PROVENANCE
Canadian Fine Art, Joyner Waddington's, as "Church at Levis," May 30, 2006, lot 45
Private Estate, Ontario

Although his work intimately woven into the fabric of Quebec Impressionism, it can be easy to forget that Robert Pilot was born and spent much of his childhood in Newfoundland, only moving to Quebec after his mother married pioneering Canadian Impressionist Maruice Cullen following the passing of her first husband. They arrived in Montreal in 1910, and Pilot would assist in Cullen’s studio, with the two of them taking sketching trips together. After additional study with William Brymner at the Art Association of Montreal, now the Musée des Beaux Arts, Pilot’s own artistic voice took shape. Following his service as a trench mortar gunner in World War 1, he studied in Paris at the Académie Julien, and by 1925 he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Artists, the year this work was produced. Gestural and atmospheric, this depiction of the depths of winter nonetheless retains a romantic tone, aided by Pilot’s skillful expression of the church’s gothic architecture and his inclusion of a solitary, contemplative figure on the foreground path.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars