Written By Emily De Angelis, The London Writers Society (LWS)
I was introduced to the work of Canadian painter Florence Carlyle in 2019 on my first visit to the Woodstock Art Gallery. I was leaving the main floor exhibit when I came face to face with a panel displaying a photo of a painting of a Victorian woman lounging on a settee. The text on the panel above the photo asked, Where have all the Carlyles Gone? That was my first encounter with Florence Carlyle.
Florence Emily Carlyle, who I have come to affectionately call Flo, was born in Galt, Ontario, on September 24, 1864—a hundred years before me—and moved to Woodstock, Ontario, when she was just seven. Her family relocated there because her father was appointed inspector of schools for Oxford County. Her mother, Emily Jane Carlyle, had been a teacher and principal in North Carolina just before the outbreak of the American Civil War. She was determined that both her sons and daughters would be educated. She also recognized her daughter’s artistic talent early. Carlyle attended school in Woodstock and studied art in local programs and with private tutors. She would be among the first cohorts of female artists to study in Paris, France, in the late nineteenth century and would find acclaim as one of Canada’s leading female artists.
As a student of Japanese form poetry, I decided to celebrate National Poetry Month in 2023 by writing a haiku (nature poem) or senryu (human nature poem) each day as practice. I also decided to write ekphrastically. Ekphrastic poetry is verse written in response to visual arts. I picked Florence Carlyle’s work as my inspiration. I could easily access her paintings through the gallery’s online collection portal. I remembered my earliest encounter with the artist and the question on the panel: Where have all the Carlyles Gone?
I learned that the Art Gallery of Ontario owns a famous Carlyle painting, The Tiff, which won the Ontario Society of Artists’ Annual Prize in 1902. The Art Gallery of Hamilton owns a few Carlyle pieces, as does Museum London and Western University’s McIntosh Gallery. Other galleries and private collectors throughout Canada and the world also own a few, but the bulk of Carlyle’s works belong to the Woodstock Art Gallery and were acquired through purchase, gifts, or bequests.
At the end of National Poetry Month in 2023, I submitted a proposal to the gallery to do a poetry reading in honour of the hundredth year of Carlyle’s passing. I was contacted by Mary Reid, the former director-curator of the gallery, to see if I would instead be interested in curating a poetry and art exhibit. I was thrilled at the opportunity. I worked with a poetry editor first and then with an assistant curator. I selected ten paintings with corresponding poems for the show. I was also required to write a didactic panel—a text to be displayed in a prominent location in the gallery to inform visitors of the exhibit’s context and meaning. I also designed and proofread labels with each painting’s details and its corresponding poem.
The exhibit, The Ekphrasis of Florence: Poetry in Japanese Form Inspired by the Work of Florence Carlyle, opened in July 2023. It was only as this exhibit ended that I learned my work with Florence Carlyle was not over. Within the year, I would be involved in a project that explored her writing. The exhibit was only the beginning of my collaboration with an artist born a century before me.
Emily De Angelis is a writer of fiction and poetry. Her award-winning debut young adult novel, The Stones of Burren Bay, was released with Latitude 46 Publishing in 2024. A chapbook featuring De Angelis’ poetry and the writing and paintings of renowned Canadian painter Florence Carlyle, In the Space Between: The ‘New Woman’ in the Writing of Florence Carlyle, was released with the Woodstock Art Gallery in 2024.
