Lot 170: Maurice Galbraith Cullen 1866 - 1934 Canadian

Maurice Galbraith Cullen 1866 - 1934 Canadian pastel on paper on board The North River 18 x 23 1/2 inches 45.7 x 59.7 centimeters signed and on verso certified by Cullen Inventory #1206 Provenance:Les ateliers RC, Paris Dominion Gallery, Montreal Galerie d'Art Vincent, Ottawa Private Collection, Toronto Maurice Cullen's began to use pastel during his time in Paris around 1892, when he learned the technique from Philippe Roll. He used it to the end of his life and had a great regard for this medium, of which he was a master. Cullen often visited the Laurentians to sketch, considering winter to be the season that held the most beauty, and in the early 1920s built a cabin at Lac Tremblant to immerse himself in the landscape that meant so much to him. One of the great themes of his oeuvre was that of rivers such as the Cache and the North, their dark and mysterious waters flowing through the snow, their edges tinged with ice, their shores ringed with dark evergreens. Cullen did not follow the fractured brush-stroke and fragmentation of colour of the French Impressionists, but instead used pure colours. Cullen's snow is never just white but, as here, tinged with delicate tones of pink, mauve and blue. Particularly exquisite are the strokes of turquoise under the trees, radiantly cool, in this superb Laurentian pastel.