PROVENANCE
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Michèle Grandbois, Marc-Aurèle Fortin: The Experience of Colour, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 2011, a similar watercolour entitled A View at Hochelaga reproduced page 109

EXHIBITED
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal, Marc-Aurèle Fortin, 1888 – 1970, Exposition rétrospective, September 16 – 30, 2006, catalogue #17

In 1925 Marc-Aurèle Fortin took up residence in Montreal at 351 Notre-Dame Street East, a former hospital, painting in what had been an operating room. Montreal became his prime subject – particularly the harbour, the Jacques Cartier Bridge construction project and the working-class neighbourhood of Hochelaga, in the east end of the city. Fortin discovered this neighbourhood while walking along the railway line beside the river, and from an observation point on a rise, he painted the panoramic view over Hochelaga to the hills beyond numerous times. Fortin was fascinated by the intersection between rural farmland and the city; he found this view so engaging that he was known to visit at dusk and dawn to observe the light. Rising from the city are the striking towers of the Nativité-de-la-Sainte-Vierge Church, Saint-Antoine Cathedral and Saint-François-Xavier Church. With its numerous church spires, details that reflect the life of the neighbourhood - such as the laundry drying in the breeze - and the lofty, billowing clouds Fortin was so well known for, this is a classic Hochelaga watercolour.

This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist's work, #A-0655.

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