Clarence Alphonse Gagnon 1881 - 1942

Laing Galleries, Toronto
H.R. Milner, Edmonton
Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montréal
Michael Pitfield, Montréal
Masters Gallery, Calgary
Private Collection

Exposition Clarence A. Gagnon, Galérie A.M. Reitlinger, Paris, November 27 - December 16, 1913, no. 28, as Solitude glacée
The H.R. Milner Collection, Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, 1976, no. 20, as Winter Scene
Clarence Gagnon, 1881-1942, Dreaming the Landscape, Musée National des beaux-arts du Québec, Québec City, June 7 - September 10, 2006; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, October 6, 2006 - January 7, 2007; The McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, June 2 - August 19, 2007, no. 63

Terry Fenton, The H.R. Milner Collection, Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, 1976, no. 20, as Winter Scene, reproduced.
Hélène Sicotte and Michèle Grandbois, Clarence Gagnon, 1881-1942, Dreaming the Landscape, Musée National des beaux-arts du Québec, 2006, p. 120, no. 63, reproduced in colour and dated to bewteen 1908 and 1913. Also listed and reproduced in colour on p. 348.

Despite his long love affair with France and Europe, Gagnon’s heart was in Quebec. His most affecting work came from his understanding of and insight into the landscapes and villages of the Charlevoix, at the centre of which lay his favourite town of Baie St. Paul.

In this painting, Gagnon has caught, in a wistful, almost melancholic, mood, the essence of the wilderness that surrounded all the little villages along the St. Lawrence River and continued on back into the forests, lakes, and rivers of the rugged PreCambrian Shield.

The composition, although seemingly easy and natural, is actually a tour de force of three triangles capped by a rectangular band of sky. The near, middle, and distant landscape elements have a sinuous way of connecting to each other. The viewer stands on a high point of land, overlooking a river valley, which angles off to the right, and the far bank with the hill behind it. Over the hill in the further distance the land, partly covered in snow like the immediate foreground, rolls away across the miles to a hazy horizon. The sky is uneventful and understated, a backdrop that provides an even larger vista, and which pushes down against the three interlocking triangles of the terrain.

To the right, is the edge of a stand of vertically triangular spruce trees, dark and strong against the rest of the painting, and offset slightly by a few small tops of more spruce in the left corner of our field of vision.

 And then we come, finally, to the two leafless birch trees, arching out over the lip of the valley and reaching up to the limit of the picture surface. With their bending trunks and tapering branches, they seem to give a sort of benediction to the country for which they serve as sentinels. This is a heart-felt, intimate, and personal painting for Gagnon, one in which he invested as much affection for the Charlevoix as he did in his paintings of Quebec’s houses and settlements.

This work is recorded as Lucile Rodier Gagnon (no. 126).