Louis NicolasLife & Work

Louis Nicolas: Life & Work reveals the story of the first-known artist to depict the land that would become Canada. Born in France, Louis Nicolas (1634–1682) trained as a Jesuit priest before arriving in New France in 1664, where he was sent to convert the Aboriginal peoples and where he stayed for eleven years.

During his stay Nicolas travelled from the western end of Lake Superior to Sept-Îles and from Trois-Rivières to the south of Lake Ontario. Fascinated by the wildlife and Indigenous peoples of the New World, he created hand-drawn illustrations for a book that would become known as the Codex canadensis, in which he documented seventeenth-century Canada. His extraordinary images included tattoos, pipes, hairstyles, weapons, and people of an undocumented land. He created portraits of Iskouakite, an Outaouais chief, and Catherine Tekakouita. These represent the only known images of First Nations people in New France.