Still Life (Variation No.3), 1938

Galerie Jeanne Newman, Montreal (1973) Private Collection, Montreal

Canadian National Exhibition, Department of Small Pictures, Toronto, August 26 - September 10, 1938, no. 503

James King, “Bertram Brooker: Life & Work” [online publication], Art Canada Institute, Toronto, 2018, reproduced page 74, see page 71 for similar work “Cabbage and Pepper” Department of Small Pictures, Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, 1938, cat. no. 503, listed as “Still Life”

A forerunner of abstract art in Canada, the self-trained Bertram Brooker was a skilled draftsman, talented advertising artist and businessman. His extensive experience with graphic illustrations provided the artist with a keen eye for compositional balance, proportion and contrast between light and dark in his works. Brooker was among the first artists in Canada to champion abstract art in the 1920s. His abstract compositions drew on his philosophy of Ultimatism, his knowledge of early twentieth century art movements such as Cubism, Vorticism and Futurism, as well as his interest in music. From about 1929, Brooker’s paintings evolved from abstraction toward representation. He met fellow artist Lionel Lemoine Fitzgerald in the summer of 1929, whose work inspired Brooker to abandon pure abstraction to explore the potential of abstraction as a means of representing the inner life of figural and organic structures. “Still Life (Variation No. 3)” was one of two still-life paintings by Brooker included in the 1938 CNE exhibition in the “Canadian Small Pictures” section. Brooker’s “Variation No. 3” appears to be an abstract version of the second painting, which depicted an arrangement of cabbage and peppers on white paper, a white tablecloth and a brown paper bag. The two works share the same compositional arrangement; In “Variation No. 3”, the central pale blue and green circles represent cabbage and a green pepper, the brown shapes on the right-hand side indicate the red peppers and a paper bag, and the grey and white angular forms reference the crinkled paper and tablecloth. It appears that Brooker wanted to demonstrate in the exhibition how he could toggle between representation and abstraction in paintings that shared a basic iconography of forms. We extend our thanks to Michael-Parke Taylor, Canadian art historian, curator and author of “Lionel Lemoine Fitzgerald: Life & Work” (Art Canada Institute) for his assistance in researching the preceding essay.