Clarence Gagnon (1881-1942)

Village in the Laurentian Mountains, 1925

National Gallery of Canada

Clarence Gagnon is best known for his rural Quebec landscape paintings and the illustrations for Louise Hémon’s novel Maria Chapdelaine. He was born in a small village in rural Quebec. Although he trained and maintained a studio in Paris for much of his career, he never lost his love of the Laurentians and the Charlevoix region of eastern Quebec which inspired many of his paintings.

As a young artist, Gagnon traveled to Paris to study at the Académie Julian from 1904 to 1905. In 1908, Gagnon returned to Canada, and settled in Baie-Saint-Paul region of Charlevoix which became his preferred sketching area. His affection for French-Canadian life is evident in his anecdotal series of depictions of habitant life, a theme to which he returned throughout his career.

From 1909 to 1914 Gagnon moved between Canada, France and Norway, always working up the sketches he had made in Quebec. After a successful 1913 Paris show, Gagnon portrayed the Canadian landscape almost exclusively, and generally in wintertime. He invented a new type of landscape - a winter world composed of valleys and mountains, of sharp contrasts of light and shadow, of vivid colours, and of sinuous lines. He ground his own paints, and from 1916 his palette consisted of pure white, reds, blues and yellows.

From 1924 to 1936 Gagnon lived in Paris once again. He began devoting most of his energy to creating the illustrations for two works of fiction Le Grand Silence blanc by L. F. Rouquette (Paris, 1928) and Marie Chapdelaine by Louis Hémon (Paris, 1933), a story that celebrated Canadian frontier life.

In 1936 Gagnon returned to Canada where he died on 5 January, 1942. Clarence Gagnon was a a full member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (1922). In 1923, he received the Trevor Prize of the Salmagundi Club of New York.

-Adapted from the National Gallery of Canada