Street in Old Quebec, 1921

This painting by Hal Ross Perrigard, an original member of the Beaver Hall Group of artists, is dated ‘21, the year of the one Beaver Hall Group exhibition. This is a rare urban scene by Perrigard titled on the reverse “Street in Old Quebec.” There is reason to speculate that the street is Rue Couillard, a painterly street that has attracted the interest of other artists of the period and since.

Perrigard, a Montrealer, was not only one of the Beaver Hall Group artists, he was a member of the Montreal Pen & Pencil Club, and Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts as early as 1924, the same year he participated in the now iconic Wembley Exhibition. From 1915 Perrigard exhibited annually in the exhibitions of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts and Art in the Association of Montreal exhibitions. We note that in 1920 his contributions to the RCA exhibition included a painting titled “Rue Sous Le Cap,” a street in lower Quebec that famously has survived the numerous floods over the centuries since the area of Quebec City was developed.