Quebec Village in Winter

Private Collection, Quebec

Montreal Boys Achieve Success with Paintings, “Montreal Daily Star”, February 20, 1913, page 9 Victoria A. Baker, “Modern Colours: The Art of Randolph Stanley Hewton, 1888-1960” [exhibition catalogue], Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2002, pages 12-13 A.K. Prakash, Canadian Art: Selected Masters from Private Collections, Ottawa, 2003, reproduced page 183

Randolph Stanley Hewton was one of the many artists of his generation who travelled to Paris to further his studies in fine art. After training with William Brymner at the Art Association of Montreal, he enrolled at the Académie Julian from 1908 to 1913. Inspired by the artworks of the European avant-garde that he witnessed first-hand, he adopted a painterly approach of “colourful, flattened surface patterns inspired by his understanding of the modern methods introduced by French impressionist and post-impressionist painters.” Hewton’s bright colour palette was well-received in Paris; a 1913 exhibition review described a painting of a garden as stylistically likened to “an early Gauguin of the Pont-Aven period.” Hewton’s “Quebec Village in Winter” exemplifies his signature post-impressionistic style in its vibrant colours and flattened perspective. A founding member of the Beaver Hall Group, Hewton was an influential and respected artist in the Montreal art scene of the 1920s. While he is known for portraits of the city’s well-dressed residents, Hewton also took time to venture into Quebec’s rural areas to depict the landscape and small towns. He joined A.Y. Jackson, Dr. Frederick Banting and Albert Robinson on many sketching trips to Baie-Saint-Paul, Saint-Tite-des-Caps and Les Éboulements, as well as the Gatineau region. “Quebec Village in Winter” is a charming scene of rural Quebec that shows the first signs of spring - a season that Hewton and his fellow sketching companions sought to capture.