Sold for: $34,250

PROVENANCE
Galerie Claude Lafitte, Montreal
Private Collection, Quebec

During Clarence Gagnon’s fourth return to Quebec from France during 1919 to 1924, he started a new chapter in his life - he married Lucile Rodier, and resumed living in Baie-Saint-Paul. He continued his outdoor sketching, traveling through the Laurentian landscape on skis in the winter and on foot in the summer, carrying his paintbox, sketchbook and folding stool, painting striking pochades such as this.

Since the First World War, Gagnon had eschewed commercially produced artist colours, since the quality had declined. He ground his own pigments, ordered in large quantities from the Paris firm of Morin et Tanet, and he was known for the vivacity and purity of his colours. He used white as his base, infused with pale pastels, which caused snowscapes such as this to appear incandescent. Sunlight breaks through the scudding clouds, raking across the Laurentian Mountains and causing an exquisite interplay between light and shadow. A quiet stream with a sinuous curve meanders through the scene, bordered by the organic lines of a snake fence. This is a quintessential Baie-Saint-Paul scene for Gagnon, in which the artist contrasted the cultivated surrounds of the town at the foot of the mountain against their wilderness setting.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars