Maisons à Ste-Rose

Galerie Bernard Desroches, Montreal

Canadian Fine Arts, Toronto

Private Collection, Toronto

Born in Sainte-Rose, Marc-Aurèle Fortin’s early artistic training began close to home under the tutelage of artists including Ludger Larose and Edmond Dyonnet before his studies would take him to Chicago, New York, Boston and, later, to France. It was after a brief trip to France in 1920 that Fortin began to work full-time as a painter and to show his work, which included scenes of the island of Montreal, predominantly rural at the time, and of his birthplace, Sainte-Rose, north of the island. During the summers, he travelled to Quebec City, Île d’Orléans and the Charlevoix region, sketching and painting houses and rural scenes. Fortin became renowned for capturing the charm of small-town Quebec in his vibrant works, as exemplified in this oil painting Maisons à Ste-Rose.

The enchanting painting reflects the distinctive high-contrast colour palette that Fortin adopted in the late 1930s, known as the ‘black period’. After an inspirational year-long sojourn in France between 1934 and 1935, the artist returned to Sainte-Rose and began experimenting with the application of pure colours onto a black surface. Using a support of wood, canvas or metal, Fortin painted a thick layer of black pigment, which he left to dry before painting his subject in brushstrokes dipped in vivid colours. By deliberately leaving the black paint of the first layer visible in certain areas, the artist achieved luminous and brilliant colour juxtapositions, as seen in this nocturnal scene of Sainte-Rose.