Lorne Bouchard, in the “land of rock, ice and snow… Presenting the beauty of the solemn land and its people.”

Lorne Bouchard’s Clearwater Fjord paintings are among the most compelling of his northern work. They depict one of Canada’s most remote and spectacular landscapes of Nunavut with a freshness and authenticity few artists have matched. Rare, visually, and historically significant, they embody artistic excellence in a uniquely Canadian subject matter combining to make them of great interest to important collectors of Canadian art of the North.

Return from Char Fishing, Clearwater Fiord, Baffin Island, N.W.T., 1976 and Inuit Discussion, Clearwater Fiord, Baffin Island (Arctic Circle), July 27, 1973 emphasize the lived-in landscape of the region recognized since 1999 as Nunavut, where Inuit families, camps, and fishing activities are integrated naturally into their environment. These works portray a way of life that had changed little over generations, with families returning each summer to one of the richest marine environments in the eastern Arctic. When Lorne Bouchard visited, he encountered a landscape that remained a vital summer harvesting ground, animated by traditional Inuit life, with camps, fishing, and hunting continuing in longstanding rhythms.

While portraying Inuit figures with a sense of dignity and naturalness that integrates them seamlessly into their environment, Bouchard was not attempting to produce an ethnographic record in the manner of some northern painters. Instead, his work consistently emphasizes the abstract geometry of rock formations and the immense scale of Baffin Island, using mist and atmospheric simplification to shape the landscape. Defined by steep granite mountains rising directly from the sea, Clearwater Fjord is a dramatic setting.

With a deeply respectful depiction of Inuit life, these Clearwater Fjord paintings represent the culmination of Bouchard’s northern practice, distinguished by both their strong human dimension and its sense of discovery rooted in the region’s enduring remoteness. It was due to the generosity and hospitality of Nordair’s chairman, Mr. James Tooley, that Lorne Bouchard was able to travel to the Eastern Arctic five times. His base was in Frobisher Bay, now Iqaluit, from where he traveled on Nordair cargo flights to various remote sites, including Clearwater Fjord.

In Lorne Bouchard’s own words (Lorne Bouchard, “The Eastern Arctic: A First Impression,” The Beaver Magazine, 1974):
“Five times since my first flight into Frobisher in March 1969, I have returned to the land of rock, ice, and snow. Each time I have found new shapes and subjects that stay with me when I return south to Montreal. There the mind starts working again, presenting the memory of people and places and I try my best to convey to canvas, with simplicity, the beauty of this solemn land and its people.

"...Of the land, one has the impression of unending space, of strong formations of barren, beautiful mountains. There are no trees, but this is unimportant. One sees the skeletons of cliffs and valleys and, as spring approaches, designs of bare rocks appear. An artist must be careful with such material. There is abundant detail but the impression cannot be achieved with many brush strokes. Simplicity is the key note.

…All the essence of non-objective material is here in the rugged and beautiful formations of rock. If one is partial to this style of painting it could easily evolve. It depends on the response of the artist to the northern landscape.”
(Lorne Bouchard, “The Eastern Arctic: A First Impression,” The Beaver Magazine, 1974)

Lorne Bouchard’s introduction to the Arctic was in 1962, when he and his wife, Lucille, were guests of Claire and David Molson on a boat they rented, Laird River, and travelled the 1,200 miles on the Mackenzie River, from Hay River on Great Slave Lake to the Beaufort Sea in the Western Arctic. David, president of the Montreal Canadiens Hockey Club, and Claire were avid art collectors and clients of Walter Klinkhoff Gallery. Over the years, at Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, we had 11 one-man shows of Bouchard’s paintings.

Upon Lorne’s death, Claire contributed the following to a Montreal newspaper:
“Lorne loved Canada and in the true tradition painted in practically every area. To own a Lorne Bouchard is to own a piece of this great country. He loved all seasons, but no one could paint the winter like Lorne. He captured the broad, cold sweep of fields, the heavy, brooding mountains of the Laurentians, the villages of the North Shore; the fjord at Pangnirtung on Baffin Island was as majestic on canvas as it stands today… His heart was not part of a cult or movement. His inspiration came from the vast spaces of our country and the divergent people who inhabited it.” (Montreal Star, May 7, 1978)

Lorne Bouchard’s paintings are in numerous museums, including the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Art Gallery of Alberta, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, as well as corporate and private collections across Canada and elsewhere.

Bouchard had his first of eleven solo exhibitions at Walter Klinkhoff Gallery in 1960, and previously had four solo exhibitions at Montreal's Continental Gallery. He was featured in a two-man show at Gallery 12 and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts with Kittie Bruneau, and in a four-man show at the London Museum (Ontario) with Albert Cloutier, R.C.A., Alan Collier, R.C.A., and William Roberts. In 1981, Walter Klinkhoff Gallery also hosted a Lorne Bouchard retrospective exhibition.

Lorne Holland Bouchard was born in Montréal on March 19, 1913. He was a highly talented artist who lived the greater part of his mature career in Montreal and enjoyed an extensive and successful artistic career, first as a designer and illustrator and then exhibiting his paintings in fine art galleries as well as with the Art Association of Montreal and the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts.

Bouchard began drawing at age seven in Douglastown, Gaspé. He studied drawing under Wilfred M. Barnes, R.C.A., and also at the École des beaux-arts in Montreal from 1928 to 1930. From the spring of 1935, he worked in Drummondville for four years as a label designer and Assistant Art Director at the Dennison Manufacturing Company of Canada and subsequently worked as an illustrator for three years in Montreal with Bomac Ltd.

The highest price for a Lorne Bouchard at auction is $52,000.