Laurentian Village, circa 1930

Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal Galerie d’Art Vincent, Ottawa Private Collection

Dennis Reid, “Edwin H. Holgate”, Ottawa, 1976, page 22

A landscape painter, portraitist, muralist, printmaker and illustrator, Edwin Holgate most often found his subjects in the province of Quebec. Holgate began his art education at the Art Association of Montreal studying under William Brymner and in 1912 he went to Paris where he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. He was in Russia at the outbreak of the First World War and returned to Canada where he enlisted with the 5th Canadian Division Artillery (1916-19). He married Mary Frances Rittenhouse in 1920 and returned to Paris to continue his studies. The couple moved to Montreal in 1922, where Holgate opened a studio. Despite living in the city, the artist loved the outdoors and had always been interested in depicting the wilderness of the Laurentians. He built a cabin at Lake Tremblant in 1925, but later sold the property to purchase a nine-acre piece of land in Morin Heights, where he would eventually settle with his wife in 1946. In Montreal Holgate enjoyed the friendship of A.Y. Jackson, Clarence Gagnon, Mabel May, Lilias Newton, Randolph Hewton, and many of the younger artists who became known as the Beaver Hall Hill Group. Holgate was a good skier and took regular trips to various parts of Quebec, often in the company of Jackson. On skis, the two artists visited many of the well-known areas of Charlevoix and the Laurentians. “Laurentian Village” would have been painted on such a trip. The mid-winter scene depicts several buildings in shades of grey and red receding into a background of snowy hills. The tight placement of the houses suggests a fairly densely populated area for the generally rural Laurentians. Signs of life are visible in the central shed, with a figure standing in the doorway, and the black cat walking through the snow in the foreground. This charming oil painting was completed in 1930, the year before Holgate became known as the eighth member of the Group of Seven and remained a member of the Group until it disbanded in 1933. Dennis Reid describes the artist’s Laurentian paintings as “among the most sensual of his works, they reveal across every inch of their surfaces the long hours of concentration that have brought to them the gentle glow of life.”