Robert Harris, 1849 - 1919

In an article titled "The Resurrection of Robert Harris", published in The Atlantic Advocate in 1985, Fergus Cronin described how Moncrieff Williamson, the first director of The Confederation Centre Art Gallery and Museum in Charlottetown, beginning in 1964, had to "rebuild", as he says, "the Harris reputation practically from scratch."

But is Robert Harris really resurrected? If he was resurrected it was only to be buried again. It is now 30 years since Moncrieff Williamson wrote Robert Harris's biography and assembled and sent on tour across Canada a great exhibition of Robert Harris portrait paintings. Throughout the 1990s Gallery directors Ted Fraser and Terry Graff regularly scheduled Robert Harris shows, as did their predecessors Mark Holton and David Webber. But it wasn't until after a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation arts reporter inquired why the Centre was not exhibiting its Harris pictures that the first Harris show in three years appeared in the Gallery during the summer of 2002.

The Robert Harris Collection at the Confederation Centre consists of some 5,000 works of art. It was a gift made to the City of Charlottetown and the people of Prince Edward Island by Robert's widow, Elizabeth Putnam, when she died in 1928. It was housed in The Robert Harris Memorial Gallery (left), built at that time on Queen's Square in the heart of Charlottetown to accommodate both the Collection and the City Library, to plans drawn by architect James Harris, Robert's nephew, and paid for (50%) by the Harris family, the City of Charlottetown and the Province of Prince Edward Island. In 1958 the Harris heirs, on receiving a commitment that the pictures would be exhibited, turned the Collection over to the Fathers of Confederation Trust, then in process of formation. In 1959 a Montrealer, Robert Ayre, writing in The Montreal Star described the Gallery and the Harris Collection as presenting a scene of neglect. "It was through the generosity of his relations that the Memorial Gallery was built," he wrote. "Robert Harris deserves better of the Island than this." He quoted the chairman of a board "which takes in both Library and Gallery" as confessing he knew nothing about pictures; but described the chairman as showing "a little uneasiness. . . After warnings from a visitor from the National Gallery he is proceeding to have some of the paintings restored". The Charlottetown Patriot , in reprinting the story, headlined it, " Sad neglect of Noted Artist Charged to Charlottetown." Mr. Ayre's criticisms helped generate support for Dr. Frank MacKinnon's vision of a new arts centre in downtown Charlottetown. The Harris Gallery was demolished and The Confederation Centre of the Arts, with theatre, gallery and library, erected on its site in 1964. The Harris Collection forms the heart and approximately 90% of the of the Centre's Permanent Collection.

In 2003 the Government of Canada gave the Confederation Centre of the Arts more than half a million dollars with which to put the works of art in its Permanent Collection "on-line" on the internet. This work was completed early in 2004.  Since then the Harris works of art in the Confederation Centre Collection have been accessible to the general public via the Internet on computer screens, and the Centre apparently has not felt the same obligation as before to exhibit them in its galleries. Whether or not this satisfies the requirement of the gift by the Harris heirs that the Collection (5000 items) be exhibited is open to question.  One cannot help wondering if the Confederation Centre scrounged the money from the federal government to put the Harris Collection on line in order to get out of its obligation to exhibit it in its galleries.  This supposition prompts further questions relating to the development in the 1990s of an interest in Robert Harris as Canada's Confederation Painter and the proposed tour of his works across Canada and to the United States and Europe that ended abruptly with the nonrenewal of Terry Graff's contract as director of the Confederation Centre Gallery in 2000.

For some further thoughts arising out of the departure of Terry Graff from the Confederation Centre Gallery see the section titled "The Island Family Harris - and the Harris Collection at the Confederation Centre of the Arts" on this website.