James Wilson Morrice 1865 - 1924

Sold as Red Venice, Sotheby's (Canada), October 27, 1969 (lot 16)

Private Collection, Ottawa

The small wooden pochades that Morris carried with him and used to register quickly any scene or vignette of the life he encountered in his travels, may rarely have been so richly saturated with sunset colours as this one. Enchanted as almost every artist was with the charm of Venice, Morrice drew in pencil and on these tiny wooden panels in oil with eagerness and intensity. The results, almost always, gave an immediacy, freshness, and vitality that the larger canvases, painted back in Paris or elsewhere away from the actual subject, tried to achieve but inevitably did so in a different key. Tom Thomson and Morrice would have understood each other perfectly about this, and doubtless would have agreed, too, that these small sketches, done with a rush of energy, were really the pinnacle of their art. What they were, really, was a drawing in oil paint, and drawing, as every artist knows, is the precursor and the essence of an aesthetic idea. Morrice and Venice were a perfect match for each other, and that partnership shows in this small painting as well as it ever could.