Sold for: $43,875

PROVENANCE
Galerie Clarence Gagnon, Montreal
Private Collection, Montreal

EXHIBITED
Musée Marc-Aurèle Fortin, Montreal, Exposition, May 10 - September 9, 1990, catalogue #19

René Richard came to Canada in 1909. His parents were in search of new opportunities, and established themselves at Cold Lake in northern Alberta in 1910, where Richard’s father operated a trading post. Richard, then 15, became a trapper, and in 1923 paddled a canoe down the McKenzie River to the Arctic Ocean, trapping Arctic fox along the way. His interest in art, and his desire for another kind of life, spurred him to travel to Paris where he met Clarence Gagnon. Gagnon took Richard under his wing, encouraging him to visit museums and to explore the countryside to sketch. After exhausting his funds, Richard returned to Alberta and the mining and trapping life, but filled his backpack with art supplies, working out-of-doors whenever he could. He moved to Quebec in 1940 at the suggestion of Gagnon. Territoire de trappeurs has a lively, windswept and wintery atmosphere. Richard keenly understood the hard work involved in trapping, and thus his depiction of this lone trapper’s encampment has a unique authenticity.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars