, the tenants called censitaires, but also referred to as habitants, leased his thirty acres from the seigneur on the basis of duly notarized contracts. The land therefore belonged to the King of France.

A seigneurie measured 5 x 15 km in size. Land was allocated as the member of the Compagnie des Cent Associés pleased and was usually leased, not sold, to influential colonists:

the nobility,
religious institutions (in return for educational and hospital services),
military officers, etc.

Seigneurs and Censitaires

Normally, the Seigneurie was farmland divided into

river lots (rangs, or rows), linked by
montées, roads going from one rang to another.

Censitaires or habitants paid rent (cens) and banalités. According to Wikipedia, banalités were “taxes levied on grain, which the tenant had to grind at his seigneur’s mill. He [the seigneur] also usually granted hunting, fishing and woodcutting licences.” The seigneur used that money to run the mill, the Church, keep roads open, etc.

In the eighteenth century, it was also customary for habitants to contribute a certain numbers of hours of work to his seigneur. This was called la corvée, the chore. Each habitant cultivated about thirty acres of land, which he leased. As for the seigneur,

he could establish a court of law,
he usually managed the commune,
he provided a church to his censitaires, and
he was under the obligation of providing a common mill.

Some Canadiens settled in cities and many engaged in the fur trade. These Canadiens usually belonged to a parish, but 75-80% of Canadiens were habitants. So Canadiens belonged to 1) seigneuries or 2) parishes, and communities were usually closely knit.

Seigneuries and Parishes

There were roughly 200 seigneuries and they covered virtually all the inhabited areas on both banks of the St Lawrence River between Montréal and Québec and beyond on the north side. On the south side, they extended to the Gaspé area. By and large, that land was arable and having sons helping on the farm was beneficial. However, to what extent can one divide up thirty acres of land? But that is another story.

In short, for the time being, we have, as noted above, two leaders. They are, on the one hand, the seigneur and his censitaires, farming communities and, on the other hand, the curé, the parish priest, and his parishioners. When the seigneurial system was abolished, the habitant remained on his thirty acres, but Canadiens also lived in townships or cantons grouped into parishes. In other words, with the abolition of seigneuries, the Canadiens were grouped into parishes. The parish became the main organizational element.

Let us read the Canadian Encyclopedia [iii] on the subject of the seigneurial system:

“The system of land tenure, which placed rural inhabitants close to one another, and in the early 19th century the village, were the foundation upon which the family, neighbour relations and community spirit developed. The closeness of this agricultural society to the soil led naturally to a feeling that land was included in one’s patrimony, to be passed from generation to generation.”

The Conquest and the Abolition of the Seigneurial System

After the conquest of Quebec, or the Treaty of Paris (1763), the system became an obstacle to colonization by British settlers as the Quebec Act of 1774 left the Canadiens undisturbed. Under the terms of the Quebec Act, French civil law was retained and so was the seigneurial system. The seigneuries were arable land and, therefore, prime land. Some seigneuries were bought by English-speaking Canadians.

According to Wikipedia, “[t]he system was finally abolished when the last residual rents were repurchased through a system of Quebec provincial bonds.” By the way, some seigneuries belonged to women.

It could well be that the seigneurial system was abolished as it dissolved. As noted above, to what extent can land be divided? The fact is that the Canadiens ran out of land. That story is told in Ringuet’s (Philippe Panneton) Trente Arpents (1938). Some tried to make arable land of land that was not arable. Louis Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine (1914), a French author who spent a winter in the Lac Saint-Jean area and provided a lasting account of what was called colonisation.

But, this is where we must pause as a whole chapter of Canada’s history is over. Other stories begin.

Much of the above information is based on the contents of my lectures on French-Canadian literature. But I wish to acknowledge that I have also used the Canadian Encyclopedia and, to a certain extent, Wikipedia.

Le Jeune Étudiant, Ozias Leduc, 1894 (Photo credit: FR Wikipedia)

https://youtu.be/i2r2naec3rw

Related Articles

Évangéline & the Literary Homeland (cont’d)

Évangéline & the Literary Homeland

Richelieu & Nouvelle-France

Une Éminence grise: Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fonsac

Wikipedia Entries

Samuel de Champlain (13 August 1574 – 25 December 1635)

Pierre Du Gua de Monts (Du Gua de Monts; c. 1558 – 1628)

Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully (1560–1641)

_________________________

[i] René Dionne, Les Origines canadiennes (1763-1836), in Gilles Marcotte, dir. vol. 2, Anthologie de la littérature québécoise (Montréal: L’Hexagone, 1994), p. 324.

