Sélection de ventes notoires de 2023 par Galerie Alan Klinkhoff

Among the best and most recognizable of his works are paintings such as this, paintings of Calèches on the Mount Royal. The highlights are his colourful horses-drawn sleighs outside the Chalet atop Mount Royal with a backdrop of the city skyline. The horses and their coachmen, clothed in their raccoon coats wait patiently looking for clients, not toward the city below. This was a festive Mount Royal scene until the 1980’s when the Montreal stables relocated farther from the mountain making it more profitable to remain available for tourists on the streets of Old Montreal than to hike up the hill.

“Doug” Lawley was born at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, graduated from Mount Allison and then McGill University in Montreal where he settled and married in 1927. Painting first interested him in 1937 and he gave serious consideration to becoming an artist and though he did continue to study painting under Agnes Lefort in Montreal and Albro Hibbard of the American National Academy, teaching won out as a first occupation. He taught Latin and also supervised the art class for many years at Westmount High School where he later became Vice Principal; after his retirement he continued to teach Latin at Lower Canada College.

Lawley’s first one-man show was held at the Dominion Gallery in 1962. Doug Lawley’s paintings are represented in the collection of the Royal Trust Company, Montreal, Glace Bay Miners’ Foundation, and elsewhere, as well as in many private collections.