Rue Ste. Julie, Quebec, 1972

John Little’s painting places are limited primarily to Montreal and Quebec City. His repertoire does however include paintings of Ottawa, St John, Halifax, and occasionally other areas in the Province of Quebec. One of many reasons he confined his interests to these cities is a personal preference for returning to his wife Lorraine and their family after a day’s work. It needs to be said that the subjects he painted are always inspired by his sensibility to capture images of the origins of the citizens at a time when they were being eradicated by wholesale demolition for the benefit of “urban renewal” and “suburbanisation”.

Quebec City provides an architecture that it seems is a bit different from generally what Little painted in Montreal. Strictly as an observation, we seem to note that his houses are flush to the sidewalk, sometimes one step up to the front door, and his lamp posts almost jutting out to the roadway.