Resting Nude by James Wilson Morrice

Provenance:
Estate of F.R. Heaton, Montreal
Continental Galleries of Fine Art, Montreal
L.M. Hart, Montreal
Private Collection, Montreal

Exhibited:
"The Private Collection of the Late F.R. Heaton", Continental Galleries, Montreal, 22 October‒4 November 1949
"Ten Montreal Collectors", Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 8-24 February 1952 (loaned by L.M. Hart)
"May Catalogue Show", Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal, May 1991

Literature:
[Anon.], 'Fine Paintings Shown in Heaton Collection', "The Gazette" (22 October 1949), page 26, mentions "a comely nude seated in a wooded landscape"
Robert Ayre, 'Collection Here Reflects Discrimination', "Montreal Star" (15 February 1952), page 32, "mentions a nude in Hart collection"
Lucie Dorais, 'Morrice et la figure humaine/Morrice and the Human Figure', in Nicole Cloutier, "James Wilson Morrice, 1865-1924", Montreal, 1985, page 69

Resting Nude is one of the few portraits and very few nudes James Wilson Morrice completed during his lifetime. Model studies and portraits count for about six percent of his artistic output. Morrice’s interest in the human figure evolved gradually, and then only after his move to Europe. No portraits of family or friends exist from his early years in Toronto, nor from his time studying at the Académie Julian, where the students worked from live models.

Morrice painted his mistress Léa Cadoret, his friend Robert Henri, (likely) Henri Matisse and William Brymner in the mid-to-late 1890s, all in small format oil sketches, which are more spontaneous than large, carefully planned canvases. Numerous sketches of female models fill his sketchbooks from 1895-1898. Robert Henri wrote to his family that Morrice had painted several very beautiful portraits of models during the autumn of 1898. At about the turn of the century, Morrice seems to have lost interest in the study of the human figure as a stand-alone subject. His landscapes, meanwhile, became increasingly animated by human activity, and many of the oil sketches of this period show people sitting in cafés. The subject of nude and clothed models was revived somewhat around 1908, when he presented one at the Salon d’automne in 1908. The brighter palette of his portraits of the years to come were likely influenced by the colourful work of Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse.

Author Lucie Dorais has remarked on the link between the artist’s figural work and his own character, writing: “All of Morrice’s portraits, whether they represent friends or professional models, bear the stamp of his reserved disposition. The models are almost always seen from a distance, sometimes in profile, and most of the nudes have their back to the spectator. The artist, who was extremely shy, perhaps wished in this way to avoid any interference from the subject, so that he could concentrate on his aesthetic preoccupations, especially the harmony of colour tones.”

We extend our thanks to Lucie Dorais, Canadian art historian and author of "J.W. Morrice" (1985), for assisting with the research on this artwork.