Step into Spring With New Historical Works at Mayberry Fine Art

This Spring, Mayberry Fine Art is pleased to present a phenomenal selection of historical Canadian and European fine art. The selection has been curated by our Canadian art specialists and spans an impressive 80 year period, highlighting important artists like August Rodin, Alfred Joseph Casson, Norval Morrisseau and many others.

La Bretonne En Prière - Marc Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté (1906)

Marc Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté synthesises centuries of European artistic tradition in his 1906 painting La Bretonne en Prière. A wonderful example of the artist’s figurative work, La Bretonne immediately recalls Dutch genre painting from the 17th century. Painters like Vermeer paid close attention to the minutiae of daily life around the Netherlands, switching focus depicting wealthy patrons and their wares to pious, poorer people. The humble surroundings rendered in these paintings emphasised a subject’s piety. The work also harkens to many trips taken by artists to Brittany, France, with its unique culture, language and style of dress to the rest of France. 

Stylistically, the work is indebted to the French impressionists whose work Marc Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Cote became well acquainted with while living in Europe from 1897 and 1907. La Bretonne en Prière was painted in a pivotal year for Marc Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté career; in 1906, the artist left behind his academic training for a bolder, impressionistic approach to his painting. 

Buste de Baigneuse Zoubaloff 10/12 - Auguste Rodin (sculpted circa 1888, cast later)

Rodin is often regarded as the father of Modern sculpture and his work is found in museums and important private collections globally. Following his rejection from the École des Beaux-Arts, his sculptures took on a supple and psychological dimension, in contrast to the rigid style of sculpture in the late 1800s. This sculpture, Buste de Baigneuse Zoubaloff, was sculpted from clay and later cast in bronze in an edition of 12 works, one of which is present in the Brooklyn Museum's permanent collection.

Sans-Titre (1955) - Jean Paul Riopelle

1955 was an important year for Jean Paul Riopelle. Not only did he have two exhibitions at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, he met the incredible Abstract Expressionist painter Joan Mitchell in Paris who would become an enduring companion of the artist. By the 1950s, Riopelle had moved away from traditional styles of painting and began working with a palette knife, creating what came to be known as his “mosaic” paintings for which he is most recognised. These paintings were created by layers of paint applied with an angular palette knife in a structured and cohesive way, like the tiles of a mosaic. Sans Titre is a remarkable example of this new way of working.

Riopelle was connected to the Surrealists, but found more kinship with a group of artists from Quebec looking to break away from the stifling artistic and cultural conventions of their day in the conservative province. While studying with Paul Émile Borduas at the École du Meuble, Riopelle signed the “Refus Global” (Total Refusal) manifesto in 1948. So began the group of rebel artists named the “Automatists” who subscribed to an automatic way of working similar to the Surrealists, in which they acted on impulse while creating their artworks.

La Fenice (1965) - Sorel Etrog

By 1965, Ertrog had been living in Canada for 3 years. He was born in Romania and came of age under Nazi occupation. His family were Jewish and made a modest living in the city of Iaşi. His father Moriţ opened a restaurant and supported his family despite harsh times. Etrog’s grandfather was a carpenter and he was fond of a local bookshop owner who leant books to the community and painted in his free time. A coup in 1940 saw the Romanian government align itself with the Nazis, leading to an increase in deadly anti-Semitism. Etrog’s father was one of the only male survivors of the devastating 1941 Iaşi Pogrom, which decimated the city’s Jewish community. 

La Fenice refers to a phoenix, a mythical creature that is constantly reborn. The phoenix is found in many mythic traditions, from ancient Egypt to Greece, and is now best known as a metaphor for emerging from immense hardship and  rising from the ashes. In many ways, Etrog’s sculpture may be read as a manifestation of his family’s survival of the Holocaust and Soviet Occupation. It also speaks to the larger struggle and resurgence of the Jewish community after the Holocaust and countless Pogroms predating the Second World War. The sculpture’s resemblance to a sword also recalls many mythic traditions that use swords as a metaphor for one’s divine purpose in life, such as Virgil’s Aenied or the Arturian legend of the sword in the stone.

Two Hemispheres - Norval Morrisseau (circa 1979)

Two Hemispheres is in many ways an archetypal Morrisseau painting, including all the imagery the artist is revered for. Morrisseau’s woodlands style emphasises the human, animal and abstract forms that have become closely associated with the artist. The work depicts two figures standing together surrounded by loons on a bright red background with thick black outlines. The “maang” (loon in Ojibwe) is said to have inspired the sounds of flutes in ancient Ojibwe mythology. In the bottom right corner, Morrisseau signs his work with the name that was given to him in a healing ceremony at 19, Copper Thunderbird.

Pender Harbour - Walter Joseph Phillips

Walter Joseph Phillips was majorly influenced by late 19th century British Watercolourists and a group of contemporary printmakers who combined the techniques and visual traditions of the Japanese ukiyo printmakers with the British watercolour tradition. Pender Harbour is an incredible work that demonstrates how Phillips adapted the tendencies of the British Woodcut movement of the early 20th century into a uniquely Canadian context. Alongside York Boats, Lake Winnipeg (1930), Pender Harbour is an exquisite example of Phillips leaning into the features of Japanese prints more so than British landscape watercolours. In this work, Phillips is utterly confident in his rendering of his subject matter, which is emphasised by the use of negative space and asymmetrical compositiom, similar to that of Hiroshige’s harbour and seascapes from the 19th century.