Still Life with Plant, 1948

Acquired directly from the artist by Mrs. R.C. (Eleanor) Riley, Winnipeg W.P. Riley, Winnipeg Private Collection

“FitzGerald Memorial Exhibition”, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; travelling to the Winnipeg Art Gallery, (Supplement for the Winnipeg showing, 1958), no. 86 “In Seclusion with Nature: The Later Work of L. LeMoine FitzGerald, 1942 to 1956”, Winnipeg Art Gallery; travelling to London Regional Art Gallery, London; Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax; McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg; Musée du Québec, Quebec City, 1989‒1990, no. 29 “Into the Light: Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald”, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg; travelling to Winnipeg Art Gallery, 12 October 2019‒12 July 2020

Michael Parke‒Taylor, “In Seclusion with Nature: The Later Work of L. Lemoine FitzGerald 1942 to 1956”, Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1988, no. 29, reproduced page 115 Sarah Milroy, Ian A.C. Dejardin and Michael Parke‒Taylor, “Into the Light: Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald”, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, 2019, listed page 231, reproduced page 116

In 1947, Lionel Lemoine FitzGerald negotiated a leave of absence from his responsibilities as director at the Winnipeg School of Art. With time to concentrate exclusively on his artwork, the fifty‒seven‒year‒old painted one of the masterpieces of his career: “The Little Plant” (1947; McMichael Canadian Art Collection). This accomplished picture set the direction for a series of subtle still‒lifes that are among his best works from the later forties and chart a path to greater abstraction. “Still Life with Plant” is one such example. Painted most likely in late 1948 when FitzGerald was staying in West Vancouver, this picture follows the precedent of “The Little Plant” with a similar simplified compositional geometry of horizontal and vertical forms, choice of muted colour scheme, and painterly technique. The subject is a daffodil plant whose newly‒sprouted leaves emerge from a white cylindrical container supported by an oval dish placed on a tabletop that the artist tilts towards the picture plane. “Still Life with Plant” captivates the viewer by the beauty of its abstraction. The tipped‒up area behind the white pot is divided into diagonal sections that defy logic and perspective. But the painting adjacent to the daffodil is even more astonishing. Here a range of subdued colours in brown, red, lilac, and green are conceived with the same palette‒knife‒like application of small ridges of paint as those found in “The Little Plant”. This painterly abstraction gives the plant something of an energetic, vibrating aura. This corresponds to FitzGerald’s idea that the artist requires “an appreciation for the endlessness of the living force which seems to pervade and flow through all natural forms even though they seem on the surface to be so ephemeral. So, in great works of art, this same unseen force moves through leaving [the] spectator with an undefined feeling that lives on in the memory and becomes part of his character, another experience added.” “Still Life with Plant” is a painting with the promise of such reward. We extend our thanks to Michael Parke‒Taylor, Canadian art historian, curator and author of “Lionel LeMoine Fitzgerald: Life & Work” (Art Canada Institute) for contributing the preceding essay.