Marika

Galerie Lamoureux Ritzenoff, Montreal Private Collection, Toronto

Colin S. MacDonald, “A Dictionary of Canadian Artists”, vol. 1, Canadian Paperbacks, 3rd edition, 1977, pages 220-21

In 1938, Paul-Vanier Beaulieu had saved enough money to fly to visit his brother Claude in Paris, who had been living there for three years. The young artist soon purchased a studio of his own and enrolled in courses at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris until the Nazi invasion in 1940. As a citizen of a country at war with Germany, Beaulieu was arrested and interned at Fresnes, followed by Saint-Denis, France. He was joined by his brother Claude, fellow Quebecois artist Jean Dallaire, as well as 160 other Canadian citizens among a total of over two thousand interns. Beaulieu continued to paint during his internment, mostly portraits of his fellow prisoners. “Marika” is one of the few examples of the artist's work from this period that have been identified. Colin S. MacDonald writes in “A Dictionary of Canadian Artists” that two of the works Beaulieu produced during his confinement were “a portrait of a woman Marika and a study of Christ in the style of French artist Georges Rouault.” There remains a total of at least three portraits of the same woman dressed in yellow from this time, though this particular example is most fitting of MacDonald's description. The thick black contours and frontal composition of “Marika” is very much akin to the expressionist style of Rouault. The identity of the sitter is a mystery, apart from being an intern much like himself. The composition provides an interesting glimpse into this peculiar time during the formative stage of Beaulieu's career. The doors of the internment camp finally opened on August 28, 1944, and Paul-Vanier Beaulieu returned to a normal life as an artist in Paris, before moving back to Montreal the following year.