[ii] Jacques Mathieu, “The Seigneurial System,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/seigneurial-system

[iii] Ibid.

28 April 2012
WordPress

Parliament to the Rescue: the Hidden Resource

28 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada, History, Quebec

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Canada, Canadien, Company of One Hundred Associates, Constitutional Act 1791, Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, New France, Quebec, Quebec Act

: L’Enfant au pain (Boy with Bread) by Ozias Leduc 1892-99, National Gallery of Canada

Until the Act of Union, 1840-1841, the former citizens of New France were surprisingly happy with their new masters. They enjoyed the fact that they no longer had to bend their head before an intendant or a gouverneur and, although the Seigneurial system was maintained, British Rule brought a Parliament. Moreover, Canadiens could also express themselves in newspapers and their priests occupied a privileged position.

Here are testimonials:

Le Canadien: a newspaper

« Vous avez peut-être vécu dans ces tems malheureux qui on précédé la conquête de ce pays, où un Gouverneur étoit une Idole devant laquelle il n’étoit pas permis de lever la tête. »[i]

Translation

“You may have lived during these unfortunate days that preceded the conquest of this country, when a governor was an idol in whose presence one was not allowed to raise one’s head.”

The above quotation is taken from the 4 November 1809 issue of Le Canadien, a newspaper founded on 22 November 1806. Earlier in the same article, the anonymous Canadien had also praised freedom of the press, which had not been allowed the citizens of New France. Later, in the same article, our anonymous writer would praise the British Constitution.

The Oraison Funèbre (the funeral oration) of M^grJean-Olivier Brian

More eloquent, however, is Father Joseph-Octave Plessis‘s (1763-1825) Oraison Funèbre. In his funeral oration, Oraison Funèbre, on the death of M^grJean-Olivier Brian, Bishop of Quebec from 1764 to 1784, Plessis apologized on behalf of his people, the Canadiens, for having feared British rule. He said that the people of New France had been rather apprehensive because they could not be persuaded that foreign men, unaccustomed to New France’s land, laws, customs and religion, would be able “to give back to Canada what it had just lost by changing masters:”

« On ne pouvait se persuader que des hommes étrangers à notre sol, à notre langage, à nos lois (laws), à nos usages (customs) et à notre culte (religion), fussent jamais capables de rendre au Canada ce qu’il venait de perdre en changeant de maîtres. »[ii]

Translation

“We could not persuade ourselves that men who knew little about our land, our language, or laws, our customs and our religion could ever return to Canada what it had just lost by changing masters.”

Back to the Quebec Act and Lord Dorchester

There can be doubt that the Canadiens had much to gain when Sir Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester made them full-fledged British citizens under the Quebec Act.[III] Nothing had been taken away from Britain’s French subject and they had now gained the right to have newspapers and be members of Parliament.

Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1763), it had been negotiated that the Canadiens were to be left undisturbed. But, ironically, the citizens of the Province de Québec (1774) and of the two Canadas, born of the Constitutional Act of 1791, had been provided with the tools that would allow them to regain what they lost when the Act of Union was signed into law: Parliament, as the word suggests.

The Rebellions and the Act of Union

The events of 1837-1838 and the ensuing decision to unite the two Canadas and to prohibit the use of French were regrettable. However, once order was restored, the new United Province of Canada was again enjoying the benefits of the British Constitution.

When first appointed Joint Prime Minister of the United Province of Canada, in 1842, Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, or LaFontaine, was not heading a responsible government, which would cause him to resign, but the United Province of Canada had a Canadien voice and it so happened that this Canadien, Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, spoke English. You may recall that Lafontaine had travelled to Britain in an effort to avert a call to arms in 1837.

A Bilingual Household

Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine was married first to Lynzee Rickard (1813–1859) who became his wife on 9 July 1831. When Lynzee died (in 1859), Louis-Hippolyte married the widowed Jane Élisabeth Geneviève Morrison (1822-1905) daughter of Charles Morrison. They were married on 30 January 1861 and lived on rue Saint-Denis in Montreal. It was a bilingual household.

As joint Prime Minister of the United Province of Canada, Louis-Hippolyte first addressed the assembly in French and then he and his political partner Robert Baldwin set about returning to Canadiens the right to speak their own language.

In fact, assimilation would have been difficult due to the land tenure system, the seigneurial system. As for those Canadiens who were not farmers they gathered around a priest, in a parish. That was what I like to call the “parochial” system.

Conclusion

So let me close this blog on an optimistic note. In the 1840s, we have fine men in Parliament and their goal, responsible government, had been attained between 1842 and 1848, when Baldwin and Lafontaine became Joint Prime Ministers.

In my next post, we will examine the Seigneurial System which was not abolished until 1854. In fact, Louis-Joseph Papineau was a seigneur and, from 1774 (the Quebec Act) until 1854, French-speaking Canadians had both seigneuries and a Parliament.

Ravel: 10 Jeux d’eau

Nature morte by Cornelius Krieghoff

_________________________

[I] René Dionne, Les Origines canadiennes (1763-1836), in Gilles Marcotte, dir. vol. 2, Anthologie de la littérature québécoise (Montréal: L’Hexagone, 1994), p. 324.

[II] Op. Cit., p. 331.

[III] The Quebec Act: 1774

The Quebec Act of 1774 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain (citation 14 Geo. III c. 83) setting procedures of governance in the Province of Quebec. The principal components of the Act were:

The province’s territory was expanded to take over part of the Indian Reserve, including much of what is now southern Ontario, plus Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota.
The oath of allegiance was replaced with one that no longer made reference to the Protestant faith.
It guaranteed free practice of the Catholic faith.
It restored the use of the French civil law for private matters while maintaining the use of the English common law for public administration, including criminal prosecution.
The province’s territory was expanded to take over part of the Indian Reserve, including much of what is now southern Ontario, plus Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota.
The oath of allegiance was replaced with one that no longer made reference to the Protestant faith.
It guaranteed free practice of the Catholic faith.
It restored the use of the French civil law for private matters while maintaining the use of the English common law for public administration, including criminal prosecution.
The province’s territory was expanded to take over part of the Indian Reserve, including much of what is now southern Ontario, plus Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota.
The oath of allegiance was replaced with one that no longer made reference to the Protestant faith.
It guaranteed free practice of the Catholic faith.
It restored the use of the French civil law for private matters while maintaining the use of the English common law for public administration, including criminal prosecution.

The Aftermath (cont’d): Aubert de Gaspé’s Anciens Canadiens

30 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada, Literature

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Arché, Canadien, French Canadian, Longue-Pointe, Montreal, Montreal Canadiens, Quebec, Seven Years' War

The Ice Bridge at Longue-Pointe, by Cornelius Krieghoof, 1847-1848

Cornelius Krieghoof’s paintings show a mythical Quebec. Similarly, Philippe Aubert de Gaspé‘s (30 October 1786 – 29 January 1871) Les Anciens Canadiens (1863) mythifies the Canadians of Old. Les Anciens Canadiens, a novel, was first serialized in Les Soirées canadiennes, a magazine founded in 1861 by H. R. Casgrain, A. Gérin-Lajoie, the author of Un Canadien errant (the words only), F. A. H. La Rue and J. C. Taché.

A Literary Homeland Novel & an historical novel

Aubert de Gaspé wrote his Anciens Canadiens, Quebec (1863) when he was in his mid-seventies and did so in response to the Report of John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham GCB, PC (12 April 1792 – 28 July 1840), in which Durham stated that the Canadiens did not have a history or a literature. Les Anciens Canadiens therefore constitutes a Patrie Littéraire achievement. In 1890, Charles G. D. Roberts‘s KCMG, FRSC (10 January 1860 – 26 November 1943) translated Gaspé’s novel entitled The Canadians of Old, but I have yet to explore translations of Les Anciens Canadiens.

Given that it was written one hundred years after the Treaty of Paris (1763), one may think this novel has little to do with the aftermath of the “conquest,” except that it is a historical novel in which events take place as the Province of Québec replaces Nouvelle-France, which Aubert de Gaspé memorialized and idealized.

Les Anciens Canadiens‘s main protagonists are Jules d’Haberville, the son of a seigneur, and Archibald Cameron of Locheill, an exiled Highlander, both of whom are students at the Jesuit seminary in Quebec City and both of whom are fated to fight on opposite sides during the Seven Years’ War or French and Indian War.

Moreover, while visiting Jules’s father manoir, Archibald meets Blanche, Jules’s sister, and the two fall in love, which almost takes us back to Krieghoof’s two major themes: the habitant and the Amerindian. Krieghoof was fond of genre themes and, among these themes, a “typical scene” was one where “a British soldier flirts with a young francophone woman, the intimate moment interrupted by her husband or a parent.”^[i]

Archibald, renamed Arché, is not “a British soldier flirting with a young francophone woman.”^[^ii] However, like a “parent,” the parents of a French-Canadian girl, Blanche herself does not think she should marry Arché. She is the daughter of a seigneur and she rejects Arché who is not just “un bon Anglais,” but Scottish and extremely handsome. Blanche is simply too pure. It is at times possible to correct the accidents of history.

