Fig 1. "La Bald-Face" by Clarence Gagnon, as illustrated in the novel "Le Grand Silence Blanc" written by Louis-Frédéric Roquette in 1928, page 84.
Unframed verso
Lucille Rodier Gagnon Estate Label
Walter Klinkhoff Gallery Inc. Label
Paysage du Nord
14 x 25.4 cm
Inscriptions
Bares the estate stamp, 'Atelier Gagnon' (lower left); titled by Walter Klinkhoff on a Clarence A. Gagnon inventory label, ‘Paysage du Nord, Canada’ and numbered ‘1170’(verso)Provenance
Arts & Culture Gallery Ltd., Montreal
Walter Klinkhoff Gallery Inc., Montreal
Private collection, Ottawa
By descent to the present private collection, Michigan
Paysage du Nord is an extraordinary work, a Clarence Gagnon landscape of the “Le Grand Nord”, which, in part, subsequently served as the backdrop for the image reproduced on page 84 in “his” 1928 edition of Le Grand Silence Blanc (fig 1). In Gagnon’s final composition for the image in the book, Gagnon juxtaposed “La bald- face”, a white polar bear, which is likely a sacred symbol of spirituality in this context in this land.
Working in his Paris studio from 1924, Gagnon composed 33 images to illustrate Louis-Frédéric’s Roquette’s Le Grand Silence Blanc. In 1928, Editions Mornay published a deluxe edition in 725 books.
