Sold for: $79,250

PROVENANCE
Douglas Gallery, Vancouver
Acquired from the above by a Private Collection, Vancouver, February 24, 1967
Private Estate, Vancouver

Religieuse was painted in 1967, the year in which Jean Paul Lemieux began to experience fame. His work was in the National Gallery of Canada exhibition Three Hundred Years of Canadian Art and a retrospective of his works was mounted at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. There, the opening was presided over by Pierre Elliott Trudeau, then federal minister of justice and the future prime minister of Canada. This is a classic single figure work by Lemieux in his mature style, in which he pared down his images to their most essential and resonant elements. The figure of the nun is depicted using simplified geometric planes against a spatially indefinite charcoal background. Only the line at the bottom suggests three-dimensionality – perhaps a darkened room, perhaps outside at night. Lemieux’s use of light is exquisite – the nun’s face and the white sections of the habit on her head and neck reflect a light from an indeterminate source, which, along with her slight, enigmatic smile, gives the impression of her exalted spiritual awareness. In Religieuse, the young nun reverently contemplates, surrounded by Lemieux’s ethereal atmosphere of ascetic and glorious silence.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars