Sold for: $15,000

PROVENANCE
Galerie Madeleine Lacerte, Quebec City
Private Collection, Quebec City
Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, May 27, 2004, lot 70
Acquired from the above by the present Private Collection, Vancouver

The few rare known examples of Jean Paul Lemieux’s early work concern the subject of winter and winter sports. These works go back to his childhood, such as La course à canot à glace devant Québec (Quebec City Ice Canoe Race, 1915, unknown collection), while others are assembled in his 1931 sketchbooks at the National Gallery of Canada, with its depictions of tobogganing, a hockey game, and skiers on Mount Royal.

The young Lemieux cultivated an early talent for watercolours, taking lessons in his teens from an “English lady” in Montreal. As an aspiring commercial illustrator and, from 1926, a student at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal, he worked primarily in watercolours until his departure for France in June 1929. On his return in 1930, he started a commercial art business, JANS, but the Depression put an end to that, and he returned to painting and teaching art. He graduated from the École des beaux-arts de Montréal in 1934.

La pêche sur la glace (Ice Fishing) is a lively and detailed studio work depicting this winter activity, which dates back to pre-European times and has since become a tourist attraction. Ice-fishing motifs are strewn throughout the highly perspectivist space, from the heated shanties, tip-ups and rod holders to the pickup truck parked out on the thick ice.

We thank Michèle Grandbois for her assistance in cataloguing this work. This work will be included in Grandbois’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars