LOT 024

ARCA OC OSA
1927 - 1977
Canadian

The Thoughts of Youth Are Long, Long Thoughts
mixed media on board
initialed and on verso titled and inscribed variously
31 x 41 in, 78.7 x 104.1 cm

Estimate: $100,000 - $150,000 CAD

Sold for: $133,250

Preview at:

PROVENANCE
Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal
Private Collection, Montreal


I can see the shadowy lines of its trees,

And catch, in sudden gleams,

The sheen of the far-surrounding seas,

And islands that were the Hesperides

Of all my boyish dreams.

And the burden of that old song,

It murmurs and whispers still:

‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’

—H.W. Longfellow, from "My Lost Youth"

The title of this work, The Thoughts of Youth Are Long, Long Thoughts is drawn from a poem written by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow entitled “My Lost Youth.” As William Kurelek explains in the written note on the verso of this painting, Longfellow’s work was a favourite of his childhood, as it was concerned with a nostalgia for the imaginative reveries of childhood. Each stanza of the poem ends in the refrain: “ ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will / And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’ ” For Longfellow, a child’s desires are like the wind, fluctuating, unable to settle, characterized by longing and far-flung dreaming rather than uncertainty. This is not something lost, however, and the dreamy adventures of his youth are continually brought back through his later reminiscence.

This same nostalgic recollection represents a foundational aspect of many of Kurelek’s paintings. Here, the artist echoes the recuperative potential of memory that Longfellow explored. He depicts a playful event from his childhood, in which a flooded field presents the adventure of an ocean voyage. He wrote, “All one needed was boyish imagination and to gaze down at the water, forgetting about the land at the edges of the flood, and the motion of the waves gave the illusion of rapidly sailing forward.” One boy is shown dramatically poling the raft forward across the glassy pond, ripples shooting behind him, while the others stare into the unseen depths of the (certainly shallow) pond. An everyday scene on the surface, but we get the sense that the subjects are illuminating the scene through their own fantasies.

This sense of expanded imagination is emphasized by the relative spaciousness of the scene, which is uncluttered by the Brueghelian crowds or the cozy, intimate interiors that sometimes appear in Kurelek’s works. Instead, we are presented with a landscape that is both vast and vacant. The flooded farmyard and further fields are characterized by their openness and emptiness, accentuated by the scarcity of surrounding details: frost-covered mounds of earth, sparse trees at the pond’s edge, thin fence posts and distant birds acting as our only geographic markers in an otherwise featureless landscape. The spaciousness of this sweeping prairie landscape is further emphasized by its deliberate horizontality, marked by the compressed panorama of a clear sky over a scant distant line of trees.

Kurelek frequently employed this compositional strategy - situating a moment of drama in an empty landscape, viewed from an elevated perspective - to highlight both the vastness of the western prairies and the sometimes challenging (both physically and spiritually) nature of the rural immigrant experience. His intent is often moralizing: the loneliness of the individual in an indifferent universe, or the mundane importance of work (and, equally, play). The impersonal beauty and vacancy of nature serves as an allegorical foundation for the hardships and desires of Kurelek’s subjects, allowing them to perform, re-enact, explore and engage with their environment without limits. As if to underscore this embellished emptiness, the upper left corner of the painting contains a small vignette of Christ, having fallen while carrying the cross - perhaps a surprisingly moralistic inclusion that nonetheless transforms the setting into something subtly phantasmagorical.

In the end, however, this scene is not fantastical or exaggerated. We cannot see the children’s imagined adventure as they see it: we are not shown the crashing waves or sweeping seas of their voyage across the pond. Instead, we are simply shown the blank canvas of their temporary stage, and their childlike introspection as they explore their dreamscapes. In The Thoughts of Youth Are Long, Long Thoughts, Kurelek grounds an expanded space of infinite potential with something very intimate: a memory of joyful reverie, free of existential worry or danger.

This work is in the original frame made by the artist.


Estimate: $100,000 - $150,000 CAD

All prices are in Canadian Dollars


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