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Artworks
Robert PilotThe Old House, Anse St. Jean Saguenay1898-1967$7,500Inscriptions
signed, ‘R. PILOT’ (lower left); titled, ‘Old House - Anse St. Jean (Saguenay)’ (verso)Provenance
Kaspar Gallery, Toronto
Sotheby - Parke-Bernet, New York
Private collection, Ontario, November 1980
Estate of the above
Among the Canadian landscape painters, Robert Pilot found Canadian subject matter almost exclusively in the province of Quebec, through the Maritimes and Newfoundland. Of course, as we know, Quebec city was his favorite painting place, with views looking from Quebec City towards the south shore or alternatively, the south shore looking toward the city. Baie St. Paul in Charlevoix County has been a mecca for all artists working in that region, and Pilot was no exception. His wife's family had a summer home in La Malbaie, Murray Bay, which offered him a base for painting there and over at Cap à l’Aigle. Onto St. Simeon, and then onto the Saguenay was an easy few days sketching trip for Pilot from La Malbaie. Peculiar among artists one would call landscape painters, Pilot is rarely in a hinterland and usually includes as compositional devices architectural elements such as houses or buildings and not extraordinarily people.
In our close up of this modest home, a significant inclusion is the confident brush strokes, one in blue one in red, which serve to imply a lady in the doorway, attracting the spectator’s gaze.
At the age of 22, Robert Pilot took part in the inaugural exhibition of the Group of Seven, where he was joined by Albert Robinson and Randolph Hewton as the other two non-Group members invited to participate. The following year, he became a founding member and exhibitor in the annual exhibition of the Beaver Hall Group. In his later career, Pilot assumed the role of President of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts.
During World War I Pilot was in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, Fifth Division Artillery and re-enlisted in 1941 during World War II serving as Captain in the Black Watch, for his service he was honored with a distinction of an Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1944.