James Wilson Morrice 1865 - 1924

As an artist, Morrice was peripatetic and restless. His search for stimulation and subject-matter took him from Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City and Murray Bay, to England, Wales, Brittany, Normandy, Brussels, Morocco, Italy, Bermuda, Cuba, Trinidad, Barbados -- not to mention Paris, his home base, and numerous locations in the south of France.

This painting of Le Jardin Saint-Martial in Avignon was probably painted circa 1909-10, although Morrice's only documented visit to Avignon was in the summer of 1904.  Its focal point is the prominent commemorative sculpture of Agricol Perdiguier, a local politician who championed the working classes and was a friend of George Sand, which is set against the medieval church Saint-Martial. The canvas was shown in 1910 at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux Arts as Avignon (Le Jardin), as Morrice has inscribed on the stretcher.

The canvas bears all the hallmarks of Morrice's individual sensibility. His faultless composition packs in many disparate elements (the trees, the statue, the church, the figures, the broad expanse of lawn that leads us into the picture, the counter-balancing sky) and yet each seems to have space enough to be whole and at ease. His style of painting with modest dabs of pigment is neither pointillist nor wholly impressionist, and his strokes are gentle and convey much more than might seem possible. His colour choices are also highly individual, and although realistic in some senses are a palette no other painter would choose: they range from black to white, with almost everything in between: browns, reds, greens, and blues.

Most tellingly than all these attributes combined, however, is Morrice's unique genius to create an atmosphere of pleasure and peace here in this little corner in the centre of a busy city. These urban vignettes he was drawn to were those that he could portray with a touching mixture of nostalgia, sentiment, and  genuine affection. The social harmony of a society may have been something of an illusion in reality, but Morrice consistently provides a convincing portrait of people and places that is at once accurate and optimistic, as well as reassuring.

Our thanks to Lucie Dorais for her great help in identifying the locale and the details depicted by Morrice in this painting.