Sold for: $14,040

PROVENANCE
Galerie d'art Michel Bigué, Quebec
Private Collection, Quebec

LITERATURE
Michèle Grandbois, Marc-Aurèle Fortin: The Experience of Colour, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 2011, page 102

The terroir of Quebec is the backbone of Marc-Aurèle Fortin’s work. Born in Sainte-Rose (and later returning to live there), he rambled and sketched through Charlevoix, Gaspé and Saguenay, carrying his paper, brushes and watercolour cakes with him. Michèle Grandbois writes, “Fortin developed a passion for watercolour, describing it as a ‘tremendous mania’ that intoxicated him as if he were a ‘morphine addict'.” Fortin began to devote himself to this medium in the early 1920s. For five or six years, he experimented with watercolour technique on wrapping paper and glazed bristol board. Having mastered this demanding medium, he used his watercolours as a substitute for oil sketches. In this scene of men gathering hay with scythes, Fortin first draws in his forms with graphite, then sets in his impressions of colour. Typical of Fortin’s compositional attractions are the high billowing clouds, delicately reflected in the river’s surface. Les foins (Making Hay) is a fine example of one of Fortin’s best-known subjects - peaceful rural life in the verdant countryside of Quebec.

This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist's work, #A-0599.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars