signed lower left; signed, titled and dated 1988 on the stretcher on the reverse
12 × 60 in (30.5 × 152.4 cm)
(including Buyer's Premium)
Galerie Claude Lafitte, Montreal
Private Collection, Toronto
Guy Robert, Lemieux, Toronto, 1978, page 111
During his period of maturity, known as the “classic period” (1956 to 1970), Jean Paul Lemieux rendered the Canadian landscape not as picturesque scenery but as an existential stage where human figures appear fragile and suspended in time.
At first glance, Hiver offers viewers a seemingly minimalist composition. A low horizon bisects the canvas into two vast planes: the snow-laden ground and the heavy, grey sky above. The horizontal sweep dominates the work, evoking a sense of immensity and silence. Lemieux’s brushwork is broad and economical, favouring tonal modulations of whites and greys over descriptive detail, emphasizing the cold austerity of the scene. The atmosphere is one of desolation, but also of contemplation—an emotional space where viewers can project their own sense of solitude or stillness.
The scene is punctuated by the appearance of a lone male figure in the lower right corner. His face—roughly brushed, almost mask-like—stares directly at the viewer. The figure’s presence transforms the scene into a meditation on human vulnerability within nature and resonates with the artist’s late-life reflections. In Canadian art, winter is often cast as a symbol of endurance, harshness, and survival; for Lemieux, however, it also conveys timelessness and metaphysical silence. Hiver thus stands not merely as a depiction of the season, but as an allegory of mortality and the human condition. The figure’s red-tinged face maysignify both the vitality of life and the inevitability of decline, situating the figure between resilience and fragility.
After decades of painting, the artist began to shift away from the narrative toward the flat space of the picture plane. Lemieux observed, “I no longer saw things the same way. A totally different vision was developing in me, a vision that was above all horizontal, which I had never experienced before.” Unlike the heroic depictions of the Canadian wilderness by the Group of Seven, Lemieux’s landscapes resist grandeur. They are humble, quiet, and imbued with a sense of isolation that speaks to the lived experience of winter in Quebec’s towns and countryside. Lemieux’s solitary figures suggest not conquest of the land, but co-existence with its silence and severity. It is a meditation on winter not merely as a season, but as a metaphor for mortality and the quiet resilience of the human spirit.
