Artworks

This is an extraordinary opportunity to acquire an important work of large scale in the medium of pastel, one in which Gagnon excelled.

The importance of Clarence Gagnon to the canon of Canadian art is emphasized by the illustration of his painting Old Houses, Baie-Saint-Paul on the cover of the catalogue, Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons. [1] The exhibition presently on at the National Gallery of Canada (until July 3, 2022) is a “must see,” a blockbuster, a presentation of Canada’s foremost impressionists led by James Wilson Morrice, Clarence Gagnon and Maurice Cullen.

Laurentian Village, the canvas in oils, purchased by The National Gallery of Canada in 1927, is one of the most often exhibited and published paintings by Gagnon. The evolution from a drawing of St. Urbain in Charlevoix to the final state in oil is well described and illustrated in Clarence Gagnon, 1881-1942: Dreaming the Landscape, the traveling exhibition hosted by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in the year 2006:

“The known basis for this painting [ the oil painting Laurentian Village ] is not a pochade (although one may well still exist), but a graphite sketch, showing the main street of Saint-Urbain, lined with telephone poles and leading towards the mountains in the distance (fig. 67). [2] As usual, Gagnon enlarged the motif to the desired proportions by making a pastel version on heavy brown paper (cat. 109, p.164). [3] In transposing the image, he eliminated the telephone poles and gave greater impact to the highlands in the background. In the final canvas, he accentuated the mountain peaks and ridges even more - not because he had just returned from a trip to the Swiss Alps, as one writer has claimed, but because he was overcome with nostalgic memories of Charlevoix.” [4]

_____________
Footnotes:

[1] Rosemary Shipton, ed., Canada and Impressionism : New Horizons, 1880-1930 (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2019).
[2] Hélène Sicotte et al., Clarence Gagnon, 1881-1942: Dreaming the Landscape, translated by Judith Terry and Donald Pistolesi (Québec: Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 2006), p.163.
[3] Ibid., p.164.
[4] Jean-Rene Ostiguy, in Dreaming the Landscape, p.163.