Clarence Gagnon

Clarence Gagnon

Published by Therese Myles on 19th Oct 2019

Clarence Gagnon was a Canadian Quebecois painter born in 1881 in Montreal Quebec. Much of the life of Clarence Gagnon has gone undocumented, in part due to the fame and fortune enjoyed by European and American artists and painters, Canadian artists and painters often went unnoticed. The vast size of Canada didn't make it easy to travel to galleries and exhibitions either, nor did the harsh winters and large snowfalls. Travel was especially difficult back in Gagnon's earlier years. Cars were only for the rich and the airplane wouldn't be invented until nineteen eleven so most Quebecois at that time had to travel either by horse and carriage or boat in the summer time, and only by trains or dog sled teams in the winter time.

Gagnon's father wanted him to become a business man and was very critical of his son and his obsession with drawing and art, considering it to be very impractical. Clarence's mother on the other hand nourished and encouraged her son's enthusiasm for the arts. In the end, art was the victor in its duel with business and thus in 1897 Clarence Gagnon enrolled in the Art Association of Montreal to study his chosen craft.

In 1904 Gagnon went to Europe to study art in Paris, France at the world famous Académie Julian under the master artist and professor Jean-Paul Laurens. He spent a couple of years studying at the Académie Julian in Paris before going travelling to hone his skills as an independent painter. Gagnon visited the French country side and Italy, which inspired several of his paintings as well as influencing his painting style.

In 1909 Gagnon sailed back to his home country of Canada and made his home in the town of Baie-Saint-Paul in Quebec, on the north bank of the mighty Saint Lawrence River. Clarence Gagnon preferred to paint natural scenes, beautiful wilderness and the ordinary people of Canada. He is especially known for a series of paintings depicting snow and mountains, using a unique, highly personal and distinct style. Clarence Gagnon's use of bright and intense colours as well as his masterful manipulation of contrast have influenced many artists to come after him.

Gagnon became a member of The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1922 and spent much of the following decades travelling to find inspiration for his paintings. Gagnon visited the picturesque Laurentian mountains in his native Quebec, the famous floating Italian city of Venice, the city of Rouen, and Saint Malo in Brittany, located in Northwest France.

He spent his travels painting renowned landscapes and nature scenes, as well as doing illustrations for the novels Maria Chapdelaine by Louis Hémon, and in nineteen twenty nine he illustrated for Le Grand silence blanc by Louis Frédéric Rouquette. Gagnon spent a little more than a decade living in France, which came to influence his style somewhat.

In 1936 Clarence Gagnon once again headed home to Canada, where he was to emerge as one of the nation's foremost modernist artists of his day. His art was frequently featured at the Montreal located Gallery L'Art Français, where it received a great deal of attention from critics as well as the general public. He mentored the student and aspiring painter, René Richard, who would himself become famous for his landscapes depicting the scenery of Quebec.

Clarence Gagnon passed away in 1942 in Montreal Quebec at the age of sixty, part of the way through the Second World War, leaving his mark strongly upon Canadian art and art history.

View Clarence Gagnon Gallery