Artworks

“Spring Creek, St. Fereole [sic]” is an excellent painting, one which is exemplary of Lorne Bouchard’s late winter/early spring work. “St. Fereole” is in fact Saint-Ferréol-les-Neiges, a name change that was made a couple of years after Bouchard painted this work, made in part apparently to highlight the snowfall in the region of Mont Ste. Anne, a splendid ski mountain. Very much in the tradition of A.Y. Jackson and his painting companions, Bouchard’s sketching trips on the north shore of the St. Lawrence heading toward the already legendary Charlevoix region of Baie St. Paul and La Malbaie (Murray Bay) were scheduled for the latest days of winter or early spring when road travel was easier and more predictable than during the winter months. Lorne Bouchard’s repertoire of countless tones of grey is unsurpassed by Robert Pilot and Clarence Gagnon, both of whom were particularly sensitive to its expressive qualities of climate and light.

In an essay written in 1982 by a Nathalie Le Gris, she wrote about Lorne Bouchard:

Lorne Bouchard’s life unfolded as a homage to painting and to the painter’s trade. As of the age of fourteen, Bouchard knows he wishes to be a painter. At twenty, he sets off on his first plein-air trip to Gaspé. There, he creates his first paintings, oils, on the theme. He discovers the Far North. The impression made during that first contact will affect him during his entire life, and will give his paintings the characteristic momentum which expresses the stark aspect of infinite spaces, and will make him a great painter of snow.

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In 1962, he makes a trip with David Molson on a sixty-foot boat, “The Liard River,” in order to paint the MacKenzie River, from Hay River on the Great Slave Lake to the Sea of Beaufort, in the Arctic. This cruise covers a distance of 1,200 miles and is for Bouchard a revelation of the grandeur and richness of his country. He strives to share it through the many landscapes he created at that time.

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A plein air painter. He enjoys creating atmospheres, typical details of a street scene in a Quebec village. The bareness of a snowy landscape, where demi hues are so important, showcases the artist’s talents. He knows how to evoke the feeling of an afternoon devoid of sun: the diffuse light of grey winter days as well as the luminosity of summer. His canvases also bear witness to everyday themes. An attention to composition reigns over the whole. A house in the foreground, to the right, is balanced by a street steadily widening to the left, and other houses, in the background, in the same direction. The poles upholding electrical wires along the streets add a precise detail and strengthen the composition.


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Lorne Bouchard was an important Canadian landscape artist who had his first exhibition at Montreal’s distinguished Continental Gallery, in 1940 at the age of 27. During his ensuing career spanning almost 4 decades, Bouchard painted the Canadian landscape in its splendour from the Atlantic to the Pacific and both the Eastern and the Western Arctic. It must be said however that, perhaps, because he lived in Montreal, among the most familiar regions in his work are landscapes immediately outside the City of Montreal and then beyond to the Gaspé, Charlevoix, and Laurentide Park. However, it needs to be said that his artistic interests deviated occasionally with urban compositions, figure studies and even the still life. Lorne Bouchard was an artist of originality, integrity and great creative ability.

Claire Molson, who along with her husband David, were avid art collectors and outstanding clients of Walter Klinkhoff Gallery particularly throughout the 1960, submitted the following to The Montreal Star on May 7, 1978, shortly after Lorne’s premature death at age 65.
“Lorne loved Canada and in the true tradition painted in practically every area. To own a Lorne Bouchard is to own a piece of this great country. He loved all seasons, but no one could paint the winter like Lorne. He captured the broad, cold, sweep of fields, the heavy, brooding mountains of the Laurentians, the villages of the North Shore; the fiord at Pangnirtung on Baffin Island was as majestic on canvas as it stands today… His heart was not part of a cult or movement. His inspiration came from the vast spaces of our country and the divergent people who inhabited it.”
Continental Galleries hosted Lorne Bouchard exhibitions in 1940, ‘49, ‘52 and 1955. Walter Klinkhoff Gallery held solo exhibitions for Lorne Bouchard in 1960, ‘62, ‘64, ‘66, ’69, ‘73, ‘75 ‘77 and finally a tribute, memorial exhibition in 1981.