Bringing Art to Life: A Biography of Alan Jarvis, which has won the Ottawa Book Award, examines Jarvis’s role in establishing the National Gallery, when it was located on Elgin Street in the 1950s and 1960s.
Andrew Horrall, an archivist with Library and Archives Canada, wrote the novel.
The biography explores the tragic story of Jarvis, focusing on his triumphant return from England to Canada to head the National Gallery in 1955, his impact on Canadian culture and his struggles with alcoholism.
This year, which marked the book awards’ 25th anniversary, the $7,500 prizes in each category went to Horrall (English non-fiction), Craig Poile (English fiction) and Claire Rochon (French fiction).
Horrall says he was shocked and humbled by the win, having never won such an honour before.
“I have been living with this story for 15 years now, and this really feels like a sort of marker at the end of things, that other people share the excitement in the story or understand why I was so interested in it for so many years on my own,” he says.
Jarvis headed the National Gallery when it was located at 90 Elgin Street. The building, which held the gallery from 1959-1987, will be demolished this fall and replaced by an office tower.
In the biography, Horrall writes that Jarvis had championed the new gallery building on Elgin, insisting on adequate conservation labs and storage facilities, a library, inviting exhibition rooms and a restaurant.
He writes: “Barely middle-aged when he took over the National Gallery, he gave this small, insular institution nationwide force and inspired a generation of artists. He championed modern art and vaunted Canada’s best painters and sculptors to the country and the world.”
Horrall was compelled to tell the Jarvis story because he was inspired by the man’s complexity. “It is just a wonderful narrative. It is a story of huge promise as a child and immense tragedy. It’s sort of Shakespearean,” says Horrall.
“He comes home to head the National Gallery at 39 and by the age of 44 it’s all over and he never really holds another similar position, and he ends up dying alone of alcoholism.”
Jury members Charlotte Gray, Brian McKillop and Kathy Cook, who judged the non-fiction finalists, said Horrall’s book is elegant and he “has vividly brought to life a man who, regarded in his youth as a brilliant Adonis, played an important role in Canada’s cultural history as director of the National Gallery of Canada, and yet is largely forgotten today in part because of his own flaws.”
After 15 years of working on the biography, Horrall is taking a break to focus on his growing family, but he is on the lookout for inspirational characters for a possible second book.
“I am waiting for another story to capture me the way this one did. I’d love to do another biography, but I haven’t come across another person who is as interesting,” says Horrall.
Poile, the co-owner of the Collected Works bookstore, took home the Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry and the Book Award in the fiction category for his poetry collection, True Concessions.
Rochon, a doctoral student at the Université de Paris, won the Prix du livre d’Ottawa in the French fiction category for her poetry collection, Fragments de Sifnos.
The awards also honoured Lisgar Collegiate graduate Kate Jaimet for her novel, Dunces Anonymous.
The Ottawa Book Awards and the Prix du livre d’Ottawa, which were held at the Library and Archives Canada, honour the best English and French books published in the previous year. All nominees received $1,000.