J.W. Morrice
Off Concarneau
oil on panel
studio stamp and inscribed “Mrs. Turnbull” on the reverse
4.75 x 5.75 in ( 12.1 x 14.6 cm )
J.W. Morrice is well-known for his small sketches, or pochades, of Paris and Venice; in both places, he rarely wandered away from the water. In Paris, where he lived from early 1890, he moved to an apartment overlooking the Seine as early as he could. When he ventured away, it was usually to seaside resorts or small towns, endless sources of new subjects. For years, dealers routinely entitled them “Brittany” or “St. Malo”, and the present sketch is no exception. It belongs to a whole series of similar small marines, hard to locate, and therefore date, because most offer no geographical clue.
They are characterized by paint applied thinly on the wooden panel, a technique the artist adopted around 1904. Some are pure marines of sea and sky, but never without a sailboat; others have a few rocks in the foreground; in a third group, a man-made detail is a priceless clue: a green railing found in some of them spells “Dieppe”, Normandy, which Morrice visited several times over the years, including a busy working week in June 1906. As Paris was unusually hot that summer, he went to Brittany, going around it following the seashore; he passed through Morlaix in the northwest and Quimper in the southwest, ending up in Le Pouldu, past Concarneau.
Created after 1906, Morrice shares his enjoyment of this marine view on a sunny day; on the right, the schooner bobbing on the water adds to the joyous atmosphere. The thinner paint application is also found in many pochades painted in Concarneau between mid-November 1909 and mid-April 1910. Actually, one drawing from the "Concarneau Sketchbook" (#15, MMFA, page 21) is almost a mirror image of the present sketch. Based on this, one can assume this sketch was also painted near Concarneau during that long stay.
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.
For additional images and/or details related to this artwork, please visit the digital catalogue: https://rb.gy/fy8zwo
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