Lot 63
JEAN-PHILIPPE DALLAIRE
Additional Images
Provenance:
Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal
The Jean and Joseph Connolly Collection, Montreal
Literature:
Dallaire (exhibition catalogue), Musée du Québec, 1999, page 131 for Istamboul?, Un père vert, and En vert et contre tous, figs. 86, 87, 88, reproduced in colour.
Note:
Painted during his tenure as a draughtsman at the National Film Board of Canada in Ottawa (1952-1956), Dallaire’s Le Musicien exhibits playfulness and a lyrical quality that one might expect from animated film. The movement and style of this work is remarkably similar to a suite of three gouaches that Dallaire created in the same year, 1955, entitled Istamboul?, Un père vert, and En vert et contre tous. Given the engaging compositions of these works, it is difficult to believe that the artist was excluded from the first biennale of Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada, which took place during the very year of their creation.
Floating atop a richly coloured background, the figure’s jubilation is fully expressed by the energetic and vigorous lines that compose his form. With a hint of the carnivalesque, the festive yellow is punctuated by accents of white and blue and freckles of red. We are drawn to the vibrancy of Dallaire’s spectacle, compelled to listen, as if Le Musicien were a marionette performing solely for the eyes of the viewer.