Pool, Snowflake, circa 1928

Dr. A.J.W. Alcock, Winnipeg Private Collection, Winnipeg

"Pool, Snowflake", from the collection of L.L. FitzGerald’s Winnipeg neighbour Dr. A.J.W. Alcock, was accepted for the 1958 "FitzGerald Memorial Exhibition" according to a preliminary typed list of works dated 31 May 1957 (National Gallery of Canada Archives). Although the painting was ultimately not included in the retrospective exhibition, its appearance as number fourteen of twenty-nine oil paintings recorded by the distinguished panel of Ferdinand Eckhardt (director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery), Robert Hubbard (curator of the National Gallery of Canada), and Douglas Duncan (art dealer and collector) confirms the significance of the picture. During summer recess from teaching duties at the Winnipeg School of Art, FitzGerald would vacation at his grandparent’s farm in the southern Manitoba community of Snowflake. There the changeable open skies and flat wheat fields of the light-drenched prairie landscape offered numerous opportunities for painting. "Pool, Snowflake" captures a more intimate outdoor scene. FitzGerald looks downward to an expanse of dark leaves and branches which turn out to be mirror reflections in the water of trees outside his field of vision. Together with the artist’s view upwards to the high horizon, the effect is disorienting. This startling and complex composition de-emphasizes three-dimensionality and instead draws attention to the picture plane as a flat surface—one of the hallmarks of modernist painting. This is further accentuated by the limited range of colours thinly applied so that small bare patches of unpainted canvas are visible. FitzGerald creates an effect similar to the unfinished look characteristic of many paintings by the French Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne. Abstracting tendencies such as these are a feature of FitzGerald’s most inventive period from 1927 to 1934, when he completed at least a dozen oil paintings that solidified his national reputation. We extend our thanks to Michael Parke-Taylor, Canadian art historian, curator, and author of the Art Canada Institute's "Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald: Life & Work" (2017) and editor of "Some Magnetic Force: Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald Writings" (2024) for contributing the preceding essay.