PROVENANCE
Roberts Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Guy Robert, Lemieux, 1975, reproduced page 129

Beginning in 1960, Jean Paul Lemieux focused almost exclusively on paintings of isolated figures set in simple landscapes. Subtle, evocative, loaded with feeling and mood, these figures communicate volumes with so little detail; they are remarkable feats of painting and unique in the annals of Canadian art. This young man, a classic Lemieux persona, stands slightly to the edge of the canvas in a neat suit and hat. He looks right at us and says, with his jaunty red tie, that he is prepared, anticipatory – something is happening. Lemieux’s figures are types – not painted from models, but from the artist’s remembrances and from his instinctively precise observations of the human condition. He captured the look, stance or smile that reveals something to us about the complexity of relationships and our hopes, worries, ambitions and fears. These figures are acute depictions of the gap between generations, the difference in our outlook as we age, as ideologies change and time passes. This fine early work was painted the year Lemieux retired from the École des beaux-arts where he had taught for over 20 years.

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