Resting, 1906

Collection of the artist Private Collection, United States

Retrospective Exhibition, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, November 1 - 30, 1922, no. 12 as “Lent by Franklin Brownell, Esq., R.C.A., Ottawa”

Franklin Brownell loved to paint light. In the many landscapes he turned out, ranging from Gatineau near his home in Ottawa to places farther afield, such as the British West Indies, he made a point of combining a modified Impressionist handling to record light with the thoroughly academic training in drawing and painting the figure he had learned in Paris. Paintings like his well-known “The Beach, St. Kitts”, in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, show his developed style: a broad handling of brilliant, even blazing light and beautifully developed figures. Besides landscapes, he painted interior scenes in which light plays a role, and still life. Sometimes he combined subjects in dazzling displays of virtuosity, as in this canvas. The painting shows a seated woman with a sweet face, resting. Beside her is a glass vase of flowers – lilacs - so we intuit that it is early summer. There is a book on the table. Behind her is an open door leading to another room in the house. Light falls on the woman`s dress, letting us know there is a light source behind the painter. This woman appears elsewhere in Brownell`s work. She seems to resemble a woman in the canvas “Arranging Flowers”, in “An Interesting Story” and perhaps in “A Home Lesson”. It is tempting to think that she may have been a family relation, likely his wife, Louise Nickerson. Understandably, if this supposition is correct, this sweet-faced woman seems to have been his favorite model, along with a child, his daughter, Lois. Brownell seems to have valued the painting specially and saved it for himself, only lending it to the large retrospective of his work at the National Gallery of Canada in 1922, the crowning achievement of his life. We extend our thanks to Joan Murray, Canadian art historian, for contributing the preceding essay.