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Artworks
Rita MountPoste de cochers, rue Sherbrooke (Cab Stand, Sherbrooke Street at McGill University), 1930 (circa)1888-1967Oil on canvas board9 x 11 in
22.9 x 27.9 cmSoldFurther images
Inscriptions
signed, 'Rita Mount' (recto, lower left)Provenance
Private Collection, Montreal.
— Poste de cochers, rue Sherbrooke (Cab Stand, Sherbrooke Street at McGill University) is a fine and rare Montreal urban winter scene by Rita Mount. In the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec in Montreal (BAnQ) Rita Mount Archive there is an undated Christmas card of a painting of the same subject, a work with some additions and modifications, a work we speculate is larger in size than our sketch (fig. 1). This cab stand outside McGill’s Roddick Gates at McGill University is imagery that has found its way into important paintings by Robert Pilot and Kathleen Morris.
The benefit of her addresses published in Art Association of Montreal (AAM) catalogues, [ 52 ] from 1903 until 1949 we identify only two different addresses and both within a block of the intersection of Dorchester at St. Christophe in Montreal (Today that’s not far from the Berri-UQAM metro station, a 10 minute walk over to Bonsecours Market where, by the way, she painted another splendid urban scene we sold recently). Those same AAM catalogues itemize a predominance of Gaspé subjects exhibited in her shows. As we have seen with many of the Beaver Hall Group women, for example, confined to the city they found content for their art sometimes just beyond their homes and, occasionally, literally looking outside from their windows or just beyond the doors of their studios. Not so with Rita Mount. With the rare and outstanding example as our Poste de cochers, rue Sherbrooke (Cab Stand, Sherbrooke Street at McGill University), this begs the question, “What was she doing?” From the fall through the winter months, was she satisfied to paint “up” from her Gaspé summer sketches? Was she otherwise preoccupied, a teaching position perhaps or with other family responsibilities, maybe taking care of her parents or her brother René?
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52. Evelyn de R. McMann, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts formerly Art Association of Montreal - Spring exhibitions 1880-1970, pp. 275-276. -
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