Lot 547
John Geoffrey Caruthers Little, RCA (b. 1928), Canadian
Additional Images
Provenance:
Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal, QC;
Private Collection, Toronto, ON
Note:
The demolition of Montreal’s traditional architecture was a central preoccupation for the Little, who was outspoken in his defence of old buildings—“the stuff that is really good to paint.” Much of his work attempts to chronicle the city’s urban heritage before it disappears, serving as an architectural “family album.”
While some of Little’s paintings bear a close resemblance to their present-day locations, Rue Marie-Anne at Drolet shows renovation’s toll on these city streets. The houses on the left side of the paintings have been razed to make way for a parking lot, while the houses on the right side have been either renovated or rebuilt. The quintessentially angled Montreal façade still stands today— now occupied by a French restaurant— as does the cupola of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Catholic Church which peeks up behind it.