Gems of British Columbia for the year 1890, “Sprays from the Gem Fountain,” 1890

Between 1881 and 1896, Maynard produced a series often referred to as the Gems of British Columbia. These works reveal that Maynard was not only a talented artist, she was also a clever marketer. At the end of each calendar year, she assembled her portraits of children from the previous twelve months and transposed them into a single collage, which she would send to their families as a New Year’s greeting. An outlet for her whimsy, the 1890 version seen here is perhaps the most playful of all. In it, the photographs are arranged to resemble water spurting forth from a fountain made entirely of little faces. The collage not only encouraged families to have their children photographed at the Maynard studio but served as a demonstration of her range and skill.

Christmas cards became popular in the 1840s after the British monarch Queen Victoria published an engraving of her Christmas celebrations. The Gems annual greeting was an ingenious way to harness popular interest in Christmas greeting cards into a marketing campaign. The magazine St. Louis and Canadian Photographer was always particularly pleased to receive the Gems, writing that, “The coming of these ‘Gems of British Columbia’ is looked for each year as earnestly as the sound of Xmas chimes, or the hearty ring of a New Year’s greeting.”

The first of the Gems series, produced in 1881, combined the faces of hundreds of children of different ages featuring varied poses, costumes, and props into a single rectangular field. In this iteration, Maynard even included some of her more experimental portraits, such as her grandson Harry sitting on a clamshell. While the faces of white settler children make up the bulk of her compositions, the collages also reflect the growing diversity of Victoria with the inclusion of the many East Asian and Black children who sat for her. Occasionally, as in the bottom right corner of the 1881 image, she added a doll face to the mix.

In every successive iteration, Maynard included the Gems collage from the previous year in clever ways. In the 1883 edition, a child in the centre holds up two flags, each of which bears the prior year’s work. The designs became necessarily more complex and creative as the series continued. Little faces were used to form the letters of the text, as garlands, as jewellery for other children, and were hidden in the centres of flowers. Instead of a rectangular field of faces, the children would be shaped into designs such as a turtle in 1887, a crown in 1888, a wreath in 1892, or, in 1884, nestled within a Dieffenbachia plant.

The Gems series was met with great praise at home and abroad. The December 25, 1881, issue of the Daily British Colonist noted that: “The work furnishes evidence of the ability, taste and patience of the artist and is a highly creditable presentation of the chief types and beauty of this health-giving climate.” The 1885 version of the Gems was published in the September 1886 issue of the St. Louis Photographer, together with a poem of praise that began:

See this cluster of sweet faces,

Happy childhood’s charming graces;

In all their beauty thus arrayed,

By Mrs. Maynard here portrayed.

The Gems were printed as cabinet cards of 9.75 by 6.75 inches (24.8 x 17.1 cm). These were sometimes called “Paris Panels,” a phrase which could often be seen printed on the bottom of the photograph. Receiving such an image would have been a joyful experience for parents, particularly in a time when child and infant mortality was so high.