Artworks

La Plage of 1967 is the study from which Surrey painted pretty much directly the larger version under the same name. The composition of this work and The Young Ladies of the Village (after Courbet) in The National Gallery of Canada are inspired by the village at Île Bizard and should be a pair. The compositions are so similar but inverted. Our La Plage would date from the end of the summer of 1967.

The final version of La Plage, in full scale was exhibited alongside of The Young Ladies of the Village in the important Surrey exhibition Le peintre dans la ville, at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal of 1971 and then in 1972 at le Centre culturel canadien in Paris.