Garden (Probably Saint-Barthelemy, Quebec), 1923 (circa)

In the summer of 1923, Marc-Aurèle Fortin lived in Saint-Barthélemy, Quebec, at the home of his cousin, Anna-Marie Globensky (nee. Hilaire). Out of her “large Victorian home,” Anna-Marie ran a summer tourist lodge. While she was busy caring for guests, Fortin was in charge of looking after her two children. In his free time, he would paint and tend the vegetable garden. Gardening was, “an occupation that fascinated [Fortin] from two points of view: the agricultural and the aesthetic. As a conscientious gardener, he consulted agronomy texts, since he had done some studies in the field, and his strong preference for vegetarianism was obvious. In addition, as an artist, Marc-Aurèle put a great deal of care into setting out his plants and protested to his cousin when vegetables were pulled up roughly, which, he said, ruined his arrangement!” [1] With its tidy arrangement of garden plants, we can see this description playing out in Garden. This is a rare painting capturing Fortin’s great personal interest in gardens.

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[1] Michèle Grandbois et al., Marc-Aurèle Fortin: The Experience of Colour (Québec: Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec/ Les Éditions de l’Homme, 2011), p.32.