The Meeting of Fernande and Claude (La rencontre de Fernande et de Claude), 1899

Luc Choquette et Pauline de Montgaillard, 1943 Luc Choquette Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal Acquired by the present Private Collection, 2004

“Ozias Leduc: An Art of Love and Reverie”, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; travelling to Musée du Québec, Québec City; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 22 February 1996‒15 January 1997, no. 95 as “Mais elle, ceci l'amusait ce grand garçon si brun...”

Laurier Lacroix, “Ozias Leduc: An Art of Love and Reverie”, Montreal, 1996, no. 95, reproduced page 130 Laurier Lacroix, ‘Deux ‘Canayens' à la recherche de la nouveauté : Claude Paysan (1899) du Dr Ernest Choquette par Ozias Leduc’, “À la rencontre des régionalismes artistiques et littéraires Le contexte québécois 1830‒1960”, Québec, 2014, pages 237‒258

A man stands timidly in the foreground. He is holding his hat, which is full of fruits. Leaning against a fence, a woman looks at him nonchalantly. This is how Ozias Leduc (1864–1955) depicted a scene taken from the novel “Claude Paysan” by Ernest Choquette (1862–1941), who commissioned him for the illustrations. First appearing as a column in “La Patrie” in the summer of 1899, the novel was then published the same year. The passage reads: “But her, as a true daughter of Eve, she found this amusing, this tall young man with dark brown hair, who appeared so shy in her presence and she kept talking to him...”. The author dates this scene to August, during the cherry season, and the artist positions the two figures in different physical and psychological spaces. The barrier stands for social distancing. A fatherless Claude watches over his old mother while caring for the family farm. He loves Fernande, a town-dweller who stays in the countryside during the summer. Everything separates these two individuals: their family background, their culture, and especially the fact that Fernande is suffering from an incurable and deadly disease. At her death, desperate, Claude drowns himself, leaving his mother forsaken. The illustrated passage relates, however, a happy moment, that of the meeting between these two young people when Claude stumbles on Fernande when returning from the fields. The artwork is part of a set of fifteen drawings reproduced in the novel, of which many are kept in public collections (National Gallery of Canada, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec). This novel is one of the very first illustrated books by a French Canadian author. The story takes place in the village of Saint-Hilaire, and, for the first time, inspired by the author, Leduc uses its living environment as a subject matter. Here, we find a country road bordered by imposing pole fences delineating the fields. The vertical image is structured by a succession of fences, which deal with the organization of strips of farmland in the Quebec countryside. Leduc has positioned Claude prominently in the foreground, thus highlighting the emotions of the lost young man beholding the beauty and the aura of the young girl. Throughout the novel, the hero appears as an introverted individual who will not successfully bridge the gap between Fernande and himself. The precise contours of the drawing delineate, in fact, the distinct positions of the two protagonists. The charcoal drawing technique is masterful and the artist has paid significant attention to details, as evidenced by Claude’s clothing. He used the stump to mark the volumes and the eraser as a drawing method, in the grass, for example, and to accentuate the lighting in the subject. Leduc attached importance to these drawings, which he kept for a long time. This one and at least two others were hanging in the Saint- Hilaire studio before being acquired in 1943 by Luc Choquette, the son of the novel’s author and his wife. We extend our thanks to Laurier Lacroix, C.M., art historian, for researching this artwork and for contributing the preceding essay.