2017 November | Hodgins Art Auctions

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signed & dated
Exhibited: Glenbow, Calgary, AB, “A Passion for Art: Works from Private Collections” (December 3, 1994-January 29, 1995)
Provenance: Masters Gallery, Calgary, AB (label verso)

Cornelius Krieghoff is the best known and most admired of Canada’s early painters. Active before and around Confederation, the Amsterdam-born artist later cultivated a steady market for his romantic landscapes that depicted outdoor life in rural Quebec, the Habitants, local First Nations, and popular sites such as Montmorency Falls. As a genre painter, Krieghoff’s focus was on the everyday, as opposed to the more notable events and people of the period.

In 1853, the artist moved to the old capital of Quebec City where for eleven years he found success, and where many of his wilderness scenes of First Nations life were painted. An inherent part of all these images, as evidenced here in INDIAN ENCAMPMENT, is the grand scale of the environment and the serenity of indigenous life.

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signed
Provenance: Turner Art Gallery, Denver, CO (label verso)

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signed; titled & dated on the artist’s label verso

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signed; titled on brass plaque

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signed, dated & editioned

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signed & titled

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signed
Provenance: Former private collection of A. K. Prakash, Toronto, ON; Mr. Prakash is an art collector, dealer, art historian, and author of “Impressionism in Canada: A Journey of Rediscovery” (2014).

The location of this deeply rich and touching hospital scene is unknown, although it was rendered during a time when Suzor-Coté was painting in Normandy and Brittany. Drenched with light, which enhances the remarkable calm of this interior, THE VISIT, is an example of how this versatile painter and sculptor excelled in genre scenes.

The artist is noted as the first French-Canadian Impressionist to achieve recognition and success during his life and was part of a progressive trend among young Canadians to train in France, the artistic centre of modernism. In 1907, Suzor-Coté returned to Quebec after more than a dozen years away and began to exhibit extensively in Canada, acclaimed especially for his winter landscapes of the Eastern Townships where he grew up.

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studio “J. W. Morrice” stamp verso; inscribed “St. #H115” verso
Provenance: F.R. Heaton Estate, Montreal, QC (estate stamp verso); The Art Emporium, Vancouver, BC; Masters Gallery, Calgary, AB (labels verso)

James Wilson Morrice painted this panel only a few years after leaving his Montreal studio to study art in Paris. Charenton-le-Pont is now found in the southeastern suburbs of the French capital. During Morrice’s time, it was a separate municipality located along the River Seine which served as the site for this nostalgic and dreamy rendering. Featuring a river boat floating placidly along the shoreline, with its muted light and tonal style, this loosely painted oil predates Morrice’s development into a livelier more colourful modernist (Post-impressionist). Nonetheless, in whatever manner he painted, Morrice was praised for his ability to evoke the character of a particular place and time. He later brought back to Canada a fresh approach and had an important impact on a generation of Canadian artists who followed him.

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initialed verso; inscribed verso “suggest horizontal brush strokes in sky”

Note: This work was painted after the original painting, purchased in 1945 by the National Gallery of Canada:
David Brown Milne
BOSTON CORNERS; 1917-18
oil on canvas
20 x 26 in. (50.8 x 66 cm)

This painting is A. Y. Jackson’s interpretation of the David Milne canvas, which was purchased in 1945 by the National Gallery of Canada and can still be found in its collection (Accession No. 4603). It was painted by Jackson for the production of the oil silkscreen that would be part of the Sampson-Matthews public art program. Milne, an important Canadian artist in his own right, was born in Canada but had spent many of his formative years in the United States. This snowy scene of the farmland in upstate New York, near Boston Corners, Milne’s home for many years prior to returning to Canada, would be the only non-Canadian subject found within the Sampson-Matthews serigraphs.

A.Y. Jackson says of the Sampson-Matthews collection: “The silk screens made during the war were by far the best publicity Canadian art ever received.”

The Sampson Matthews silkscreen “Boston Corners” is illustrated on pp. 147 and 216 of “Art for War and Peace: How a Great Art Project Helped Canada Discover Itself” (Sigvaldason & Steeman; 2005).

Notes:

titled and certified on a label verso by Lucile Rodier Gagnon (no. 225)

Clarence Gagnon was born in a small village in Rural Quebec and began his formal art education under William Brymner at the Montreal Association of Art. Like many Canadian artists of his time, Gagnon travelled to Paris in 1904 to continue his studies. Here, he attended the Academie Julien and became immersed in the artistic community, gaining recognition for his work at the St. Louis Art Exhibition, and at the Salon de la Societe des Artistes Francais. While in Paris, Gagnon painted with James Wilson Morrice and became influenced by his plein-air sketching techniques. Upon his return to Quebec in 1908, he settled in Baie-St-Paul along the St. Lawrence River, though he would go on to spend much of his life living and working in France.

It is in the Laurentians where he produced most of his plein-air sketches, that he often used back in his studios to develop larger canvases. Gagnon’s affection for his homeland was evident in his work regardless of whether he was in Quebec or overseas. Where his contemporaries of the Group of Seven became known for their often bold, rugged depictions of Canadian wilderness, Gagnon’s contribution to the national art of Canada was in his more cultured and idyllic scenes which celebrated rural Quebec and the French-Canadian way of life.