By Katherine Stauble
Toronto/CMEDIA: In one of its many exhibitions, National Gallery of Canada (NGOC) presents the exhibition Winter Count: Embracing the Cold which is in many ways a study of such contrasts and contradictions in Canada’s winter months.
Collaborating with three curatorial departments – Canadian Art, Indigenous Ways and Decolonization, and European and American Art, NGOC presents more than 160 works examining the myriad sides of winter.
Featuring paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, installations, clothing and three-dimensional works, most of the works in the exhibition were curated between the early 19th century and the present day.
Refering to the practice among the Plains Indigenous nations of marking on a buffalo hide with important events occurring over the year, the title, Winter Count, highlights the first snowfall of one winter and the first snowfall of the next.
As such, the winter count becomes a sort of calendar and, among some Cree nations, a person’s age is counted not by number of years, but by winters.
An entire room of the show is devoted to Cree artist Duane Linklater’s large installation of teepee covers, from his Winter Count series.
Speaking of the Indigenous works in the exhibition, Jocelyn Piirainen, Associate Curator in Indigenous Ways and Decolonization, states: “Many artists, like their ancestors, create art as means of documenting history. Winter is an especially challenging time…While many of the works within this exhibition are considered contemporary works…they still reflect much of the inherited and intrinsic knowledge from our ancestors’ past.”
Although many of the works in the exhibition draw upon the Gallery’s collection, the curators have created new contexts for these works by presenting many loans from North American and European collections.
On loan from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the striking Indigenous work Winter by artist Wendy Red Star is part of her self-portrait series The Four Seasons. The photograph shows the artist dressed in traditional regalia, seated in front of a wintry backdrop and surrounded by bird ornaments, styrofoam snowballs and other dollar-store objects.
Among the European works on view, Wassily Kandinsky’s 1908 painting Winter Near Urfeld, from a private collection, is a small gem, all vivid colours applied in loose strokes. Senior Curator of European Art, Anabelle Kienle Ponka, notes the artist’s evolution towards abstraction and a more expressive style, “where it becomes evident that a painting of snow doesn’t even have to include white.”
Collaborating for the first time, the four co-curators – Cross, Kienle Ponka, Piirainen and Katerina Atanassova, Senior Curator of Canadian Art – have pulled together a selection of varied and cohesive works.
Other curatorial pairings demonstrate the close connections between Canadian and European artists from 1860 to 1914. Quebec painters Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Côté, James Wilson Morrice and Maurice Cullen all spent time in France in the late 19th century and were heavily influenced by the Impressionists’ preoccupation with atmospheric effects.
Speaking about the Canadian artists’ success in France, Atanassova notes that, when Morrice exhibited his Quai des Grands-Augustins at the Salon in 1904, it was immediately recognized for its merit and purchased by the Republic of France for the Musée du Luxembourg, eventually to be transferred to the Musée d’Orsay.
Another key connection highlighted in Winter Count was forged in 1913, on this side of the Atlantic, when J.E.H. MacDonald and Lawren S. Harris visited a major exhibition of Scandinavian art held at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo. The bold, decorative winter landscapes of Swedish artist Gustaf Fjæstad and others resonated deeply with the two Canadians.
Dominated by blue tones in many of the works, particularly a series of romantic nocturnal scenes by Scandinavian artists. In the midst of a long Canadian winter, a little romance and tranquility are warmly appreciated as Maurice Cullen once said, “Snow borrows the colours of the sky and sun. It is blue, it is mauve, it is grey, even black, but never entirely white.” With its many moods and hues, Winter Count presents a lively palette for the season.
On view at the National Gallery of Canada from November 21, 2025 to March 22, 2026, Winter Count: Embracing the Cold ‘s related events, can be seen in the calendar; for details of the catalogue see the Boutique webpage.
Situated at 380 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1N 9N4 , National Gallery of Canada Foundation (NGOC) reportedly is a charitable foundation.
About the Author
Having been on staff at the National Gallery for a decade, Katherine Stauble is an Ottawa writer, curator and artist, primarily as curatorial assistant in the Photographs Collection.
