Lot 509
John Geoffrey Caruthers Little, RCA (b. 1928), Canadian
Additional Images
Provenance:
Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal, QC;
Private Collection, Toronto, ON
Note:
Little painted Montreal’s Sherbrooke Street several times, referring to it as “one of the few really graceful streets in Canada.” [1] Though titled by the artist as having been painted from Guy Street, it appears as if Little was slightly further north on Sherbrooke, more precisely, on the corner of McKay Street. On the left hand side of the painting, the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul rises from behind a wintery tree, backgrounded by the distinctive French-inspired copper roof of the Le Château Apartments—home of Mordecai Richler—and the Standard Life building, painted in a watery blue.
The demolition of Montreal’s traditional architecture was a central preoccupation for the artist. Much of his work attempts to chronicle the city’s urban heritage before it disappears, seen by Little as an architectural “family album.” Sherbrooke Street was of particular concern for Little, who wrote that “it was once like a great banquet table with rich food and rare wines. Now someone’s put a ketchup bottle on the table, a bank that’s all flat and blue.” [2]
[1] Alan Klinkhoff, John Little: City Life From 1951 (Alan Klinkhoff Gallery: Toronto, 2017), 12.
[2] Klinkhoff, 105.