Dr. Paul Weil and Mary Rosamond, Montreal
By descent to Dr. Sonia Salisbury, Nova Scotia
Private Collection, Nova Scotia
Literature
Julia Skelly, “Prudence Heward Life & Work” [online publication], Art Canada Institute, Toronto, 2015, page 49
An important modernist female painter of the early twentieth century, Prudence Heward has gained attention for identifying the issues of gender, race and class in her oeuvre. She is recognized for her figural studies of modern women in a variety of settings, from rural and public spaces to domestic interiors. This painting somewhat strays from that narrative, while retaining the quintessential characteristics of the artist.
Occasionally Heward would utilize foliage in the background of her figural paintings, rooting the sitter in an outdoor setting. As Julia Skelly observes, “Heward’s landscapes and still lifes of the 1930s and 1940s, like her portraits, are characterized by increasingly luminous colours and more expressive brushwork, showing her increased comfort with finding an individual style and subjective interpretation of nature.” Heward purportedly admired the New Zealand modernist painter, Frances Hodgkins, who often depicted a still life in an outdoor location. Heward followed suit, fusing a still life with a landscape in “A Summer Day” (1944, Private Collection) or “working up” the background of a painting with rich greenery.
The original owners of this painting were friends with Heward. Allied with Montreal artistic circles of the day, they certainly appreciated her accomplished hand. While presented as a modest still life painting, Heward has expertly rendered stylized vegetation with a simple technique. The adept, agile brushwork and delightful, rich colouring of this intimate work solidifies Heward as a masterful modernist painter of figures, landscapes and still lifes.
