Musings from the Roost: Clarence Gagnon, artist (12)

A couple of years ago while reading a Louise Penny book, I encountered an artist new to me, Emily Carr, whom I loved. (So much so that I bought a jigsaw puzzle featuring an image of hers, which was so hard it took me two years to finish!) I am now reading another book by Penny, The Long Way Home, and again she is featuring a Canadian artist, this time the Québecois Clarence Gagnon (1881–1942), a painter, draftsman, engraver, and illustrator. He is best known for his Impressionist images of the Baie Saint-Paul region of Charlevoix, along the St. Lawrence River (where in the book, Gamache & Co. are searching for the Three Pines artist Peter Morrow, who has disappeared, leaving tantalizing traces and clues).

In 1913 Gagnon was given a solo show in Paris, Paysage d’hiver dans les montagnes des Laurentides au Canada, the first time a living Canadian artist was featured in that city. "Mark[ing] him as a painter with his own interpretation of the Canadian winter and also as a painter known for his views of habitant life" (Wikipedia), the show was a turning point for him and his career. Afterward, according to the National Gallery of Canada, "Gagnon portrayed the Canadian landscape almost exclusively, and generally in wintertime. He invented a new type of landscape—a winter world composed of valleys and mountains, of sharp contrasts of light and shadow, of vivid colours, and of sinuous lines. He ground his own paints, and from 1916 his palette consisted of pure white, reds, blues and yellows." Although he spent many years bouncing back and forth between Québec and Europe, especially France, Canada remained his heart's true subject. In 1931, while living in Paris, he wrote:

It was not the over-sensitivity of the misunderstood that made me move to Paris. . . . Over there, I paint only Canadian subjects, I dream only of Canada. The motif remains fixed in my mind, and I don't allow myself to be captivated by the charms of a new landscape. In Switzerland, Scandinavia—everywhere, I recall my French Canada.

Penny describes his work like this: People from Québec who viewed Gagnon's work

looked about to burst into tears. And unsuspected yearning uncovered, discovered. For a simpler time and a simpler life. Before Internet, and climate change, and terrorism. When neighbors worked together, and separation was not a topic or an issue or wise.
Yet the Gagnon paintings weren't idealized images of country life. They showed hardship. But they also showed such beauty, such peace, that the paintings, and the people looking at them, ached

Here are some of his works, in no real order, except that Europe follows Canada. I still need to rustle up a date or two. (Click to see them large on black.)