Marie-Cécile Bouchard was a celebrated folk artist and among the founders of Quebec’s tradition in folk art of the Charlevoix region. She was introduced to painting by her elder sister Simone-Mary. Their family, including their parents and 14 siblings, lived in the Moulin César, a historic property in Baie St Paul. Like her siblings, she specialized in genre scenes, depictions of traditional Québecois interiors, and rural life.

Her work gained some international recognition when it was exhibited in Brazil in 1945, Rio de Janeiro, Paris et New York earning her praise as an exceptional "primitive" artist. Marie-Cécile Bouchard’s paintings, admired for their simplicity and emotional depth, were acquired by collectors worldwide. Her work was included in the exhibition of Canadian Women Artists at the Riverside Museum in New York in 1947, an exhibition of the work of 72 Canadian women artists, including Emily Carr, Anne Savage and Prudence Heward (Madeleine Laliberté was the only other “peintre naïve” whose work was in this important exhibition). 

It was her custom to make a visual record of her paintings after she finished them, painting small copies which she kept together in a book. However, her strong religious faith, reflected in her frequent use of spiritual themes, eventually led her to leave painting behind. 

In 1947, Marie-Cécile, joined a few of her siblings who had become Sisters of Sainte-Antoniennes de Marie at the Convent in Chicoutimi. Although as the photo demonstrates she and her siblings were still practising their art while in the convent, their dedication in subject matter was exclusively religious. Marie-Cécile put her artistic career publicly on hold for 22 years. Toward the end of her life, with the benefit of a book of small studies of earlier paintings of the 1940s, Marie-Cécile (Soeur Marie de la Sagesse) revisited them and is said to have painted 30 paintings from them. Le Baptême which we offer here, is one of those paintings.