Estate of Arnold O. Brigden, Winnipeg
Gift to the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1973
Exhibited
"Fifth Annual Exhibition of the Manitoba Society of Artists", Galleries of Richardson Brothers, Winnipeg, 1–8 February 1930
"The Brigden Collection", Winnipeg Art Gallery, 30 May- 14 October 1974, no. 23
"Manitoba Landscape", Winnipeg Art Gallery, 14 June-17 August 1986
"FitzGerald in Rural Manitoba", Winnipeg Art Gallery Extension Services ArtReach Program; travelling to McCreary; Neepawa; Dauphin; Brandon; Virden; Holland; Leaf Rapids; Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, 6 March 1992-10 November 1993
"Against Wind and Weather: The Barn in Canadian Art", Winnipeg Art Gallery Extension Services ArtReach Program; travelling to Neepawa, Manitoba; Tiger Hills Art Gallery, Holland, Manitoba; Portage Arts Centre, Portage la Prairie, Manitoba; Mennonite Heritage Village, Steinbach, Manitoba; Leaf Rapids National Exhibition Centre, Manitoba; Heritage North Museum, Thompson, Manitoba; Art Gallery of Swift Current, Saskatchewan, 25 November 1994-7 December 1997
Winnipeg Real Estate Board Citizens Hall of Fame induction ceremony for L.L. FitzGerald, Assiniboine Park Pavilion Gallery, Winnipeg, 7 October 2004 Around Here: Historical Scenes of Manitoba, Winnipeg Art Gallery, 4 July-16 November 2007
"The Collection on View: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven", Winnipeg Art Gallery, 27 June 2015-2 April 2018
"Into the Light: Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald", McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario; travelling to Winnipeg Art Gallery, 12 October 2019-6 September 2020
Literature
W.J. Phillips, 'Art and Artists', "Winnipeg Evening Tribune", 1 March 1930
Michael Parke-Taylor, "Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald: Life & Work" [online publication], Art Canada Institute, Toronto, 2019, reproduced page 83
Sarah Milroy, Ian A.C. Dejardin and Michael Parke-Taylor, "Into the Light: Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald", Kleinburg, 2019, reproduced page 43
From 1926 to 1941, the Winnipeg painter and printmaker Walter J. Phillips authored a column, 'Art and Artists', in the "Winnipeg Evening Tribune". His lively texts typically covered a range of topics germane to local readers interested in the workings of the world of art. Phillips’s columns often reflect his dogmatic and firmly-held opinions. While not a close friend of Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald, Phillips paid a singular tribute to his fellow artist on 1 March 1930. That evening, his entire column in the Tribune was devoted to a painting he had seen exhibited at the annual exhibition of the Society of Manitoba Artists. The picture discussed was FitzGerald’s relatively small oil "The Barn". Phillips enthused that “its austere beauty was so appealing that I cannot get it out of my mind.” He described the role that light plays in the picture: “The sheer walls of the barn are wrapped in luminous shadow, within which subdued lights dance and play as they are projected from other and sun-washed surfaces. The roof reflects little invisible clouds; the strips of sward in the foreground mirror the sky. The relation of one thing to another – universal interdependence – is symbolized. Light is the expositor.”
"The Barn" was originally owned by Arnold Brigden, who managed Brigdens of Winnipeg Limited, one of Canada’s oldest commercial printing and graphic design firms. While FitzGerald was never employed by Brigdens, many of his artistic contemporaries such as Charles Comfort, Eric Bergman, Caven Atkins, Fritz Brandtner, Philip Surrey, and Gordon Smith worked there for various periods during the 1920s and 1930s. Arnold Brigden served on the art committee that supervised both the Winnipeg School of Art and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. A close friend of FitzGerald, Brigden was able to choose some of the artist’s finest works, including "The Barn", when building what has been called “the first modern collection in Winnipeg.”
We extend our thanks to Michael Parke-Taylor, Canadian art historian, curator, and author of "Bertram Brooker: When We Awake!" (McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 2024) and editor of "Some Magnetic Force: Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald Writings" (Concordia University Press, 2023) for contributing the preceding essay.
