Inside their artistic works of friction
New book examines the rivalry that sometimes inspired the art of Mary and Christopher Pratt
Carol Bishop-Gwyn admits she felt nervous launching her new book, “Art and Rivalry: The Marriage of Mary and Christopher Pratt,” in St. John’s. She was disappointed — but not surprised — that no one attended from any of the galleries that represent the two artists’ work.
St. John’s is, after all, the beating heart of Pratt country. There is loyalty here to these beloved Newfoundland artists — and nobody wants to see them in an unfavourable light.
“Art and Rivalry” has plenty of juicy details — most of which have been shared by the couple themselves in interviews over the years — but Bishop-Gwyn wasn’t interested in the Pratts for salacious gossip. Her biography is a fascinating view into how duelling ambitions and marital betrayal helped inspire some of the pair’s most iconic paintings.
“The friction in their marriage created greater work from them, particularly Mary. She was angry and it came out,” says Bishop-Gwyn, who lives in Toronto, but first met the Pratts through her now husband, Richard Gwyn, and his late wife, Sandra, during summer vacations to Newfoundland.
Each year, Bishop-Gwyn would visit each of the artists’ homes. Mary and Christopher were divorced by this point, but still appeared at events together. From her fly-on-the-wall vantage, Bishop-Gwyn began to build an understanding of the two artists and their relationship. Although her biography is unauthorized, Bishop-Gwyn spent time with both Pratts, observing and asking questions.
“I like to put things in context,” says Bishop-Gwyn, whose last book was a much-lauded “warts and all” biography of Celia Franca, co-founder of the National Ballet of Canada.
Some of Mary Pratt’s photorealistic paintings may feel like paying witness to an uncomplicated life. An unmade bed, a broken slice of toast, a sparkling jar of homemade jelly, all captured in luminous light and colours. But there are others, such as a dishcloth smouldering in flames while hanging on a clothesline, or a carton of broken eggs — painted after she lost twins at birth — that suggest less than domestic bliss.
“If she had stayed a contented, married woman, I don’t know whether her work would have been as exciting and edgy,” says Bishop-Gwyn.
Christopher’s paintings feel less autobiographical. Where Mary found inspiration in her domestic surroundings, Christopher captures Newfoundland’s physical environment through such painstaking geometric precision that landscapes and buildings become abstract objects.
Bishop-Gwyn recalls one conversation with Christopher sitting in his living room. He told her that if Mary had been there, she could draw a wonderful picture of Bishop-Gwyn in less than an hour.
“He said, ‘I can’t, that’s not the way I work.’ I think he was very impressed by her freeness,” says Bishop-Gwyn. “He’s a very complex man. He admits in his diaries that it doesn’t take him very far off course to get out of his comfort zone.”
“Art and Rivalry” begins in the early days before Mary, who died in 2018, met Christopher at Mount Allison University where they studied painting under Lawren P. Harris and Alex Colville. Harris once told the aspiring female student that there is only room in a marriage for one successful artist — and in her case, that would be Christopher.
For years, Harris was right. Christopher was the prized artist, spending endless hours in his studio while Mary ran their rural household and took care of their four children, grabbing time to paint whenever she could. But it was Christopher who took the photo that would become the subject of Mary’s first professional painting, “Supper Table,” and kickstart her career. And then there is the Donna series. Donna Meaney was a local teenager who first started posing for Christopher at age 16. By 19, she was also his lover.
Bishop-Gwyn acknowledges this relationship would now be considered unacceptable, especially in the context of the #MeToo movement. “In ’60s and ’70s Newfoundland and North America, it wasn’t acceptable, but it was more prevalent.”
Mary knew about the affair when she began using Meaney as her own subject, yet it inspired some of her finest, most sensual explorations of the female body. As an outsider it’s shocking to learn that Christopher would often assist by staging and shooting photos of Meaney for Mary’s series. Artistic competition? Revenge? An opportunity to better understand a husband’s muse? Like any marriage, only those involved know their secrets.
“None of them wanted to talk about it,” Bishop-Gwyn says. But that didn’t stop her from trying. In 2013, Bishop-Gwyn attended a retrospective of Mary’s work at The Rooms museum in St. John’s. She spotted Meaney standing next to the painting “Girl in My Dressing Gown,” in which she is posed wearing Mary’s wrinkled garment, her body partially obscured in shadow. Bishop-Gwyn took advantage of the moment and asked Meaney about her thoughts at the time. Meaney responded, “Oh, I don’t know. I had no idea what I was thinking.”
Other unknowns still linger. BishopGwyn finds it remarkable that these two isolated artists, so geographically removed from major art centres such as Toronto, became such successes in the 1970s. Their work was so counter to the popular abstract expressionist artists of the day like Harold Town and Michael Snow. What made their figurative paintings stand out?
Bishop-Gwyn says, “That is my big mystery.”