2019 May | Hodgins Art Auctions

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signed lower left; signed, titled & dated verso
Provenance: Hollander York Gallery, Toronto ON

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Certified verso by Lucile Rodier Gagnon, wife of the artist (Paris, 1946; no. 196).

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. Where his Group of Seven contemporaries are best known for their bold, rugged depictions of the Canadian wilderness, Gagnon is recognized for gentle and idyllic scenes that reflect his affection for his homeland.

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signed, titled & dated verso; estate stamped (Inv. #129)
Provenance: Masters Gallery, Calgary AB

Isabel McLaughlin studied at the Ontario College of Art (under Arthur Lismer and Yvonne McKague Housser), as well as at the Art Students League (New York) and at the Scandinavian Academy (Paris). She held her first solo show in 1933 at the Art Gallery of Toronto, the same year she became one of the founding members of the Canadian Group of Painters. She exhibited regularly with the group, and in 1939 became its first female president.

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signed lower right
Provenance: Masters Gallery, Calgary AB

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signed & dated lower left
Provenance: Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal QC

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signed lower right; titled and dated on labels verso
Provenance: Dominion Gallery, Montreal QC

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signed lower right; signed, titled & dated verso
Provenance: Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal QC (inventory label verso – no. 1420); The Watson Art Galleries, Montreal QC (1925 exhibition label verso – no. 35)

Maurice Galbraith Cullen was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland, moving with his family to Montreal as a young boy – it would be the city he would call home. At age fourteen, while working as a clerk, he began to study art at the Institut National des Beaux-Arts et Sciences, and privately with sculptor Louis-Philippe Hebert. In 1989, an inheritance from his mother allowed Cullen to moved to France to further his studies. He trained at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts and at the Academies Julian and Colarossi. He was quickly drawn to impressionism and decided to focus on painting. While in France, he met several fellow Canadian artists, including James Wilson Morrice and William Brymner, who became his sketching parthers. Cullen exhibited at the Paris Salon and become an associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux-arts, before returning to Montreal in 1895.

Although he exhibited regularly, his paintings did not sell well in Montreal during these early years. The art collectors of the time still preferred the somber 18th and 19th century works by Dutch and British artists. Things improved somewhat following his election into the Royal Canadian Academy (as an associate in 1899 and a full member in 1907). Cullen influenced many artists, teaching privately at his Beaver Hall Square studio, and at the Art Association of Montreal, where he taught outdoor studio classes every summer between 1911 and 1923. He also took his students on periodic sketching trips. Cullen was a regular contributor to exhibitions of the Royal Canadian Academy and the Art Association. It was through these exhibitions that he became known to the prominent Montreal art dealer William Watson, who beginning in 1923 held annual exhibitions of Cullen’s work. From this point on, Cullen concentrated on the Laurentian landscape.

Considered the father or Impressionism in Canada, Cullen bent the light filled, loosely painted French Impressonist techniques to accommodate the demands of the uniquely Canadian landscape and his own style. Cullen, who often painted outdoors, was a careful observer of nature, continually watching the ice and snow on the Laurentian rivers, and noting the transient effects of time of day, weather and even season. It is in these Laurentian winter scenes that we see Cullen’s mastery of the effects of light upon snow; his use of complementary colour and texture; his ability to capture atmosphere.

In an early exhibition publication, William Watson says of Cullen’s work:

“In deep winter under a canopy of snow, where the woods are a silhouette of black against a shimmer of radiant light, Cullen paints his poem to the glory of the Laurentian winter. In his pictures one feels the very mood of hushed solitude, the exquisite silence of the snow-enshrouded world.”

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inscribed “circa 1993”
Provenance: Ingram Gallery, Toronto ON

Marcelle Ferron initially studied at the Ecole du Meuble (Montreal) and the Ecole des Beaux-arts (Quebec), though this education became progressively dissonant with her modernist sensibility. Ferron became a member of Paul-Émile Borduas’s Automatiste art movement, signing the Refus Global manifesto in 1948. She began to achieve prominence while living in Paris (1953-1966). In 1963, she began to study glass making and stained glass techniques. She devoted herself to this art form for many years, and did not return to painting again for quite some time.

Marcelle Ferron exhibited broadly throughout her prolific and decorated career, both in Canada and internationally. In 1970, The Musee d’Art Contemporain de Montreal staged a retrospective of her work, subsequently shown in Paris at the Canadian Cultural Centre in 1972.

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signed & dated lower right; signed, titled & dated on the backing verso

Jean-Paul Jerome studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Montreal, under Stanley Cosgrove. By the early 1950s he had shifted towards abstraction, and in 1955 he became one of the original founders of the Plasticien Movement, an avant-garde movement based in geometrical abstraction. After a sojourn in Paris, Jerome returned to the Ecole as an instructor, leaving in 1973 to devote himself fully to his art.

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signed & dated lower right
Provenance: Galerie Simon Blais, Montreal QC; Masters Gallery, Calgary AB

Rita Letendre is one of Canada’s most distinguished, living abstract artists. She began her artistic training in the academic and traditional atmosphere of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Montreal, quickly changing her path following a viewing, in 1950, of the art show “L’Exposition des Rebelles”. After leaving the conservative Ecole, Rita Letendre began showing small abstract works. In 1954, she was selected to participate in the final Automatiste exhibition coordinated by Paul-Emile Borduas, “La Matiere Chante”. Soon after, she participated in a touring exhibition with the Plasticiens, and had her first solo show at L’Echourie in Montreal. This was the beginning of a very long and productive career.

The 1950s were a formative period for Letendre, during which she was influenced not only by the Automatistes, but by Eastern philosophy and the American Abstract Expressionists. Her work transformed over the decades, from these early gestural works, to vibrant geometrical compositions, and canvases characterized by vigorous brushwork and contrast. In 2017 Rita Letendre was honoured with an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, “Fire and Light” which showcased work spanning her 70 year career.