CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART - Heffel

HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE 27
16 JEAN PAUL LEMIEUX
CC QMG RCA 1904 ~ 1990
Le lac du nord
oil on canvas, signed, 1980
48 x 98 3/4 in, 121.9 x 250.8 cm
PROVENANCE:
Marlborough~Godard, Montreal
Mira Godard Gallery, Calgary
Private Collection, Calgary
Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto
LITERATURE:
Alec Scott, Surface Tension, June 16, 2005, http://www.cbc.ca/arts/
artdesign/lemieux.html (accessed March 2, 2009)
EXHIBITED:
Mira Godard Gallery, Calgary, 1980
Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto, Jean Paul Lemieux Paintings, 2006
In 1956, Jean Paul Lemieux received his first public commission with the
request for a mural, Medicine in Quebec City, for the University of Laval
health sciences building. This was a welcome project for the artist, who
admired the work of the Mexican muralists but had not had the
opportunity to test his own skills on a monumental scale. For the next 45
years, while mostly creating paintings in dimensions more suited to
intimate, private spaces, Lemieux confidently produced others meant for
grand public sites. Among the most memorable of those is his 1964
Charlottetown Revisited, commissioned to celebrate the opening of the
Confederation Centre of the Arts, and his 1979 portrait of Queen
Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, which hangs in Rideau Hall.
In many of his larger paintings, the subject was his own family, as in the
much~reproduced 1910 Remembered (1962) or La Visite (1967). In these
examples, the figures are clothed in garb reminiscent of the artist’s youth
with a “palette…as subdued as the emotions he conveys…”
By 1980, with his reputation and renown as a painter of iconic Canadian
scenes firmly sealed and celebrated nationwide, Lemieux’s desire to
create ambitious large~scale paintings had clearly not diminished,
despite his advancing age. Employing the exaggerated horizontal format
which distinguishes many of his landscape paintings, Le lac du nord
reveals much about the artist’s physical and emotional attachment to the
Quebec countryside; its warmer palette suggests more psychic closeness
between the figures than in earlier works. In this painting, both the
figures and the specific site are unnamed, yet the artist’s fondness for them
and for the place is unambiguous. The setting, perhaps not far from the
artist’s home in the beautiful Charlevoix region, is bound to evoke
memories of a warm summer day, seemingly without end, spent lazing at
the lake. The calm water, sandy beach, dense forest and clear sky are, at
first viewing, seamless layers in an expansive vista, but on longer viewing
and examination of the surface, Lemieux’s concentration of small
brush~strokes are revealed throughout. The viewer’s eye is drawn
naturally from the largest figure at the left towards the man and his dog at
the right edge and then to the woman strolling towards us on the beach.
The cabin at the rim of the lake is at first barely noticeable against the
backdrop of trees, but it soon becomes visible along with its subtle
reflection in the lake.
This image is another fine example of the artist’s masterful ability to
present us with a grand vista, while remaining attentive to the small
details that reveal his underlying interest in the scene. In Lemieux’s most
memorable works, no matter the number of characters that are cast in the
scene, the dialogue between them is muted and the individuals are
depicted as somehow removed from the main action. In that vein, the
script for Le lac du nord has not yet been published ~ but its story may be
written in the viewer’s imagination.
ESTIMATE: $80,000 ~ 120,000