Vue d’Hochelaga

Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal Private Collection, Montreal

Musée Marc-Aurèle Fortin, 1988, no. P-404

Marc-Aurèle Fortin first experimented with watercolour in 1918. He was drawn to the medium but also found it very challenging. After painting several studies of trees in 1920 using a sponge application technique, he was dissatisfied with his progress and temporarily abandoned watercolour painting. In the mid-to-late 1920s, Fortin re- introduced watercolour into his repertoire with newfound confidence, using bright pigments painted directly on dry paper, which created sharp contours and crisp compositions. “Vue d’Hochelaga” displays the artist’s proficiency in this new technique. Behind a shallow hill, Fortin creates an intricate and colourful setting of apartments, church towers, industrial buildings, and leafy trees. His pigments are soft and delicate, yet his lines are clean and distinct; the watercolour painting demonstrates Fortin’s mastery of the range of techniques presented by the medium. Typical of many works by Fortin, the human presence is very small and is overshadowed by the sublime landscape. In the lower right corner we see cloaked figures walking down a path, as well as two field workers. In the same area are linens hanging on a clothesline - the only other evidence of a human element in the work. Fortin chose a viewpoint to highlight the growing urbanization of Montreal, for we can see the dense cityscape in the background in contrast with the remnants of open fields and farm life in the foreground. Recognized by critics for the magnificence of the trees in his works of the early 1920s, Fortin began to develop more interest in urban activity by walking the streets of Montreal later in the decade. The painter focused predominantly on Hochelaga, an eastern neighbourhood that was undergoing significant industrialization. Fortin regularly sat at the top of a hill to paint dozens of views of this unique landscape, usually in watercolours, though occasionally in oils as well. The National Gallery of Canada selected one of his Hochelaga landscapes for an exhibition in 1930 and purchased the work the following year, marking a milestone in Fortin’s career.