Lorne Bouchard

Lorne Holland Bouchard was born in Montréal on March 19, 1913.  He was a highly talented artist who lived the greater part of his mature career in Montreal and enjoyed an extensive and successful artistic career, first as a designer and illustrator and then exhibiting his paintings in fine art galleries as well as with the Art Association of Montreal and the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts.

Bouchard began drawing at age seven in Douglastown, Gaspé. He studied drawing under Wilfred M. Barnes, R.C.A. and also at the École des beaux-arts in Montreal from 1928 ­to 1930. From the spring of 1935, he worked in Drummondville for four years as a label designer and Assistant Art Director at the Dennison Manufacturing Company of Canada and subsequently worked as an illustrator for 3 years in Montreal with Bomac Ltd. 

Bouchard painted the Canadian landscape extensively, most commonly around Montreal, the Laurentians, Charlevoix, and the Eastern Townships.  He was also a highly accomplished painter of the still life, a body of work that includes some exquisite near-miniatures.

A defining moment of Bouchard's career was in 1969 when James "Jim" Tooley, chairman of Nordair, invited the artist to travel throughout the Eastern Arctic. Flying aboard Nordair aircraft to remote northern communities, Bouchard gained rare firsthand access to a landscape that few Canadian artists had experienced in such depth. The expedition inspired a remarkable body of Arctic paintings and sketches, celebrated for their immediacy and atmospheric sensitivity. Later that year, at Tooley's invitation, Bouchard returned north to record the passage of the tanker Manhattan through the Northwest Passage near Resolute Bay, an event of considerable significance in the history of Arctic transportation and northern development. These journeys firmly established the Arctic as one of the most distinctive subjects in his oeuvre and contributed significantly to his reputation as an interpreter of Canada's northern landscape.

Bouchard had his first of eleven solo exhibitions at Walter Klinkhoff Gallery in 1960, and previously had four solo exhibitions at Montreal's Continental Gallery. He was featured in a two­-man show at Gallery 12 and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts with Kittie Bruneau, and in a four-man show at the London Museum (Ontario) with Albert Cloutier, R.C.A., Alan Collier, R.C.A. and William Roberts. After Bouchard's death, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff also hosted a tribute retrospective exhibition in 1981.

Lorne Bouchard's paintings are in countless private collections.  His work offers not only visual beauty but also a compelling record of Canada's landscapes as experienced by one of the country's most widely travelled and adventurous painters.