Dumais’s gratitude & the habitant as voyageur

However, being Scottish does save Archibald’s life. The novel contains two perilous and related events. Early in the novel, Dumais, an habitant, crosses the Rivière-du-Sud when the ice is too thin and breaks. The Canadiens made ice bridges, as depicted in Krieghoff’s painting above. In fact, Dumais is the victim of a genuine débâcle. He breaks a leg and is hanging from a tree hoping to be rescued. Archibald turns into a formidable athlete and saves Dumais’s life.

Later in the novel, Dumais will save Archibald’s life. The British have attacked New France and Archibald is ordered to burn properties, including the d’Haberville’s manoir, which he doesn’t want to do. However, as he is destroying properties, Archibald is captured by Amerindians and is about to be tortured and burned when Dumais surfaces, looking like an Amerindian, and tells the Amerindians that their captive is not an Englishman, but Scottish and that “les Écossais sont les sauvages des Anglais[,]”^[iii]or “the Scots are savages to the English.” Dumais then goes on to tell that Archie is the young man who saved his life on the day the ice broke.

Dumais even reveals that is not altogether the Amerindian he appears to be, but a sort of “voyageur,” the often métissé French-Canadian who manned the birch-bark canoes, first for fur-traders and later for Scottish explorers who crossed the continent, the voyageur who spoke the Amerindian languages and married Amerindians.

Reference to Cooper and Chateaubriand

Interestingly, Les Anciens Canadiens, contains a reference to James Fenimore Cooper and, indeed, written by a Cooper the tragic events at the Rivière-du-Sud may have been better told. “Only a Cooper or a Chateaubriand could have done justice to a depiction of the tragic events taking place on the shore of the Rivière-du-Sud.” « La plume d’un Cooper, d’un Chateaubriand, pourrait seule peindre dignement le spectacle qui frappe leurs regards sur la berge de la Rivière-du-Sud. »^[iv^] Given Chateaubriand’s masterful style and Cooper’s quickly penned realism, this comparison is not altogether felicitous or convincing.

A Flaw, but not too tragic

Yes, there is the flaw. Like Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, Aubert de Gaspé’s Anciens Canadiens is a page-turner, but Aubert de Gaspé so idealizes New France that a comparison with Cooper is again rather inappropriate. The seigneur is too cordial and life at the manoir, too perfect: the meal, the May Fest, the Saint-Jean-Baptiste, the spontaneous singing, the good gentleman who has been imprisoned because others spent his fortune, the priest (le curé), the gentle treatment of the seigneur’s black slave, the friendship between Jules and Arché: frères (brothers), the much too “noble” Blanche. In fact, even Archibald’s heroism is also a little too heroic, but it is the tone of mythologies. They provide a glorious past.

__________________

^[i] Arlene Gehmacher, “Cornelius Krieghoof,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/cornelius-david-krieghoff

^[ii]Ibid.

^[iii]Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, Les Anciens Canadiens (Éditions Fides, collection Bibliothèque québécoise, 1988[1864]), p. 239.

^[iv]Les Anciens Canadiens, p. 79.

^[v]Arlene Gehmacher, “Cornelius Krieghoof,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/cornelius-david-krieghoff

The Aftermath & Krieghoff’s Quintessential Quebec

29 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Aboriginals, Art, Canada

≈ 267 Comments

Tags

Canada, Canadian Encyclopedia, Canadien, Constitutional Act 1791, Cornelius Krieghoff, New France, Quebec, Quebec Act, ROYAL PROCLAMATION OF 1763

—Bargaining for a Load of Wood by Cornelius Krieghoff (1815 – 1872), 1860

Galerie Walter Klinkhoff

http://www.klinkhoff.com/gwk/home/gwkexhbrowse.asp?WID=769&artist=75

“After Canada was ceded to Britain in 1763, new British laws respected the private agreements and the property rights of francophone society, and the seigneurial system was maintained.” The Canadian Encyclopedia

—ooo—

In 1755, the British deported thousands of Acadians but, in 1874, nineteen years later, the Quebec Act made French-speaking Canadians full-fledged British subjects.

At first, there were difficult years on both sides. But, as stated in the Canadian Encyclopedia, after Canada was ceded to Britain in 1763, “new British laws respected the private agreements and the property rights of francophone society, and the seigneurial system was maintained.”[i] For details regarding this question, one can read Michel Brunet’s French Canada and the early decades of the British Rule (go to pages 3 and 4).

