In Les enfants de choeur, three characters compete for the narrow space of the canvas. Their truncated bodies appear at the bottom, to the left, and to the right of the composition. Jean Paul Lemieux has arranged the choirboys facing away, head-on, and in profile, in such a way that the trio gives the strange impression of being in motion—one moving away, another approaching, and the third crossing the pictorial field from right to left. Lemieux has dressed them in bright crimson cassocks, without the usual white surplice worn by altar servers. A thin white Roman collar, like a yoke, encircles the necks of their youthful heads, which are topped with red skullcaps.

In this composition, where both figures and setting are stripped down to the extreme, our gaze is first drawn by the vibration of the chromatic masses and by the force fields they create on the surface. Then, a more attentive eye perceives the textures left by brush-strokes applied regardless of form or background. The rhythmic unity that emerges evokes the painter’s breathing as he worked.

Lemieux’s attachment to biblical scenes and to members of the Catholic Church—both clergy and laypeople—may seem anachronistic in the context of the 1960s, when the Quiet Revolution was in full swing and delivered the final blow to the Church’s strong grip on Quebec society. A native of Quebec City, which had long been the centre of Catholic power in North America, the painter was inspired by a culture that once imposed its customs and liturgical calendar on every good Québécois, an era now past. Lemieux was even an avid collector of sacred objects. His body of work, marked by a succession of stylistic periods, draws deeply from this rich religious heritage—from the primitivism of his early years (1940 – 1945) to the Nordic expressionism of his later period (1970 – 1990), passing through the classical period (1956 – 1970), the most renowned of his career, to which Les enfants de choeur belongs.

In 1965, Lemieux returned from a trip to Tuscany, where he immersed himself in the visions of the Quattrocento painters he had long admired. He then created pared-down works such as Pise (1965, collection of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec), with a format similar to Les enfants de choeur, which depicts the baptistery and two tiny cardinals dressed in red—the only bright colour to pierce the enveloping greyness of the painting.[1] The following year, he painted a work titled Nativity (1966, collection of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection), which became a popular icon after UNICEF reproduced it as a greeting card in 1967 and Canada Post chose it to illustrate a Christmas stamp, issued in 130 million copies, in 1974.

According to our research, Les enfants de choeur was only ever reproduced in black and white in Guy Robert’s 1975 monograph on the artist. Its sale is recorded in the artist’s sales inventory from 1966. That same year, Lemieux painted Petit Pierre (private collection), a portrait of an altar boy shown in bust-length profile, dressed and capped in the same manner as the subjects of our painting.[2]

Les enfants de choeur is a remarkable example of the humanist painting that Lemieux left us during a time of great change in both society and the Quebec art scene. With its vibrant colour masses and drastically reduced space, the work embraces the formalist tendencies of contemporary abstract art, yet without abandoning the human figure. For Lemieux, the human figure remained the primary source of the emotion that painting evoked in him.

We thank Michèle Grandbois, author of Jean Paul Lemieux: Life & Work and Quebec City Art & Artists: An Illustrated History (both Art Canada Institute), for contributing the above essay, translated from the French.

1. Reproduced in Michèle Grandbois, Jean Paul Lemieux at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Quebec City: MNBAQ, 2007), exhibition catalogue, 105.

2. Reproduced in Marie Carani, Jean Paul Lemieux (Quebec City: Musée du Québec, 1992), 154, dated incorrectly as circa 1964.