Lot 561
Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, RCA (1869-1937), Canadian
Additional Images
Provenance:
Private Collection, Montreal, QC;
Private Collection, Montreal, QC, acquired ca. 1910;
By descent Private Collection, Saint John, NB, acquired ca. 1965;
By descent Private Collection, Fredericton, NB
Note:
This striking portrayal of a wild duck, Untitled (Common Goldeneye) (1897), is achingly beautiful, a reminder of transience, and a painting that goes to the heart of Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté’s creativity. Waddington’s is pleased to offer this incisive and insightful work for the first time in more than a century.
Unlike the smaller Nature morte au canard (1897) that has been in the collection of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec since 1947 and shows a common goldeneye (colloquially named Whistler) in a dorsal view, this larger ventral view is much more dynamic. Suspended by its right foot, legs and wings splayed, the composition has vertical and intersecting diagonal tensions that arrest and maintain attention. Enriching the composition, Suzor-Coté’s fine application of paint in Untitled (Common Goldeneye) unabashedly describes texture, volume, space and light. Audaciously, the celadon wall behind the duck is undifferentiated except for the slight shading from top-left to bottom-right in accord with the painting’s unseen source of light. Suzor-Coté carefully layered glazes to give the painting its extraordinary luminosity, and added impasto to the lofty belly plumage to denote texture. Further to his skill and achievement with this painting, the white feathers have a slight tint of celadon and the blacks have additions of green indicative of Suzor-Coté’s close observation. In this work Suzor-Coté struck the centre between the truth of the thing he set upon to paint and the richness of its evocation as a painting.[1]
This exemplary work of art has passed through multiple generations of an Eastern Canadian family. Well cared for and much loved since its acquisition in the early 20th-century, it remained unexhibited and unpublished. While the absence of unequivocal documentation prevents us from asserting it, published accounts of an 1897 painting titled Wild Duck (Whistler), exhibited at the 1898 Spring Exhibition of the Art Association of Montreal, suggest that Untitled (Common Goldeneye) is indeed the same work.[2] If this is the case, this helps us understand the Montreal Herald critic who, in his review of the 1898 exhibition, described Wild Duck (Whistler) as “one of the cleverest and most remarkable studies in the exhibition.”[3]
[1] Didier Prioul,”'Laurier Lacroix, Suzor-Coté, lumière et matière, catalogue d'exposition, Ottawa, Musée des beaux-arts du Canada; Québec, Musée du Québec. Montréal, Les Éditions de l'Homme, 2002, 383 p. Traduction anglaise par Neil MacWilliam sous le titre Suzor-Coté: Light and Matter," RACAR: Revue d'art canadienne Canadian Art Review, vol. 32, no. 1-2 (2007): 117. See also, Laurier Lacroix, Suzor-Coté: light and matter, (exh. cat.), trans. Neil MacMillan (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada; Quebec City, QC: Musée du Québec; Montreal: Les Éditions de l'Homme, 2003): p. 103.
[2] For example: "Spring Exhibition," Montreal Witness (2 April 1898); “Artists’ Work, Spring Exhibit,” The Star (Montreal, QC) (4 April 1898); “Art Exhibit Opens Today,” Montreal Herald (5 April 1898); “With the Artists.” The Gazette (Montreal QC) (5 April 1898); and "Spring Exhibition - Second Notice," Montreal Witness (9 April 1898).
[3] “Art Exhibit Opens Today,” Montreal Herald (5 April 1898).