PROVENANCE
Estate of the Artist
Private Collection, Montreal
A.K. Prakash & Associates Inc., Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Louis Hémon, Maria Chapdelaine, 1933, illustrations by Clarence Gagnon, the related scene reproduced page 16

After Sunday Mass at the church in Péribonka, Samuel Chapdelaine and his daughter Maria set out to return to the family farm, wrapped up in the sleigh pulled by the horse Charles-Eugène. The beast is the only fully conscious being on the icy path; it will lead the sleeping Chapdelaines to the steps of their house. This is the subject of the scene that Clarence Gagnon illustrates on page 16, Endormis sur le chemin du retour, the fourth of the 54 compositions that adorn Louis Hémon’s famous novel Maria Chapdelaine (originally published in 1913).

The work was republished many times, including in deluxe editions with the participation of renowned illustrators in Paris, including Gérard Cochet, Alexandre Alexeieff, Jean Lébédeff and Jean Droit. In the late 1920s, Éditions Mornay—which had just published Le grand silence blanc by Louis-Frédéric Rouquette, illustrated by Gagnon, in 1928—invited the Canadian to work on an illustrated edition of Hémon’s novel. Gagnon devoted himself intensively to the project for five years. When the book was published in 1933, the artist’s contribution was considered one of the most accomplished and definitive interpretations of the beloved story.

All the small colour compositions in the book are 10 by 12 centimetres. The final images were made in oil monotypes, sometimes enhanced with other techniques.[1] All 54 are now housed in the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario (see the related work, 1969.4.5). These works are the result of numerous studies inspired by the pochades that the painter produced during his stays in Baie-Saint-Paul. A single monotype may have several preparatory gouache studies, which are a precious testimony to the illustrator’s creative process. Moreover, the painter may also have worked on a composition up to the final state of the monotype, as is the case here for this variant of the composition Endormis sur le chemin du retour.

Indeed, the vibrant sleigh scene shares similar features with the illustration on page 16 of Maria Chapdelaine: the position of the horse pulling the habitant’s sleigh; the two figures wrapped up in the grey goatskin carriage dress; the fire-ravaged ground covered with snow, revealing new vegetation on the surface among the emaciated and blackened skeletons of an ancient forest. On the other hand, we observe that the sleigh runs along the Péribonka River rather than away from it, as in Maria Chapdelaine’s composition. The same is true for the background, where, rather than translating snow-capped mountain ranges, the illustrator has reduced it here to fields delimited by blue lines and masses covered by a cloudy sky. This variation, enhanced with gouache, allows us to appreciate the expressive spontaneity of the artist and his ability to make bright colours sing.

After the Second World War, the widow of the artist, Lucile Rodier-Gagnon, inventoried Gagnon’s studio collection in Paris, where hundreds of works and studies had been piled up since 1936. Mme Gagnon took care to mark each of them with an Atelier Gagnon stamp and to affix a certificate of authenticity on the back that included a number and the inscription “Paris, 1946.”

We thank Michèle Grandbois, art historian and co-author of Clarence Gagnon, 1881 – 1942: Dreaming the Landscape, for contributing the above text, translated from the French.

1. For the monotype technique, see Hélène Sicotte and Michèle Grandbois, Clarence Gagnon, 1881 – 1942: Rêver le paysage (Quebec City: Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 2006), exhibition catalogue, 327n70.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars