Robert Pilot often spoke of the “quiet light at the end of the day” that settles over Québec. Such is the mood this painting reflects. As the sun drops behind the heights, a soft warmth catches the sky while the river below turns cool and still. The rooftops and the distant spire appear almost suspended in the haze, held together by what Pilot called “the last tone of daylight.” The light is gentle, the colours harmonious and the scene is allowed to “paint itself,” as he liked to say, in the calm that comes just before evening.

Viewed from the Beauport shoreline looking west-south-west toward Cap-Diamant, across the Saint-Charles River and Louise Basin, the painting captures Québec City with the spire of the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec rising clearly above the Upper Town skyline. Below and to the right of the spire, the artist renders the dense cluster of Lower Town and lower-slope buildings as a single mass, typical of the compressed winter light along the St. Lawrence. The composition reflects the city’s historic topography: river wharves in the foreground, the waterfront band at mid-height, and the cathedral crowning the elevated plateau.

This exquisitely painted composition by Robert Pilot is not titled by the hand of the artist and had previously been incorrectly identified as a composition featuring Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Current research identifies irrefutably that the sightline and view is from the Beauport wharf, across the cove over the mouth area of the Saint-Charles River onto Quebec’s Lower Town waterfront, up the slope of Cap-Diamant, by the spire of Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec.


*The painting has a gallery label from Galerie Walter Klinkhoff with the location incorrectly identified as Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.