Baie St. Paul (1956), 1956

Collection of Joan Roberts Family of the artist

Sandra Paikowsky, “Goodridge Roberts: 1904-1974”, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario, 1998, page 148

Closely associated with the Quebec regions of the Laurentians, the Eastern Townships, and Charlevoix, Goodridge Roberts made several summer painting excursions to the town of Baie St. Paul on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River. The setting provided him with rugged terrain, the shallow, quick-moving river and the picturesque town to paint. Executed in the artist’s distinctly fluid brushstrokes, Roberts based his landscape on careful observation of the scene before him. On Roberts’ Baie-St-Paul paintings, art critic Robert Ayre noted: “These pictures look as if they were painted swiftly; and so they were; which may be a surprise to those who know Goodridge Roberts as a shy, slow-moving and reticent man. They were painted swiftly but the landscape was not scamped. It was fully realized according to the vision of a man who could paint swiftly and yet true only because he had spent years in slow, penetrating contemplation.” Rather than choose between speed and pictorial accuracy, Roberts made use of both, deftly capturing the light, space and atmosphere of a region to which he was deeply connected.