December 4, 1908-December 3, 1966
Sculptor Byllee Lang moved to Bermuda in 1946 and breathed new life into the post-war art scene. Small in stature, with an outsized talent, she was an established artist who had studied and worked both in her native Canada and Europe.
Europe was her base in the turbulent period before the outbreak of the Second World War. It was where she expanded her artistic horizons, found love and experienced loss.
In Bermuda, she became a beloved mentor to a diverse group of artists and produced what most agree is her greatest work, the statues of Christ and saints, for the altar of the Anglican Cathedral.
A rancher’s daughter, she was raised near Didsbury, Alberta. In 1926, at age 18, she turned her back on life on the ranch to attend art school. She spent four years at the Winnipeg School of Art, where she discovered her passion for sculpture.
She moved east to concentrate on sculpture at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, studying under German-born Canadian sculptor Emanuel Hahn (1881-1957).
She then went to Europe and spent time in cities that were famous for their art, among them Vienna, Venice and Florence. She also studied at the State Academy in Munich, Germany, and picked up commissions from prominent European politicians and minor royalty.
She met her Spanish husband Alphonso de Marin in Paris. They married and set up home in Majorca.
But it was not the best of times. She was living in Germany when Hitler came to power and witnessed Jewish children being verbally abused in the streets. In 1935, as the Spanish Civil War threatened, her husband joined the Spanish Red Cross. The couple decided she should return to Canada, where he would eventually join her. She never saw him again.
Years later, she told the Bermuda Sun: “This was typical of the war days in Europe. The whole family just vanished — as did many others.”
Back home in Winnipeg, Lang established an art school, before joining the faculty of her alma mater, the Winnipeg School of Arts, where she taught between 1940 and 1943. She joined artists’ organizations, among them the Sculptors’ Society of Canada. Commissions that flowed in included sculptures of prominent Canadians and a war memorial. One of her works from this period was the bronze, Old Woman.
In its December 1946 issue, the Greenwich Village Chatter described Lang as one of the leaders of a “rugged honest school of Canadian sculpture that has won such approval in the National Galleries there that her work has twice been selected to represent the Commonwealth abroad, and is currently touring Russia in the interests of inter-cultural understanding.”
Lang later worked for the National Film Board in Ottawa and the Canadian National Railway in Montreal, which commissioned her to do the bas-relief Coal Minors.
Her next stop was New York. Being holed up in a cold-water flat in Greenwich Village held little appeal even though the area was populated by artists and writers. In 1945, she visited Bermuda and moved here permanently the following year. Her close friend Elsbeth Gibson later wrote that Lang “ fell in love with the place and never left.”
Lang’s first job was as window dresser for A. S. Cooper’s. Brothers Sir Gilbert and Arthur Cooper, who ran the family store and were prominent members of Bermuda’s arts community, became close friends. She created the store’s prize-winning window displays and floats for the annual Floral Pageant.
In 1948, the Bermuda Art Association, which had formed around 1945, established an art school and hired Lang to give sculpture lessons. In a newspaper interview, she was brutally frank about her impressions of Bermudian creativity. “I do not think there is much artistic impulse among Bermudians,” she said. “There is a complete lack of feeling among them; they have no emotional awareness.” Her classes, she said, would be “classes in sensitivity.”
Lang eventually left Cooper’s to go out on her own. She established her studio, first at Windsor Hotel on Queen Street (where Windsor Place is now located), then Trinity Hall on Cedar Avenue and finally off Washington Lane. Her studio was both her classroom and workspace and the in-place for free spirits and intellectuals.
Artists remember it as a true salon, where blacks and whites, gays and straights from all walks of life mixed and mingled over drinks. Lang would not countenance the segregation that was then the norm in Bermuda; her studio was an oasis of tolerance and equality.
Lang, who also lent her talents to theatrical productions and home shows, left a lasting impression on her students. She taught Vivienne Gardner, Carlos Dowling, Elizabeth Ann Trott, Emma Ingham-Dounouk, all of whom were inspired to pursue formal art studies. There were numerous others, among them Andrew Trimingham, her artistic executor.
Dowling and Lang established a close bond when he became her studio assistant in exchange for free art lessons. Lang was a heavy smoker and drinker, and one of Dowling’s duties on reporting to work was mixing Lang her first drink of the day.
Vivienne Gardner, who studied at Cooper Union in New York at Lang’s urging and became a prominent stained-glass artist, said that Lang was “really into heads”. Lang’s Bermuda works include busts of Rudolph Commissiong, the leader of the Esso Steel Band, and Davy Douglas, a well-known horse and carriage driver. The Davy Douglas sculpture, was exhibited in Toronto in 1952.
In 1958, she received her biggest commission, the Anglican Cathedral reredos—a statue of Christ and 14 saints for the high altar.
The church raised £10,000 and the project got off to a positive start. But eventually it was dogged by controversy and ran out of money.
The 1,000-pound figure of Christ was triumphantly dedicated and installed in July 1962. Statues of the Virgin Mary and saints Anne, Andrew, Brendan, John, Luke and Paul were in place by Christmas that same year.
The simmering controversy—which included complaints about the appropriateness of using locals as models for the statues—took its toll. She got away from it all by vacationing in Mexico. While there she learned she had breast cancer and had to undergo a mastectomy.
Her relations with the church went downhill on her return to Bermuda. Bishop Anthony Williams, her friend and patron who had commissioned the reredos, returned to the United Kingdom after the statue of Christ was installed and Lang did not see eye to eye with his successor John Armstrong.
The Cathedral did not renew her lease for Trinity Hall, where she had begun work on the statues. She eventually found another space off Washington Lane. She continued to teach and work on the remaining statues as funds trickled in from individual donors.
In late 1966, she cancelled her art classes to undergo gallbladder surgery. She was expected to recover—her friends were planning to celebrate her birthday in hospital.
She died unexpectedly on December 3, the day before her 58th birthday, of a heart attack.
Fittingly, Lang’s funeral was held at the Anglican Cathedral and the packed church was a reflection of the impact she had had on her adopted home. She was buried at St. John’s Church, Pembroke.
At the time of her death, Lang had completed eight sculptures of the saints and had begun work on two others. Canadian sculptor Tom Bowie was commissioned to wrap up the project.
Lang’s friends, who included the Cooper brothers and Don and Elsbeth Gibson, all of them future recipients of Arts Council awards, rallied to raise funds for a Byllee Lang Memorial Scholarship in her memory. Four were awarded before funds dried up.
Lang continues to inspire 40 years after her death. In 2001, she was a recipient of a Founders Award from the Bermuda Arts Council. In January-April 2008, the Bermuda National Gallery mounted an exhibition, ‘Tribute to Byllee Lang, Artist and Inspiration’ to honour her life and legacy.
Despite her large output, relatively few of her works survive. Some are in private collections and others are owned by the Bermuda National Gallery. The Corporation of Hamilton owns the bust of Davy Douglas.
Her most acclaimed work can be viewed at the altar of the Anglican Cathedral.
