​La Plage is a highly important composition painted by Philip Surrey at Île Bizard, a small island some 45 kilometers from Montreal. There in the summer of 1966 Philip and Margaret Surrey accompanied by Daisy their dachshund, rented a good sized summer house overlooking Lake of Two Mountains on an estate owned by friends. The painting evolved into a larger format, one of his two major triumphs of that summer. On the heels of the successes and pressures posed by a sell out exhibition at Galerie Martin in Montreal and a small retrospective at Le Musée du Québec, Surrey’s retreat to the country was a happy and productive time for him.

The other is the larger paintingLes Demoiselles du Village, a painting purchased by the National Gallery of Canada in 1967. In his autobiographical notes Surrey wrote about the large versions, 32 x 48” of La Plage and Les Demoiselles du Village of which the composition of each was the exact reverse of the other. The pair of large format paintings was reunited in the important Surrey exhibition Le peintre dans la ville, at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal of 1971 and then in 1972 at le Centre culturel canadien in Paris.

Inspired by a beach on Île Bizard, the painting depicts a relaxed gathering of island residents by the water, La Plage shows an unusual sense of his delight in the community, the leisure, and the rhythms of rural life. The figures are arranged almost like actors on a stage beneath the trees, while the broad expanse of Le lac des Deux Montagnes provides a serene backdrop. The work combines Surrey’s characteristic interest in human relationships with an extraordinary sense of ease.