A fine picturesque watercolour of two First Nations canoeists on the St Lawrence River in Ontario, with the town of Brockville in the background, including a view of the blockhouse on what was then known as Refuge or Grant’s Island.
Another version of this picture is held at Library and Archives Canada, in their collection of watercolours by Philip John Bainbrigge (1817-1881). Though this version is unsigned, it does bear the same characteristic sgraffito technique highlighting the water, and the compositions are markedly similar.
Bainbrigge was a member of the Royal Engineers, deployed to Canada between 1836 and 1842, not long after graduating the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, where he was trained in technical and topographical drawing. He was tasked with surveying fortifications and transportation routes in both Upper and Lower Canada, and when tension between disgruntled settlers and the British army erupted into the Rebellions of 1837 - 1838, Bainbrigge saw action against the rebels along the Richelieu River, at St. Denis, and at St. Eustache.
Typical of his topographical work, this attractive picture foregrounds two figures paddling on the river with details of the nearby settlement in the background. This includes the town’s waterfront facades, and the Grant’s Island fortification, which had been established as a prime defensive position by the Royal Engineers in the period leading up to the Battle of the Windmill in 1838. The wooden blockhouse was built the following year, and was used as a barracks for militiamen stationed at Brockville. Bainbrigge’s combination of the kind of observational drawing required for his engineering survey work with a pastoral romantic sensibility, reminiscent of the literary works of Fenimore Cooper, sets him apart from other civilian watercolourists of his era.
C.f. Library and Archives Canada, Item ID number 2836284 (‘Brockville, September 1840’).
