Paul Kane (1810 - 1871)

Paul Kane

Paul Kane was a nineteenth-century Canadian artist of Irish descent. He is known as a master of portrait, landscape and domestic genres. Paul Kane mainly painted paintings depicting the daily life of North American Indians, and his work is still the subject of study by professional ethnological scholars.

Paul Kane, a self-taught artist, studied painting while traveling in Europe. His fateful trip was to London, where, under the influence of the famous artist George Catlin, he decided to devote his career to describing the life of the North American Indians. Kane traveled extensively across Canada, producing hundreds of sketches and an illustrated book that became a bestseller and was translated into many European languages.

Paul Kane's work is considered an important part of Canada's cultural heritage. In February 2002, Kane's painting Scene in the Northwest was sold at Sotheby's in Toronto for more than $5 million, roughly 10 times the sale price of the artist's previous painting.