Cullen Opened Our Eyes to Things No One Ever Thought of Painting
Before the Group of Seven there was Cullen...
-Regina Haggo, The Hamilton Spectator, 2014
A selection of quotations - plucked from an array of sources to include comments from contemporaries and students of Maurice Cullen, art critics, and established scholars - are examples of the consistent praise that Cullen receives for his tenacity of colour, inimitable style of painting, and for his integral role in the development of Canadian Impressionism.
"In retrospect, it is clear that Cullen deserves greater recognition. [...] In the first years of the century Cullen had set many important precedents and fought the same battle that the Group were to fight in years to come. By the example of his life, his works and his teaching, he enabled Canadian artists to see and to paint the landscape in a new way. He was a man who loved nature, simplicity, and the freedom to paint."
-Peter Mellen, Ph.D, (Courtauld Institute, London,1966), 1970
"The waveless, winding stream, the heavy peace of silence and solitude [...] To Cullen this might well be a sacred stream," recounted William Watson in 1931 of his trip to the Caché with Cullen.
Alan Klinkhoff Gallery Cullen Inventory No. AK1143.
Available for a price of $25,000
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“While the medium of oils has been for the majority of Cullen’s pictures, he confesses his pleasure for the flexibility of pastels. [...] Often handled with extreme strength of outline, these pastels are subtle enough to suggest some profound mystery, just hinted at, or half-revealed.”
—William Watson, O.B.E., Canadian Art Dealer, 1931
“Some suggested an abstraction such as silence, others a feeling of loneliness, for Cullen seldom put a figure in his landscapes, leaving everything to nature and to the viewer. There was always beauty, and that wonderful transmutation, the definition of true art, that had so impressed me in my youth.”
—William Watson, O.B.E., Canadian Art Dealer
"There is no doubt that in his paintings of the Laurentians, Cullen has achieved his greatest power. [...] It is said that Turner discovered sunsets to Englishmen, but Cullen has certainly discovered the Laurentians for us."
—William Watson, O.B.E., Canadian Art Dealer, 1931
Available for a price of $28,000
When Lismer ... arrived in Canada from England in 1911, he saw Cullen’s paintings at an exhibition and was at once stuck by their ‘quality and valid interpretation’ of the Canadian landscape and the way in which the artist had ‘combined in them the Impressionist mode with a Canadian spirit [...] The artist’s [Cullen] significance in Canada can hardly be overestimated ...”
—Joan Murray, 1973
There is a sister composition of a larger format in the Art Gallery of Ontario, which depicts the same vista but painted in winter, called On the St. Lawrence, 1897. The present oil was executed the same year as Logging in Winter, Beaupre in the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
Alan Klinkhoff Gallery Cullen Inventory No. AK860.
Available for a price of $25,000
"Healthy, lusty colour which you see in Canada is no doubt considered vulgar - Cullen, I see by the papers, has painted a good picture - he is the man in Canada who gets at the ‘guts of things.’”
—J.W. Morrice, 1910
Alan Klinkhoff Gallery Cullen Inventory No. AK839
Available for a price of $20,000
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It would not be too much to claim that the whole of Canadian landscape painting was changed by the return of Maurice Cullen to his native land in 1895. [...] Where does Cullen stand in the history of Canadian art [...]? It is already apparent that the brought to Canadian landscape a completely new vision. He was the first to interpret our landscape in a manner both personal and appropriate to the country. Though inspired by the impressionists, he nevertheless adapted their approach to suit another climate and another hemisphere.”
—Robert Pilot, 1956
