René Richard
Trappeurs dans le Nord
1895-1982
Pencil drawing
7 1/2 x 19 1/2 in
19.1 x 49.5 cm
This painting is available to view at our Toronto gallery.
19.1 x 49.5 cm
$2,500
Consultez les images additionnelles
Inscriptions
signed, “R.Richard” (lower right)Provenance
Galerie Art & Style, Baie-St-Paul, Charlevoix
In a 1928 letter to Eric Brown, the first director of the National Gallery of Canada, the highly celebrated artist Clarence A. Gagnon proclaimed:
“He [Richard] will become a greater artist than Tom Thomson. He ignored the art schools, because after a month here, he could draw better than any of the masters who were teaching him. […] The “call of the wild” is getting the best of him, and he has made up his mind to return to the Barren Lands where he came from, to resume his trapper’s life and to paint what he had been dreaming of for years up in the Delta of the Mackenzie. […] I’ll be damn mistaken if he doesn’t turn out a greater artist than Tom Thomson, I wish you will keep in touch with him so that we may see some of his things on exhibition."
Trappeurs dans le Nord is an example of Richard's extraordinary brilliance as a draughtsman. The scene is set in the rugged northern wilderness: Two trappers are at their campsite, one of them presumably the artist, with an A-frame tent and canoe. Through an exceptional command of line, value, and space, including the use of the paper itself, Richard has created a remarkable panoramic composition in this unforgiving medium.
René Richard spent nearly two decades as a trapper, trader, and canoe traveller across northern Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the Mackenzie River basin, and the western Arctic, where he lived and travelled while recording the northern landscape in sketches that later became the foundation of his paintings. His work occupies a unique place in Canadian art history, as he was arguably the first great Canadian artist to create images of an extensive swath of the Northwest.
“He [Richard] will become a greater artist than Tom Thomson. He ignored the art schools, because after a month here, he could draw better than any of the masters who were teaching him. […] The “call of the wild” is getting the best of him, and he has made up his mind to return to the Barren Lands where he came from, to resume his trapper’s life and to paint what he had been dreaming of for years up in the Delta of the Mackenzie. […] I’ll be damn mistaken if he doesn’t turn out a greater artist than Tom Thomson, I wish you will keep in touch with him so that we may see some of his things on exhibition."
Trappeurs dans le Nord is an example of Richard's extraordinary brilliance as a draughtsman. The scene is set in the rugged northern wilderness: Two trappers are at their campsite, one of them presumably the artist, with an A-frame tent and canoe. Through an exceptional command of line, value, and space, including the use of the paper itself, Richard has created a remarkable panoramic composition in this unforgiving medium.
René Richard spent nearly two decades as a trapper, trader, and canoe traveller across northern Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the Mackenzie River basin, and the western Arctic, where he lived and travelled while recording the northern landscape in sketches that later became the foundation of his paintings. His work occupies a unique place in Canadian art history, as he was arguably the first great Canadian artist to create images of an extensive swath of the Northwest.
