capable of expressing the force and reality of
that communion of the human and universal
which he felt lurked continually behind the
changing moods of nature, of the trees and skies
of his native valley. In his old age, while he
expressed some interest in the new Canadian
movement in painting, he yet showed no desire
himself to depict the northland. The cultivated,
peaceful farmsteads of Ontario spelt reality to
him; they were, he wrote to a friend in 1929,
"as much Canadian as jack pine and muskeg."
He died on May 30, 1930, and visitors who travel
by a side road from the city of Galt, Ontario, may
visit the small museum in Doon that is kept to
his memory.

The pastoral landscape was, of course, described
by other artists, some of whom were excellent
teachers, tolerant of experiment in others, and
for that reason much respected by the generation
which followed. There was, for example, William
Brymner ( 1855-1925) in Montreal. He had come
to Canada as a child, had studied later in France,
and had been influenced by that cult of veiled
simplicity of pattern based on Whistler. There
exists, by one of his students, a good caricature
of him pointing out the beauties of a Japanese
print to a less appreciative friend. At the same
time, he kept in touch with his surroundings in
Quebec and painted many portraits and figure
studies of rural types, as well as of more con-
ventional subjects. There is perhaps a fresher
approach to nature in the landscapes he did after
1900.

To all the young men in Montreal he was of
great help, and, as headmaster of the Montreal
Art School, he stood out for the more advanced
work of his friends, Maurice Cullen and James
Wilson Morrice.

Morrice, for long known abroad as Canada's
most distinguished painter, was a Montrealer
born. Brought up in the Presbyterian atmosphere
of a wealthy Scottish family of textile
merchants, he at first departed little from their
conventional norm. Then, however, when
he was twenty-five, he deserted law school, and
set off to study art in Paris. Once there his
only formal master seems to have been Henri
Harpignies, but he was soon influenced by many
of the more modern schools of painters. His
reputation abroad grew rapidly. In 1909, the
critic, Louis Vauxcelles, wrote: "Since the
death of James MacNeill Whistler, J. W.
Morrice is unquestionably the American painter
who has achieved in France and in Paris
(where he participates regularly in all the im-
portant exhibitions) the most notable and well
merited place in the world of art." Yet, while
Morrice adopted France as his second home, his
background was and always continued to be
North American. From year to year Montreal
saw him return, mostly for short visits in the
winter, when he went sketching along the St.
Lawrence. He also contributed to exhibitions
in the Dominion, and was made a member of the
Royal Canadian Academy.

As for national sentiment, one need only look at
his picture of "The Ferry, Quebec", now in the col-
lection of the National Gallery of Canada, or that
other scene of "Dufferin Terrace, Quebec",
to realize that he was close to his best when
painting his native land in its winter garb. On
the other hand, he was equally fine in those last
free creations of his brush, those canvases of the
West Indies, done towards the end of his life.
Each artist finds his stimulus in his own way;
and Morrice, it is safe to say, found his mostly by
travelling. He was forever wandering from
Paris to Morocco, from Venice to Montreal, and
thence from Cuba to Trinidad.

His work went through many variations in
style, he came close to imitation, once or twice,
of experiments in the manner of, first Whistler
and Conder, then much later, Matisse. Yet there
was always something in every painting of his
that was very much his own. Some French critics
said that by setting his figures, like solid im-
movable counters in the landscape, he was able to
induce an atmosphere of tender melancholy, which
sentiment in his paintings they called Anglo-
Saxon. Certainly a "divinest Melancholy", in
the sense of Milton's poem, is present in much of
his work.

The French also commented upon his oily and
rich pigments, and particularly the way in which
he diffused throughout his canvases a gentle, at
times almost imperceptible, pinkish glow. This
appeared whether the pigment was laid on thickly,
as in his early scenes of the Paris quays, or thinly
as in later paintings of Montreal houses.

Morrice discovered and began to use this rose-
colouring, which is so peculiar and so natural to
the otherwise sombre darkness of a Canadian
winter sky, when doing his first large canvases of
Quebec scenery--that was back in the nineties--
and he never seemed to forget its beauty. It is
hardly an exaggeration to say that he afterwards
painted Parisian skies with Canadian eyes. As a
critic once wrote in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts,
"There is much charm in the landscapes of
James Wilson Morrice. Among the grey clouds
covering his skies he scatters a rose of exquisite

-7-