"A Respectable Collection"

A Respectable Collection

For the first time, Canadians are taking a good look at what their artists have been up to. From Toronto to Montreal last week went "The Development of Painting in Canada," a 240-picture show which aims at a full, chronological review of the nation's art--from early 17th Century, French-inspired religious canvases down to the most modern (and also French-inspired) abstractions. The show's outstanding point: Canadian artists have passed through about the same esthetic cycles as other colonial countries. They began by holding tight to the mother-country's stylistic (French Louis XIV) apron strings, waited for generations before trying to record the life and landscape around them with a native's eye.

The first Canadian artists were servants of the French Catholic Church, and their painting never strayed from portraiture and religious subjects. After the French surrendered Canada to the British in 1760, matter-of-fact British colonials and their wives introduced English draughtsmanship. Towns and landscapes began to be painted as simple reports on life in a new colony.

The 19th Century brought other European influences: detailed German realism, light-filled French impressionism and decorative French postimpressionism. By 1867, when Canada became the first self-governing country of the British Empire, the Dominion was not only experimenting with all the myriad painting styles of the western world, but had also begun a hardy local regionalism of its own. Among its outstanding modern exponents was the "Group of Seven," formed just after World War I. They painted "the very look and feel of Canada," and resembled the famed "Ashcan School" which appeared in the U.S. in 1908 (Luks, Bellows, Sloan, et al).

In last week's show there was contemporary regionalism, fantasy, plain reporting. One report with gently humorous overtones was 37-year-old Jean-Charles Faucher's Cour d'Ecole (Schoolyard), an action-crowded view of French Canadian boys at play (see cut), in which the figures resembled waves of water bugs contending for three black beans--their footballs.

Critics hoped that the big national show, which will be seen in Ottawa and Quebec next, would give contemporary artists "a sense of tradition and . . . nurtured confidence." Plain citizens regarded the show with that native Canadian modesty that has in it a hint of the defensive. Reported Toronto's weekly Saturday Night: "It is not an exhibition of masterpieces that will cause you to gasp before every other canvas--Canada's contribution to world art has not yet been that distinguished, but it is a respectable collection . . . Canadians may take a certain pride."

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