Sold for: $64,350

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Michèle Grandbois, editor, Marc-Aurèle Fortin, The Experience of Colour, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 2011, page 110 and a similar oil entitled Landscape at Hochelaga, circa 1930 - 1940, reproduced page 139

The industrialization of the Hochelaga district, Montreal’s harbour and its skyline were subjects Marc-Aurèle Fortin would paint repeatedly and experimentally in the 1920s and 1930s. This area was home to Canada’s largest grain port, which ushered in urbanization at an astounding rate. Quiet countryside gave way to city sprawl, and it was this shift towards modernization that Fortin illustrates in this painting. In Landscape at Hochelaga, cultivated farmland with horses and haystacks gives way to the unexpected beauty of strongly outlined industrial buildings. Michèle Grandbois writes, “Fortin did not skimp on signs of modernization: hydro poles, electrical wires, a railway, a train and factories cross our sight,” and to incorporate such elements was insightful and progressive for the time. Fortin was skilful at combining vibrancy of colour with the starkness and structure of line drawing. Above it all are Fortin’s characteristic stunning and dreamy cumulous cloud formations, adding to the fine-tuned balance between the urban and rural in Landscape at Hochelaga.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars