Nature morte, 1963/64

Dominion Gallery, Montreal Private Collection, Montreal Private Collection, Toronto

Jean-Philippe Dallaire was largely a self-taught artist and played a role as a precursor in the return to figure painting in Canada during the late 1960s. He lived in Paris throughout different periods of his life, where he was exposed to the works of Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí. The reduction of form, flattened perspective, and whimsical combination of subject matter in “Nature morte” are indicative of the artist’s practice of incorporating multiple elements of modern art movements into his compositions. Dallaire was inspired by Italian theatre, mythological figures, surrealism, synthetic cubism and art brut. This colourful oil painting features an arrangement of pears, oranges and playing cards on a table. The pears are positioned upright and facing one another, lending a playful quality to the fruit, as if they were animated characters. The two-dimensional perspective recalls Picasso’s cubist still lifes and even Cézanne’s later reductive paintings of fruit arrangements. “Nature morte” exemplifies the artist’s original painterly style that loosely combines many sources of artistic inspiration and remains refreshingly unconstrained by specific movements. Although Dallaire was very interested in abstraction, he always remained a representational painter. “Nature morte” was completed in 1963-64, while Dallaire was living in Vence in the south of France later in life. The artist was a native of Hull, Quebec, and spent much of his career painting and teaching in Quebec City, Ottawa, and Montreal. He retired from teaching and in 1959 moved to Paris briefly, before settling in Vence until his death in 1965.