Le Bois de St. Antoine
Artist
Jean Paul Lemieux
(Canadian, 1904 - 1990)
Date1958
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensions73.5 x 127.3 cm
Credit LineThe Mendel Art Gallery Collection at Remai Modern. Gift of the Mendel family 1965.
Object number1965.4.11
Classificationspainting
Collections
On View
Not on viewConsidered one of Quebec’s important painters, Jean Paul Lemieux is known for scenes of everyday life and the countryside north of Montreal. He taught at the École des beaux-arts in Quebec City from 1937 until his retirement. While his earlier landscapes were influenced by the aesthetic of the Group of Seven and the American Social Realist painters, by the 1950s Lemieux had defined his own vision in landscape. In portraying desolate, haunting landscapes, such as Le Bois de St. Antoine, he employs a style and manner that differ dramatically from the art of his contemporaries.
Lemieux broadened the horizons for Canadian landscape painting through his creation of stark, haunting images that capture humanity’s anxiety and solitude. He stated that “I paint because I like to paint. I have no theories. In my landscapes and my characters, I try to express the solitude we all have to live with, and in each painting, the inner world of my memories. My external surroundings only interest me because they allow me to paint my inner world.” Le Bois de St. Antoine is one of the few landscapes Lemieux painted without figures. It has been included in several major exhibitions of his work across the country, and was reproduced on the invitation to the 2004 exhibition, Homage to Jean Paul Lemieux, organized by the National Gallery of Canada.
Lemieux broadened the horizons for Canadian landscape painting through his creation of stark, haunting images that capture humanity’s anxiety and solitude. He stated that “I paint because I like to paint. I have no theories. In my landscapes and my characters, I try to express the solitude we all have to live with, and in each painting, the inner world of my memories. My external surroundings only interest me because they allow me to paint my inner world.” Le Bois de St. Antoine is one of the few landscapes Lemieux painted without figures. It has been included in several major exhibitions of his work across the country, and was reproduced on the invitation to the 2004 exhibition, Homage to Jean Paul Lemieux, organized by the National Gallery of Canada.
Jean-Paul Morisset
1967
