J.W. Morrice
Fishnet and Pier, Santiago de Cuba
oil and graphite on board
studio stamp and inscribed “R.B. Morrice”, “No E. pat”, “325”, “3” and part of a graphic stamp on the reverse
5.25 x 6.5 in ( 13.3 x 16.5 cm )
The turquoise water in this sketch immediately evokes the Caribbean Sea, a region that Morrice visited at least twice, but such a frank piece of turquoise water is, so far, unique. The sketches and drawings done in Cuba and Jamaica in the Spring of 1915 do not show any water. Still mourning the recent loss of his parents, the artist focused his attention on the urban aspects of the island, coloured houses or public parks, always with little figures of local people. In Trinidad, in the spring of 1921, he brought only his watercolour kit.
This lovely little sketch is a delightful surprise, especially the delicate fishnet entirely drawn in pencil on the top of the wet paint, as if the artist had wished to attenuate the blinding effect of his bright colour. The panel had no title; after looking at images of Cuba, old and new, the search was narrowed to the area of Santiago, which Morrice visited. If many pages of his Sketchbook #10 (MMFA) depict Santiago, none relates to this particular sketch. Fortunately, old postcards and recent photographs are very helpful.
But the definitive proof of the subject came when the back of the sketch was examined: unlike almost all known pochades painted by Morrice after 1894-95, it is not painted on a wood panel, but on a heavy piece of fiberboard; two items were mechanically printed with the same ink: a big digit “3" and, at bottom left, something that was hard to decipher. There is another mysterious stamp on a fiberboard panel, a study for the MMFA canvas "Cirque, Santiago de Cuba" (Private Collection). When the images of the two backs are put side by side, the partial stamp on one panel perfectly completes the other, revealing the well-known mark of the famous Parisian firm of "Lefranc & Cie, marchands de couleurs". By the beginning of the twentieth century, it had branches in many countries, including Cuba, and it still operates worldwide as "Lefranc & Bourgeois". The dimensions of the resulting full panel correspond roughly to a “No. 3 Marine” standard format. We presume that Morrice had run out of wood panels: at least one sketch, "House in Santiago" (MMFA), has a view of a local park on the back. The large Lefranc fiberboard panel, cut in two, gave him two panels in his preferred size, which he used for two totally unrelated subjects, but in the same location.
We extend our thanks to Lucie Dorais, Canadian art historian and author of "J.W. Morrice" (National Gallery of Canada, 1985), for contributing the preceding essay.
Born in Montreal to a prominent family of textile merchants, Morrice spent most of his life abroad, much of it in Paris. He had gone there to enrol in the Academie Julian, the best-known of the private art schools that lured dozens of young Canadian artists to cross the ocean with the promise of technical proficiency and stylistic sophistication. Soon Morrice was studying with the Barbizon painter Henri Harpignies and looking intently at the pictures of the cutting-edge Nabis members. Affable and gregarious, Morrice was well liked in Paris among the local and emigre vanguard, notably his friends the great Henri Matisse and the influential American painter Robert Henri. He did well, showing in the most prestigious exhibitions of new art, including the Salons, and selling to discerning European collections of the highest rank. If he is remembered mostly in Canada today, it may be because Canadian collectors repatriated most of his pictures after his death, leaving Europeans with little to go on. He had been careful to maintain a reputation at home, showing here regularly and returning frequently for Christmas, which would explain why most of his Canadian pictures are winter scenes. Young Canadian artists held him in considerable esteem during his lifetime for his fearless modernism and his success in Europe. A stylistically hybrid artist, Morrice combined a lush and often dusky Post-Impressionist tone with nonchalant brushwork of a plumb assuredness, softening the blunt structures of his Fauvist friends. What results are paintings as complicated as they are straightforward and often redolent with suppressed emotion. Morrice tends to smallish pictures that draw you in, only to surprise you by their resolute diffidence. Irresistible and remote, his pictures ask for intimacy but keep their distance, like nostalgia, like longing. Morrice ran with a fast crowd of glittering cosmopolitans. Alcoholism got the better of him by the end of his fifties; his health ultimately failed while in North Africa where he had painted with Matisse and where he died at fifty-eight.
Source: National Gallery of Canada