PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Quebec
Canadian Post-War & Contemporary Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, May 27, 2015, lot 47
Private Collection, Vancouver

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the first Painters Eleven exhibition, in 1954, and Chinoisie, from that same year, marks an important flashpoint in William Ronald’s career. Two years earlier, on the advice of his Painters Eleven mentor and colleague Jock Macdonald, Ronald went to New York to study with Hans Hofmann. Ronald’s exposure to the seriousness of analytical Cubism and Abstract Expressionism stirred in him a sense of his own potential. Searching for a personal breakthrough, he worked tirelessly to develop a rhythmic language of curved calligraphic forms and skeins of interlocking paint, observed in this explosive work.

Chinoisie exemplifies this turning point in Ronald’s career, when he arrived at a vigorous style to suit his outsized personality and ambition. Spontaneous and sensuous, the black patterns dance over peachy and neutral tones. Ronald’s black-and-white paintings from this era draw parallels to the work of other giants of 1950s abstraction, notably Paul-Émile Borduas, despite predating his patchwork monochromes by two years. Ronald’s paint is also more zealously applied than in the tight cerebral spaces of his Québécois contemporary. More analogous would be the notorious Jackson Pollock, whose ropes of paint strewn across the canvas brought “action painting” into the lexicon. Harnessing the energy from this charged period, Ronald left Toronto in 1955 for New York City, where he flourished amidst the art world elite.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars