Collection of Maurice Cullen, R.C.A., Montreal
Masters Gallery, Vancouver
Private Collection, Vancouver
Consignor Canadian Fine Art, auction, 21 February 2018, lot 53
Private Collection, Toronto
In Laura Muntz Lyall`s charming painting “A Helping Hand” (1905), an older boy helps a little girl drink from a bowl. The boy`s face and the way he holds the bowl is solicitous. Muntz implied in the work that the scene takes place in the country through the bowl (perhaps of milk) the children hold, and the trees briefly indicated in the background.
Muntz painted the scene with dash and dexterity. She had learned the technique from an American artist, her teacher and friend Wilhelmina Hawley (1860-1958) who roomed and travelled with her in France and Holland. Hawley had taught her to apply watercolour boldly in a wet technique they called “splash and dash” and when the paint dried, to add details, as here, the boy`s face. Muntz recorded the complex mingling of hands, boots, clothes and faces with great rapidity, but she achieved in it a lively depiction, even in the part most difficult for her – the hands. She must have been pleased with it.
In 1906, Muntz moved to Montreal. One of the addresses given in the city directory for her studio that year was no. 3 Beaver Hall Square, the studio address for Maurice Cullen. He was an old acquaintance of Muntz and together, they helped found the New Watercolour Society in Toronto in 1900 and showed their work in the Royal Canadian Academy. In December 1905, he had shown with her in a Four Canadian Artists Exhibition at the Art Association of Montreal. He likely encouraged her to move to Montreal and helped her settle there, even letting her use his studio till space of her own was found. The watercolour would have been a gift from Muntz for his “helping hand.”
Muntz`s major oil painting “Forbidden Fruit”, shown in the Royal Canadian Exhibition of May 1905 and exhibited again at the Canadian National Exhibition that year, may be related to “A Helping Hand”.
“Forbidden Fruit” was in an auction at Hodgins Art Auctions in Calgary May 29, 2017, lot #121 titled “Portrait of a boy and girl with apples”. In depicting the children, Muntz may have used the same models. Now both children look at the viewer. Each holds fruit, the boy in his right hand and arm, the girl, in her raised left hand, and the older boy reaches to take it from her perhaps because it`s green and would hurt her stomach.
Muntz intended the surroundings to resemble a grassy orchard and for this reason, depicted apples on the ground. The implication is that the children have taken apples forbidden to them, or “forbidden fruit;” hence the original title. It was praised in the newspapers. The Globe said that the “urchin” looked after the “darling little tot with the most mature brotherly solicitude” and the News said the fruit had an appearance of wax and the children “as if in fairy land.”
Unfortunately, the painting sold at Hodgins is undated on the recto and the verso has been relined so that any verso inscriptions or labels have been lost.
We extend our gratitude to Canadian art historian, Joan Murray, for her assistance in researching and writing about this artwork.