The Royal Proclamation and the Quebec Act

The ROYAL PROCLAMATION OF 1763 renamed Nouvelle-France the Province of Quebec, but made it rather small, which would no longer be the case in 1774. According to the Quebec Act, “which received royal assent 22 June 1774 and became effective 1 May 1775,”[ii] the Province of Quebec would “include Labrador, Ile d’Anticosti and Iles-de-la-Madeleine on the east, and the Indian territory south of the Great Lakes between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers on the west.” This enlarged Quebec would have an elected assembly and Catholics could be elected into office.

Sir Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester

The Quebec Act came into effect under General and Right Honourable Sir Guy Carleton 1st Baron Dorchester, KB [Order of Bath] (Strabane, Co. Tyrone, Ireland, 3 September 1724 – 10 November 1808 Stubbings, Maidenhead, Berkshire), Governor of Quebec (1768–1778) and Governor General of the Canadas (1786–1796). But Guy Carleton opposed the Constitutional Act of 1991 that created two Canadas: Lower Canada and Upper Canada.

Lord Guy Carleton[iii] was largely responsible for the Quebec Act, which helped to preserve French laws and customs (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-2833). (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

I will discuss the Constitutional Act (1791), which Lord Dorchester opposed, in a later post. For the time being, it suffices to tell about the life of the Canadien after the Treaty of Paris. France could have kept New France but it preferred to keep sugar-rich Guadeloupe. However, the terms of the Treaty of Paris, which protected Quebec, were respected.

It has been said that it was in Britain’s best interest to give full citizenship to the Canadiens in a formal Act, the Quebec Act. Its thirteen colonies to the South were threatening to part company with England. Therefore, why alienate the French Canadians? Yet, it has also been said that Britain acted in the best interest of its new British subjects.

Cornelius Krieghoff

So, let us remember Cornelius Krieghoof’s quintessential Quebec: a snow land, un pays de neige: snow as a country.

krieghoff-cornelius-winter-landscape-c-1849

— Winter Landscape, c. 1889 (Photo credit: Art.com)

Cornelius David Krieghoff (19 June 1815 – 8 March 1872) was born in Amsterdam and entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Germany, in c. 1830. He moved to New York in 1836 and enlisted in the US army the following year, 1837. In 1840, he deserted the US army and married Émilie Gauthier. “They moved to Montreal, where he participated in the Salon de la Société des Artistes de Montréal. While in Montreal, he befriended the Mohawks living on the Kahnawake Indian Reservation and made many sketches of them from which he later produced oil paintings.”[iv]

In 1844, the Krieghoffs travelled to Paris and Krieghoof made copies of works located in the Louvre under the direction of Michel Martin Drolling (1789–1851). Krieghoof was invited to participate in the first exhibition of the Toronto Society of Arts, held in 1847. So the Krieghoffs returned to Montreal in 1846 and moved to Quebec City in 1853. Krieghoff returned to Europe twice. He did so briefly, in 1854, and at greater length, from 1863 to 1868.

He then moved to Chicago to retire, and Chicago was his last destination. He died on 8 March 1872 at the age of 56 and is buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. The Great Quebec Fire of 8 June 1881 destroyed many of his sketches, “then owned by John S. Budden, who had lived with the artist for thirteen years.” (Wikipedia). Cornelius Krieghoof is considered the finest Canadian artist of the nineteenth century. However, although called a Canadian, he could be labelled a Dutch master.

The Habitant and his Seigneur

Just below is a painting of habitants, the name given censitaires or tenants under the Seigneurial System, abolished in 1854. They had been called habitants since the seventeenth century. The word has now become pejorative.

Habitants, 1852 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Two Major Themes

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia:

“Krieghoff early on established in his repertoire two major themes that he would revisit throughout his career and for which he is perhaps best known: rural francophones and aboriginals. His HABITANT scenes cover a range of situations: in some, for example, folk greet one another en route, play cards, race their sleds, fraternize at the local in, or attempt to settle a tract of un-arable land – granted to them by the government – in the hinterlands of Québec.”[v]

The hinterlands would be Maria Chapdelaine’s Peribonka: les pays d’en-haut (the countries above), a story told by Frenchman, Louis Hémon. As for the aboriginals, when he served in the US army, Krieghoff was assigned for service in the Seminole Wars in Florida. Krieghoff had made sketches of the Second Seminole War. The Seminoles were Amerindians.