Additional Images

Provenance:

Dominion Gallery, Montreal, QC;
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal, QC;
Private collection, Montreal, QC

Note:

Paul Cézanne’s influence is clearly felt in this still life, as Goodridge Roberts hones in on “the precise quality of light and colour relationships, to evaluate carefully the impact of one shape upon the next.” [1] Roberts showed great sensitivity for colour. He would often allow one tone to dominate his compositions, so as to impart a strong sense of atmosphere. Working alla prima, the artist relied on colour to enhance this sense of harmony and unify compositions made in a single sitting. Here, his deference to rich brown tones imparts a wonderfully warm feel, abetted by the long shadows cast by the objects on the table.

Roberts was a master of effortlessly capturing the characteristics of specific objects, always with great looseness and ease, and never overwrought. In harnessing quotidian objects, the artist “allows the spectator to shift his attention to what the artist has done to the colour, brushwork, and arrangement.” [2]

Roberts was known for making several paintings in one sitting, and would work “in one place for long stretches, with only slight shifts of the point of view, using the same jugs and pots over and over again. And the same oranges and lemons, and flowers, even if they have withered….” [3] Still lifes were often made by the artist in winter, when he was unable to paint outdoors.

It is worth noting that Roberts often included books of poetry in his still lifes, a nod to both his personal and familial proclivities. Roberts was known to both read and write poetry when not painting, eschewing books on fine art. His father, Theodore, used to tell his son that it was writing, not painting, which was the Roberts family art, and would encourage him in that direction instead—advice that went unheeded by this master painter. [4]

(1) James Borcoman, Goodridge Roberts, A Retrospective, (Ottawa: The National Gallery of Canada, 1969), 37.
(2) Borcoman, 31.
(3) Borcoman, 23.
(4) Borcoman, 34.