Collection: Richard, René

René Richard, a great landscape painter

A great Canadian master, self-taught, René Richard, ARC (Royal Canadian Academy of Arts) was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in 1895 (died in 1982). He came to settle in Alberta in 1909, he chose to live with the Cree Indians and the Inuit of Northern Canada and it was in the solitude of the wide open spaces that he became an artist. In 1927, he decided to study painting in Paris and there met the Canadian painter Clarence Gagnon. Returning to the country in 1930, he resumed his life as a trapper in Manitoba and it was finally in Baie St-Paul, in 1942, that he found his home base and married Blanche Cimon. He exhibited regularly in Quebec City and Montreal but returned in 1952 on an expedition to the Far North. He spent the next thirty years of his life in Baie St-Paul.

Until the end of his life, he painted his luminous and colorful landscapes there, always linked to the Canadian landscape. Regardless of the anonymity of the trees and those who travel the long northern trails, what the painter eloquently expresses is the very soul of the Canadian vastness: silence and solitude. It is there that he reveals visions bordering on abstraction, encountering the universal.
A bright and colorful art

[…] his personal and solitary approach has no need for comparison or justification. It is unique and does not fit into the wake of either the avant-garde or romantic nostalgia. René Richard develops his own pictorial language, his painting asserts itself in a personal aestheticism whose primary source is nature. And even if the artist had completely eliminated the identifiable elements of his paintings, the spirit that emerges from the pictorial material would not have been affected, so vivid is its expression. It is revealed in the slightest touch, the slightest line, because everything exudes this wild, austere and magnificent nature. The style is not neat, it is true, intuitive, wild like its subject, pure and in no way complacent. The landscape is painted with spontaneity, as in a surge of love. The color does not seek to seduce but to translate. The landscape is inscribed on the support by broad strokes that only passion can induce. Each gesture of the painter carries within it the essence of the place" Robert Bernier.

He rubbed shoulders with artists such as Gagnon, Fortin, Lemieux, and Rousseau, and his influence on Quebec painting was considerable. In 1973, he received the Order of Canada, and in 1980, he became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Retrospectives were held of his work in 1967 at the Musée du Québec and in 1978 by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. In 1982, one of his paintings was featured on a Canada Day postage stamp.

These works of art can be found among several major museum collections, both private and public, such as: Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Quebec, University of Ottawa, Desjardins Credit Unions and Economy Movement of Quebec, etc.

ADDITIONAL ARTICLE(S):

René Richard

[…] René Richard arrived in Canada with his family in 1909. A year later, he left Edmonton for Cold Lake, in northern Alberta. At eighteen, he became a coureur de bois and a trapper; he experienced great adventure in a wild and hostile nature that he learned to know and tame, and whose profound imprint would mark his future work. For more than thirteen years, his life was entirely devoted to the rigorous apprenticeship of life in the forest. In 1926, he returned to the south of the country to settle in Edmonton, where he began drawing and painting.

The following year, he left for Europe where he met the painter Clarence Gagnon, who was at the height of his fame in Canada. This encounter would be decisive for the budding artist that was René Richard. Gagnon would play a significant role in his artistic apprenticeship. Richard returned to Cold Lake in 1930, where he resumed his life as a coureur de bois. But between his numerous expeditions, he corresponded with Clarence Gagnon, who would eventually convince him to come and settle in the South and devote all his energies to painting. He made this choice in 1938, when he met Clarence Gagnon again in Quebec. In 1942, he settled permanently in Baie Saint-Paul and, in the late 1940s, undertook his first stay in the Far North, which would be followed by several others. The result was a series of highly interesting paintings, painted from 1950 onward. This would be his greatest period.

One might think that this series goes against the grain of the major artistic movements taking place in Quebec at the time. However, his personal and solitary approach has no need for comparison or justification. It is unique and does not follow in the footsteps of either the avant-garde or romantic nostalgia. René Richard develops his own pictorial language, his painting asserts itself in a personal aesthetic whose primary source is nature. Most of the paintings in this series are painted from memory and the results are fascinating! The gesture is lively, guided by a knowledge of the subject that only experience can convey.

René Richard avoids falling into the trap of anecdotal description by maintaining a certain distance from his subject. And even if the artist had completely eliminated identifiable elements from his paintings, the spirit that emerges from the pictorial material would not have been affected, so vivid is its expression. It is revealed in the slightest touch, the slightest stroke, because everything exudes this wild, austere, and magnificent nature.
The works in this series present us with an entire life; they are the testimony of an individual in harmony with his entire environment. The style is not meticulous; it is true, intuitive, wild like its subject, pure and in no way complacent. The landscape is painted with spontaneity, like a surge of love. The color does not seek to seduce but to translate. The landscape is inscribed on the support with broad strokes that only passion can induce. Each gesture of the painter carries within it the essence of the place.

Source: Robert Bernier, Un siècle de peinture au Québec Nature et paysage, Les Éditions de l’Homme, 1999, René Richard, pages 194-195.

TO LEARN MORE:

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