The composition is loosely recognizable as the medieval riverside neighbourhood of Chartres. During WWll some buildings were bombed and destroyed and others rebuilt afterwards. Our research shows that it is here, along the Eure River, with the medieval bridges, mills, and defensive walls that served to offer this perspective. Holgate sketched in Chartres during his sojourn in France with his newly married bride, Frances. While overseas he spent at least part of the summer of 1921 in Concarneau where he shared a studio with Robert Pilot. 
 
Chartres, 1921, although small in size, is an important example showing Holgate’s interest in post Impressionism and the vibrant colour palette of modern artists of the period. His structural simplification of the cluster of buildings, rooflines, and arches and an apparent translucence in the pigment of the flat planes show an appreciation of Cézanne. 
 
Other excellent and well known paintings of this vintage include Suzy at the National Gallery of Canada, Sanary, (owned by a regular visitor to our gallery), and Fête des filets bleus, Concarneau, 1921, at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
 
The 1920s are of great significance in the annals of Canadian art and one when Holgate was an important contributor to that canon. He was a founding member and major influence as a proponent of modernism on Montreal’s Beaver Hall artists, the 8th member of the Group of Seven and a teacher of wood engraving (a collection of Holgate’s wood engravings are at The Boston Fine Arts Museum) and later an official War Artist for Canada in WWll. 
 
As a personal note, our family had the honour and privilege of selling works for Edwin Holgate and later for his widow, Frances. When posthumously Holgate was honoured to Westmount, Quebec’s Wall of Fame, we were invited along with a few members of Frances’ nephew’s family, that of Charles Rittenhouse, to represent Edwin Holgate.