Sold for: $229,250

PROVENANCE
Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Clare Bice, The Enchanted Lonely World of Jean Paul Lemieux, Jean Paul Lemieux Retrospective Exhibitions, 1966, exhibition flyer
Jean Paul Lemieux Retrospective Exhibitions, Art Gallery of London, 1966, listed, unpaginated

EXHIBITED
Art Gallery of London, Jean Paul Lemieux Retrospective Exhibitions, February 1 - 26, 1966, traveling in 1966 to the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, catalogue #11

In the works of Jean Paul Lemieux, winter has many faces. It can be joyful, peaceful and majestic or the embodiment of human solitude, sadness and fear. Lemieux said that “winter does have a certain majesty, but it’s far too long in our country…And the older you get, the longer it feels. Winter becomes an affliction.” Yet he added that “the artist’s function is to transform life, like Botticelli [who] in his Primavera painted spring as something truly extraordinary, an idyllic season.”[1]

We see Le manteau de lapin as an allegory of the softer side of winter. The gentle features of the young woman’s face emanating from the nuanced winter white lend credence to this interpretation. With her dewy black pupils fixed on the viewer, she beckons us with the inviting promise of her tender pink smile. Lemieux clearly does not shy away from the allegorical or poetic side of the charming composition. Nor does he wallow in it, as the painting’s title, which translates as “The Rabbit Fur Coat,” unequivocally pulls us back into the reality of Canadian winter. The painter has draped the figure’s body, neck and head in velvety fur that obscures all bodily forms, leaving only the woman’s face and a few strands of dark hair standing out against the luminous whites of her coat and toque. The texture of the fur, rendered through the small, radiant strokes the painter has erratically applied to the mantle and hat, draws us into the immediacy of his act of painting. This textured effect creates a subtle sense of movement that brings the figure alive against the sparse winter backdrop. Le manteau de lapin is a fine example of Lemieux’s approach to painting: taking a flat space and maximizing expression using a minimum of shapes and colours.

Lemieux was 60 when he painted Le manteau de lapin in 1964. He would soon retire from the École des beaux-arts de Québec, after a teaching career that had spanned more than 25 years. His seminal work from 1956, Le visiteur du soir (collection of the National Gallery of Canada), an allegory of death and solitude in the cold of Canadian winter, was included in the Canadian Painting exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London that same year.[2] The painter’s works were increasingly present in the Canadian art market—at the Roberts Gallery in Toronto, the Zanettin Gallery in Quebec City, and the Denyse Delrue and Agnès Lefort galleries in Montreal. Galerie Agnès Lefort, acquired in 1961 by Mira Godard, hosted special exhibitions of the Quebec painter in 1963 and 1965 that drew rave reviews and sales to many prominent Montreal and Toronto art collectors. Le manteau de lapin was one of the paintings sold by the gallery in this period. Since then, it has been presented publicly only once (on loan for the artist’s first retrospective exhibition, in London and Kitchener, Ontario, in 1966) and has been carefully cared for by the same family for nearly six decades.

We thank Michèle Grandbois, author of Jean Paul Lemieux au Musée du Québec, for contributing the above essay, translated from the French. This work will be included in Grandbois's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.

1. Jean Paul Lemieux, interview by Guy Robert, summer 1972, in Guy Robert, Lemieux (Montreal: Éditions internationales Alain Stanké, 1975), 185.

2. Tate Gallery, London, Canadian Painting, 1939 – 1963, organized by the National Gallery of Canada, February 7 – March 22, 1964.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars