Sold for: $61,250

PROVENANCE
By descent to the present Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Michelle Gewurtz, Molly Lamb Bobak: Life & Work, Art Canada Institute, 2018, page 70

Throughout her career, Canadian war artist Molly Lamb Bobak was celebrated for her ability to translate impressions of the fleeting, ordinary lived experience into a dazzling fixed image. In order to capture the ephemerality of large gatherings -a prominent subject of her oeuvre - she first sketched what she saw. Bobak developed this technique early in her career, specifically during her years with the Canadian Women’s Army Corps. Bobak’s canvases depicting gatherings, notably retain a sketch like quality. In March on Quebec, this is achieved through the loose paint application in the background and the short and layered impasto-like brushstrokes which are prominent in the foreground to depict the roughly drawn faces, devoid of any detail. Together, these artistic techniques infuse the scene with a sense of energy and immediacy.

The viewer is drawn towards the pulsating crowd, made up of a swarm of bold, warm colours, traversing as one through a cool, snowy terrain. Bobak invites us to step a little closer and join the gathering masses. Scholar Michelle Gewurtz notes that, “… Bobak achieved the goal Baudelaire had set for artists in pursuing the idea of modernity: to capture the 'ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent half of art.' Bobak developed the skills needed to gauge, understand, and appreciate the whole big scene and to comprehend what it is to be modern.”

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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