Additional Images

Provenance:

Collection of Patrick Martin Wickham, Quebec, commissioned in 1916
Private Collection, Ontario, by descent from the above

Literature:

Daniel Drouin, Louis-Philippe Hébert Louis-Philippe Hébert (Quebec: Musée du Québec et Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montréal, 2001), repro. 26, 249, 256.

Note:

Hébert’s interest in Indigenous subjects dated to his earliest childhood, when the young artist found himself captivated by dramatic tales of life in the wilderness. In his autobiography, he recalls stories told to him by Jacques Boutin, a former employee of the trading companies, as well as books including The Jesuit Relations, and James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826). [1]

Between 1886 and 1894, Hébert was commissioned to make ten bronze sculptures for the Parliament Building in Quebec City, whose facade was meant to be a pantheon of historic Quebecers. Perhaps the best known of these is La famille d'Abénaquis (Halte dans la forêt) / The Abenaki Family (Halt in the Forest), intended to pay homage to the first inhabitants of this country.

Algonquins, 1916, was commissioned by Patrick Martin Wickham, an insurance executive and mayor of St. Lambert, who became close friends with Hébert. Wickham later asked Hébert to produce smaller versions of select sculptures from the National Assembly Building’s commission. Hébert agreed to cast six small bronzes of Pêcheur à la Nigogue and The Algonquins. This piece is one of the original six made for the Wickham collection and has remained in the Wickham family until now.

In order to perfect his bronze work technique, Hébert made several trips to Paris. In his studio there, he began working on the large clay model for The Abenaki Family, which is the basis for reduced-scale work seen here, Algonquins. Algonquins was submitted to the Exposition Universelle in Paris, where it won a bronze medal in August 1889, a first for a Canadian artist. [2] He also exhibited the sculpture at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1890. Other works from the edition are held in the permanent collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec.

[1] Daniel Drouin, Louis-Philippe Hébert Louis-Philippe Hébert (Quebec: Musée du Québec et Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montréal, 2001), 246
[2] Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montréal, Accessed October 15, 2025. https://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/works/56242/.