1

''Jardiniere with Mi'kmaq portraits''
1901

2

The Christina Morris bowl

This bowl, probably produced in the early 1920s, is perhaps Alice Egan Hagen's best known example of china painting and it has been exhibited and reproduced many times. It is also of considerable historic interest. The Mi'kmaq woman portrayed on it is almost certainly the well known nineteenth-century artist Mali Christianne Paul Mollise (anglicized to Christina Morris also Christy Ann). The portrait is a copy of a miniature by William Valentine (1798-1849), an Englishman who worked as an artist and occasionally as a decorative house painter in Halifax from 1818 until his death in 1849. Alice Hagen's daughter, Rachel Dickinson, remembered that this painting was copied from a borrowed portrait labelled "Christy Ann" which the artist had obtained from her own mother, Mrs. T.J. Egan. In 1931, when Mrs. Egan died, a cut-out watercolour of a Mi'kmaq woman's head and shoulders was discovered inside the frame of a painting by William Valentine.(1)
(1) Ruth Holmes Whitehead, "Christina Morris: Micmac Artist and Artist's Model," Material History Bulletin, Spring 1977, pp.1-14.

3

''Jardiniere with Mi'kmaq portraits'' (detail) 1901
1901

4

Christina Morris

Mali Christianne Paul Mollise (Christina Morris), the daughter of Hobblewest Paul of Stewiacke, was born ca. 1804. As a very young woman she married Tom Mollise, a Mi'kmaq whose family traditionally camped on McNab's Island in Halifax Harbour. Her husband died shortly thereafter and she never remarried. Although little is known about her early life, her history after 1850 is well documented. In 1854 she won first prize for the best full-sized birchbark canoe and worked paddles at the Provincial Exhibition, and second prize for a nest of six quilled boxes. Harry Piers, the long-serving curator of the Nova Scotia Museum noted that: "She did beautiful porcupine quill work and once she sent a pair of moccasins ornamented with quill work as a gift to Queen Victoria." (1)

Nova Scotia Indian Commissioner Col. William Chearnley commissioned her to make two complete Mi'kmaq women's outfits for which he paid $300, a year's wages for a labourer in the mid-19th century. In 1868 she won another first prize for the best nest of six quilled boxes, best large and small (splint) baskets and best covered clothes baskets. The Nova Scotia Museum has a pair of her snowshoes which were judged "very finely done." A cradle she made is in the collection of the DesBrisay Museum in Bridgewater. (2)

Christina Morris was also the subject of a number of portraits by mid-19th-century Nova Scotian artists, reflecting the romantic view of First Nations people in the period. In 1859 the Halifax Daily Sun carried a story about a painting of her by a visiting artist:

"On Saturday last we were shown a full-length portrait, in Indian costume, of Mrs. Christy Ann Morris, of the Micmac tribe. It is painted in oil colours, and is the work of Mr. Gush, the talented London artist, who visited our city about a year ago. Ladies and gentlemen visiting Mrs. Morris at her romantically situated villa on the west bank of the Arm, are shown this picture as one or her household treasures." (3)

In addition to the portraits by Gush, Valentine and Hagen, three other portraits of Christina Morris have been identified. One is a pastel from the New Brunswick Museum-- "Micmac Women/Unknown Mid-19th Century Artist." In the collection of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia there is a photo of a drawing of Morris attributed to Rebecca Crane Starr of Halifax. Finally, she was portrayed in a photograph by J.S. Rogers. (4)
(1) Harry Piers, "Notes on Micmac genealogies and biographical material," Printed Matter File, Nova Scotia Museum, Halifax, N.S. Cited in Ruth Holmes Whitehead, Christina Morris: MicMac Artist and Artist's Model.
(2) Halifax Daily Sun, 4 July 1859. Cited in Ruth Holmes Whitehead, Christina Morris: MicMac Artist and Artist's Model.
(3) Ruth Holmes Whitehead, Christina Morris: MicMac Artist and Artist's Model.
(4) Ruth Holmes Whitehead, Christina Morris: MicMac Artist and Artist's Model.