Accession Number

2016.015.002

Description

Four-panel folding floor screen. Front is faux-leather with metallic painted designs featuring bunches of vegetation in three vertical repeats on each panel. Black fabric covered back.

Narrative

This four-panel floor screen with faux-painted leather panels on one side and plain black enamel (paint) on fabric on the reverse, came from Mt. Adelaide, the West Bay (Esquimalt) residence of Joan Dunsmuir’s daughter, Mary Jean Dunsmuir (Mrs. Henry Croft, 1862-1928).

After Mrs. Croft’s death, her furnished house became the property of the source’s grandfather, Sam Matson, former owner of The Daily Colonist newspaper. The donor inherited the screen from his mother, Vivian Louise Prins Matson, a daughter of Sam and Ada Matson.

The screen might have been in Craigdarroch before going to Mt. Adelaide. Justification for this suspicion is that the source also owned the watercolour titled “Lost”, painted by Thomas Bush Hardy (British, 1842-1897), which sold as lot #277 from Craigdarroch’s drawing room at the June 22 Dunsmuir executor’s auction. From that sale, the picture (see: 2016.015.001) went to Mt. Adelaide before coming to him through his mother. Furthermore, the source’s gilt-framed photograph of Henrietta Maud Dunsmuir (1872-1950) was also in Mt. Adelaide before it was bequeathed to his mother. That photograph (now Craigdarroch accession 2006.22.1) was almost certainly in Craigdarroch before it went to Mt. Adelaide.  A four-panel screen was sold as lot #415 from Joan Dunsmuir’s bedroom at the 1909 executor’s auction, and this might be that very screen. Each panel measures 19 ½” X 6’ X 1”.

Screens such as this one were commonly employed to shield household staff from the view of diners as they made their way from the kitchens and pantries to the sideboards in dining rooms.     

History of Use

According to the donor, this screen was used at Mt. Adelaide by the Matson family. This information is verified by a colour photograph taken in the Mt. Adelaide dining room in 1954 that is held by Victoria City Archives (VCA PR58 M06062). The photograph can be viewed by clicking this link: https://archives.victoria.ca/mary-and-henry-croft-family-home-on-819-847-dunsmuir-street-known-as-mount-adelaide-dining-room-2

Following the death of Ada Matson, widow of Sam Matson, the screen was used by her decendants in Victoria until it was donated to Craigdarroch in 2016. 

Date

circa 1890

Dimensions

183 x 49.5 x 2.5 cm

Material

Wood; Fabric; Paint; Brass

Technique

Painted