Pfeiffer, Harold, 1908-1997 : Harold Pfeiffer was born in Québec City in 1908, into a prominent family in Québec's English society. Two brothers, Walter and Gordon, also became artists. Pfeiffer studied commerce for a year at l'École Commerciale and took four years of night courses under Sylvia D'Aoust and the Belgian sculptor Jan Bailleul at l'École des Beaux-Arts, where he met the ethnologist Marius Barbeau who encouraged his interest in Québec and Indian arts and crafts. Pfeiffer furthered his education visiting the museums of Great Britain and Europe 1931-1932 and again in 1934. In 1931, he worked at the Manoir Richelieu, modelling Indian masks which were sold in the gift shop. He then spent some time in Toronto, where he took interior decorating courses and worked at Simpson's and Baraud Studio, took pottery courses at Central Technical School, and met the sculptors Francis Loring and Florence Wyle. He also took correspondence courses from the New York School of Decorating to learn the history of furniture design. Pfeiffer spent much of the 1930's trying to find work in a museum, while doing free-lance research for Marius Barbeau on Cornelius Krieghoff and other subjects. He also spent this time developing his skills in portrait sculpture, doing busts of the Arctic explorer J.E. Bernier and the artist and naval commander Anthony Law, among others. Failing the medical qualifications for active service, Pfeiffer worked at a munitions plant in Valcartier, Québec and at General Engineering in Toronto during World War II. He was then appointed a crafts specialist in the Y.M.C.A. War Services, supervising an arts and crafts programme. After the war, he continued in this field, joining the staff of Macdonald College and teaching arts and crafts and interior decoration there until 1949. During this period, he also taught arts and crafts at summer camps in Québec. He then briefly taught English to francophone cadets at the Royal Military College at St. Jean sur Richelieu, before being hired in 1954 by the Department of Northern Affairs as an occupational therapist, working with Indian and Inuit patients in the Parc Savard (Québec) and Camsell (Edmonton) tuberculosis sanitoriums. As part of his work, he travelled to Port Harrison (Inukjuak) and Iqaluit, Baffin Island 1955-1956. In 1956, Pfeiffer was appointed a cataloguer in the National Museum, then still under the Department of Northern Affairs. As well as being responsible for cataloguing the Museum's collections, he also worked on organizing and assembling artifacts for displays and exhibitions. In 1960, he was sent to Newfoundland to collect artifacts from the Island's early history, to fill a lacuna in the Museum's collection; the collecting trip ended in controversy, when Newfoundland Premier Joey Smallwood confiscated the artifacts for the Island's own Museum. That same year, Pfeiffer organized an exhibition on West Coast Indians at Stratford Festival. While engaged in work for the National Museum, Pfeiffer continued to make trips to the Canadian Arctic and he embarked on a number of projects to sculpt portraits of prominent Indians and Inuit, including projects sponsored by the Riveredge Foundation in 1968 and 1972. Pfeiffer's sculptures are preserved in the collections of the Glenbow, Musée des beaux-arts in Montréal, Prince of Wales Heritage Center in Yellowknife, and the Eskimo Museum in Churchill, as well as in the private collections of his many sitters. Among the better-known Canadians that Pfeiffer has sculpted are Dr. Wilbert Keon, Yousuf Karsh, Marius Barbeau, Chief Dan George, Justice Thomas Berger, Governor-General Georges Vanier, Lotta Hitschmanova, Herman Smith (JackRabbit) Johannsen, Douglas Cardinal and the Commissioners of the Northwest Territories. He also travelled around the world, sculpting many famous subjects including the pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy and Bishop Desmond Tutu. In 1997, the year that he died, Pfeiffer's memoirs, "The Man Who Makes Heads With His Hands" were published. Prepared by Anne Goddard, Manuscript Division, from various sources, including the late Harold Pfeiffer's memoirs "The Man Who Makes Heads With His Hands // The Art and Life of Harold Pfeiffer, Sculptor" by John A. Stevens & Harold Pfeiffer. Published by General Store Publishing House, Burnstown, Ontario, 1997.
