Lot 80
HENRIETTA MABEL MAY, A.R.C.A.
Additional Images
Literature:
Evelyn Walters, The Women of Beaver Hall: Canadian Modernist Painters, Dundurn, Toronto, 2005.
Note:
Henrietta Mabel May received her training, like so many other noted Canadian painters of the 1920s and 1930s, under William Brymner at the Art Association of Montreal. Following this, she and fellow artist Emily Coonan undertook further studies abroad and were inspired by the works of the Impressionists. The Summer Party is a reflection of this inspiration.
In the 1920s, May painted in New England, Baie St. Paul near the Lower St. Lawrence, and in Hudson, Quebec, where her family kept a cottage until the Depression. The Summer Party likely captures an afternoon in Hudson along the banks of the lower Ottawa River. In the decade that followed, May’s painting became markedly darker, making The Summer Party a brilliant vestige of her early career.