Covering nearly five decades, the new Hermitage Foundation exhibit brings together some 100 paintings by some 35 Canadian artists, from major museums (including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa) and private collections.
The emergence of a national avant-garde
Rarely shown in Europe, the works are grouped into eight sections retracing the journey of painters, from their initiation to impressionism to their reinterpretation of the movement, which led to the emergence of a national avant-garde.
It was in Paris that the artistic adventure of young Canadian painters began, who, like William Blair Bruce, came to study with the greatest French masters of the day. Marked by the visual audacity of the works of Monet, Renoir or Pissarro, they are interested, like them, in the transience of atmospheres and the tumult of modern life. They paint in the Parisian capital, of course, but especially in Fontainebleau (Barbizon school) or in the fashionable seaside resorts of Brittany or Normandy.
From Normandy coasts to Quebec …
Back in Canada, the artists deploy an innovative style to represent the subjects of local daily life and the splendor of the landscapes: they create works as surprising as attractive around typically impressionist themes like water or portraits of children, but also – Canadian winters oblige! – around snowy landscapes…
Even though the season is inhospitable for outdoor work and “live” painting, it inspires some of the most emblematic Canadian works. Farms, fences and sleds tell of the human presence in an environment that is both grandiose and domesticated, in Quebec scenes evoking traditional lifestyles. A “hanging” that is both familiar (the impressionist touch) and unusual (Canadian themes), which can only satisfy lovers of modern painting. See until May 24.
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