Montréal Est is a fine example of Lemieux’s “Classic” period. This full-frontal description of this woman, Lemieux located in Montreal east implies a woman of a working class, an influence Michèle Grandbois PhD ascribes from the American Social Realists. That she is dressed warmly in a fur coat, clutching a book lends itself easily to a suggestion of a metaphor, a middle-aged woman of modest means dressed for winter in her Sunday best. 

Her facial expression is non-committal, neutral, an indifference to the interest of the artist. Michèle Grandbois offers insight relevant to our lady, “He produced scenes featuring characters of all ages, from childhood to old age. An entire small world of anonymous humanity springs to life on his canvases. Sometimes he looks deep within his own past, evoking memories, as with 1910 Remembered, 1962, and Autoportrait, 1974. His figures are almost always allegories of time: young or old, man or woman, each stands alone against an empty backdrop, fixing the viewer with an intense gaze as if longing to speak to us.” [1] 

As Mme Grandbois has written, some of Jean-Paul Lemieux’s figures finds their inspiration in his own past. For the artist his familiarity with Montreal were in his early years, first studying at College Mont St-Louis, then at the École de beaux arts de Montreal. Immediately upon graduation in 1934, he was an assistant teacher of drawing and design at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal, a year later as a teacher at the École du meuble. In 1937, Jean-Paul Lemieux returned to Quebec City to take a teaching position at the École des beaux-arts de Québec. In a large body of Lemieux’s painting, his figures juxtaposed in a vast landscape convey a sense of loneliness and insignificance of the human presence within that “universe”. Our fur coated woman staged in front of the backdrop of a patchwork of buildings devoid of any detail and distinction, similarly be an expression of her loneliness and anonymity in the urban environment. 

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Footnote:

[1] Michèle Grandbois, “Jean Paul Lemieux: Life & Work” [online publication], Art Canada Institute, Toronto, 2016, 36.