Kathleen M. Morris, St. Joseph's Oratory, Montreal, circa 1930. Oil on canvas. 24 x 30 in (61 x 76.2 cm). SOLD.

 

 

St. Joseph's Oratory, Montreal is a defining achievement by Kathleen Moir Morris, one of the most celebrated artists to emerge from the circle of friendship of the Beaver Hall Group. Morris has painted a view towards St. Joseph’s Oratory, looking south across Queen Mary Road. In the foreground, a horse drawn sleigh travels west, while a couple and a family with a young child are out for a stroll. A screen of trees separates the foreground from the rest of the composition. Morris’s characteristic earthy colours and snow tones are punctuated by the vibrant red sleigh, and the child’s red toque.

 

Fig. 1. Kathleen M. Morris, Street Scene, Montreal [Scène de rue à Montréal (promenade en traîneau devant l'oratoire Saint-Joseph)], circa 1929. Oil on panel. 10 1/4 x 13 1/2 in (26 x 34.3 cm), Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (2018.22). Not for Sale. 

 

This canvas was “painted up” from an oil sketch (today in the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec), sold twice previously by Klinkhoff family art businesses. The sketch depicts the same scene but with the direction of the sleigh reversed (see Fig. 1).  Another canvas featuring people in place of the horse drawn sleigh also exists (see Fig. 2). Morris submitted the canvas to the 51st annual Royal Canadian Academy of Arts exhibition in the fall of 1930 and to the 1931 Spring Exhibition at the Art Association of Montreal.

 

Fig. 2. Kathleen M. Morris, En route pour l’église, Oratoire St-Joseph, 1939. Oil on canvas. 18 x 22 in (45.7 x 55.9 cm). Private collection. Not for Sale, shown for comparison purposes only.

 

Morris was an artist of superb talent whose modernist approach to contemporary landscapes and cityscapes was defined by vivid colours, simplified forms, and a bold handling of paint. She was an associate of the Beaver Hall Group from its earliest days.  Along with many of the artists in the Group, she studied under William Brymner at the Art Association of Montreal, and took outdoor sketching classes with Maurice Cullen. The greatest legacy of the Beaver Hall Group would arguably be its fostering of a highly talented selection of women artists.

 

Morris was born with a handicap that today we would recognize as cerebral palsy, but she refused to allow it to adversely affect her ability to paint. Instead she sought accessible subjects and in 1929-30 she resided on Avenue de l’Oratoire, essentially in the shadow of St. Joseph's Oratory.  By the time she conceived of the painting St. Joseph's Oratory, Montreal her work had long been a fixture in the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts annual exhibitions, as well as the Art Association of Montreal’s annual Spring Exhibitions. Her works had also been selected for the British Empire Exhibitions at Wembley in 1924 and 1925, and the 1927 Exposition d’art canadien at the Musée Jeu de Paume in Paris.

 

Fig. 3 The Montreal Gazette, 16 June 1976, 13

 

In 1976, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff honoured Kathleen Morris with a non-selling retrospective exhibition. The then-elderly artist attended the show and remarked that she had never before seen so many of her paintings in one place. The Montreal Gazette’s (see Fig. 3) coverage of the exhibition included a photograph of Morris inspecting the paintings, a photograph we cherish, and beside that was reproduced an image of the St. Joseph's Oratory, Montreal (incorrectly dated 1939).

 

Fig. 4. View of St. Joseph’s Oratory, circa 1925, prior to the beginning of construction on the dome. Add a comment