Fort Simpson, British Columbia. Oil painting by Frederick Alexkcee (Alexcee), 1902.

The painting shows the town of Fort Simpson, so called after the fort which was burnt down, following which the town was called Port Simpson. It is signed and dated 1802: the artist may have meant to write 1902, or he may have thought he was depicting the town as he imagined it in 1802, though the fort had not then been built

The fort is shown on the left. The houses of the native citizens are shown around the bay with totem poles and other elaborate wood-carvings. On the right is the Hudson Bay Company's steamship the Beaver, which was in salvage at the time the present picture was painted: the canvas for the painting is lined with embossed wallpaper, which may have been removed by the artist from the inside of the same ship (as suggested by William Carleton Gibson (1913-2009), University of British Columbia)

"All of these people [C.M. Barbeau, Eric Brown, others] valued Alexcee's ability to document Port Simpson's historical villagescape, despite conflicting opinions as to his status as artist or craftsman. Another individual who relied on Alexcee's works as documents was ethnographer William Beynon. The painting Beaver at Port Simpson, in the collection of the Wellcome Institute in London, England, demonstrates many of the same elements visible in his other works: the fort, plank houses with smoke issuing from the rooftops, poles, a populated waterfront and the famous HBC steamer "Beaver" surrounded by canoes. It also appears to be a pre-mission period scene. Canoes are drawn in his typical style, in motion. Beynon later used a photograph (or copy) of this painting as a historical document and as a map of chiefs' houses in Port Simpson. The signature at the bottom right of this piece differs from the others as it has been printed in capital letters. Stylistically, it is typical, with the same fine details (fine lines in houses, grass, trees) that are visible in the painted glass panorama of Fort Simpson at the Vancouver Archives. Beynon apparently considered the work historically accurate enough to pass on to Barbeau for his anthropological work on the Tsimshian."--McCormick, loc. cit.

1802 [i.e. 1902?]

1 painting : oil on canvas ; canvas 43.7 x 147.7 cm

Select images of this work were taken by the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum: WT/D/1/20/1/5/46

Drawing by Frederick Alexkcee Fort Simpson B.C 1802

Deirdre Simmons, 'Frederick Alexcee, Indian artist (c. 1857-c. 1944)', Journal of Canadian art history / Annales d'histoire de l'art canadien, 1992, 54: 83-93

Kaitlin McCormick, '"Neither one nor the other": the unique oeuvre of Freddie Alexcee', Master of Arts thesis, Carleton University, Ottawa 2010, pp. 109-110 (online version pp. 105-106)

Haa'yups, 'The 242-year gaze', in Jack Davy (ed.), Empowering art: indigenous creativity and activism from North America's Northwest Coast, Norwich : Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, 2023, pp. 11-21 (this painting reproduced p. 14)

Wellcome Collection 45055i

The surname name of Frederick Alexkcee is also spelt in several other ways (Alexcee, Alexis, Allxcee, Alexix, Alexcie, Alexie etc.). He was a painter and carver of Tsimshian descent who lived in Port Simpson (previously Fort Simpson, previously and subsequently Lax Kw'alaams), in British Columbia. He was a member of Gispudwada (Killer whale) phratry