Lot # 016

Jean Paul Lemieux
1904 - 1990

Le lac du nord
oil on canvas

48 x 98 3/4 in   121.9 x 250.8 cm

Provenance:
Marlborough-Godard, Montreal
Mira Godard Gallery, Calgary
Private Collection, Calgary
Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto

In 1956, Jean Paul Lemieux received his first public commission with the request for a mural, Medicine in Quebec City, for the University of Laval health sciences building. This was a welcome project for the artist, who admired the work of the Mexican muralists but had not had the opportunity to test his own skills on a monumental scale. For the next 30 years, while mostly creating paintings in dimensions more suited to intimate, private spaces, Lemieux confidently produced others meant for grand public sites. Among the most memorable of those is his 1964 Charlottetown Revisited, commissioned to celebrate the opening of the Confederation Centre of the Arts, and his 1979 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, which hangs in Rideau Hall.
In many of his larger paintings, the subject was his own family, as in the much-reproduced 1910 Remembered (1962) or La Visite (1967). In these examples, the figures are clothed in garb reminiscent of the artist’s youth with a “palette…..as subdued as the emotions he conveys…..”
By 1980, with his reputation and renown as a painter of iconic Canadian scenes firmly sealed and celebrated nationwide, Lemieux’s desire to create ambitious large-scale paintings had clearly not diminished, despite his advancing age. Employing the exaggerated horizontal format which distinguishes many of his landscape paintings, Le lac du nord reveals much about the artist’s physical and emotional attachment to the Quebec countryside; its warmer palette suggests more psychic closeness between the figures than in earlier works. In this painting, both the figures and the specific site are unnamed, yet the artist’s fondness for them and for the place is unambiguous. The setting, perhaps not far from the artist’s home in the beautiful Charlevoix region, is bound to evoke memories of a warm summer day, seemingly without end, spent lazing at the lake. The calm water, sandy beach, dense forest and clear sky are, at first viewing, seamless layers in an expansive vista, but on longer viewing and examination of the surface, Lemieux’s concentration of small brush-strokes are revealed throughout. The viewer’s eye is drawn naturally from the largest figure at the left towards the man and his dog at the right edge and then to the woman strolling towards us on the beach. The cabin at the rim of the lake is at first barely noticeable against the backdrop of trees, but it soon becomes visible along with its subtle reflection in the lake.
This image is another fine example of the artist’s masterful ability to present us with a grand vista, while remaining attentive to the small details that reveal his underlying interest in the scene. In Lemieux’s most memorable works, no matter the number of characters that are cast in the scene, the dialogue between them is muted and the individuals are depicted as somehow removed from the main action. In that vein, the script for Le lac du nord has not yet been published – but its story may be written in the viewer’s imagination.


Estimate: $80,000 ~ $120,000
Sold for: $140,400.00