titled, dated 1923 and certified by Lucile Rodier Gagnon (no. 147) on the reverse
6.25 × 9.25 in (15.9 × 23.5 cm)
Auction Estimate:$7,000 - $9,000
Sale date:November 27, 2024
Price Realized
$14,400
(including Buyer's Premium)
Provenance
Private Collection, Toronto
Literature
Hélène Sicotte and Michèle Grandbois, "Clarence Gagnon, 1881-1942: Dreaming the Landscape", Quebec City, 2006, page 116
In 1923, Clarence Gagnon was living in Baie-Saint-Paul, one of the now-famous painting locations along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. Gagnon felt passionately about the inhabitants and the surrounding countryside, which offered the artist infinite seasonal landscapes to capture. “With its unique topography and age-old culture,” Hélène Sicotte writes, “the region represented a rich aesthetic resource, and it was during these years that he truly discovered it and used it to develop the landscape form that would henceforth define him.”
A sense of warmth prevails in this glowing scene of the Charlevoix countryside in autumn. Reduced to a blur of brushstrokes, the setting sun illuminates the hillside against the rich colours of the changing leaves, rendering a dynamic contrast between vertical and horizontal, dark and light. A master of ambience, Gagnon harnesses the warmth of human presence in his depiction of the traditional Quebec homestead, which grounds the composition. Flooded with sunshine and aflame with colour, Gagnon captures the autumn splendour of the Charlevoix landscape, a painting place central to the artist’s oeuvre.
