Horace Champagne

Horace Champagne was born in Montreal in 1937. He is the grandson of the Canadian pastel artist Charles de Belle (1873–1939). 

He attended the École des beaux-arts de Montreal and the Ottawa School of Art before embarking on his career as a graphic designer in the advertising industry. 

Champagne had his first exhibition in 1977 in Ottawa of oil paintings. Shortly after he discovered that for him  the medium of  pastel was one that offered great opportunities to express his creative ideas. Since 1979, Champagne has painted exclusively in that medium. Finding his art well received originally through art galleries in Western Canada he was able to leave the commercial field to paint full time. 

 For the next forty years, he worked in pastel, recording areas of Canada  from the Pacific to Atlantic coasts including the Alberta foothills and Rockies and Quebec City where his inspiration was the character of  its older streets. In 1988, he bought a house in Sainte-Pétronille, Île d'Orléans, Quebec. From there he continued to find subject matter locally, the flowers in his garden, the streets of Old Quebec, the landscape of Charlevoix, and luminous still lifes of the antique filled interior of his home and studio, Champagne traveled regularly west where he found the Rocky Mountains compelling subject matter. 

In 2006 Horace purchased a studio in Rose Blanche, Newfoundland coast where the sea stimulated his palette. In 2000 Horace Champagne was elected Premier Pastelist by the Pastel Society of Canada and awarded the distinction of Master Pastelist by The Pastel Society of Eastern Canada. Then in 2009, he was elected an honorary life member of the Pastel Society of Eastern Canada. In 2013, Champagne received an invitation to the Exposition international at Giverny, Art du Pastel en France. Champagne is a member of the Pastel Society of France, the Pastel Society of Eastern Canada and the Pastel Society of America.