Lot 25: NORA FRANCES ELISABETH COLLYER FARMING VILLAGE,

NORA FRANCES ELISABETH COLLYER FARMING VILLAGE, EASTERN TOWNSHIPS, oil on canvas; signed; a finished painting of a Village in the Eastern Townships on the reverse (also signed) 25 ins x 27 ins; 62.5 cms x 67.5 cms

Literature: Barbara Meadowcroft, Painting Friends: The Beaver Hall Women Painters, Montreal, 1997. Evelyn Walters, The Women of Beaver Hall: Canadian Modernist Painters, Dundurn Press, Hamilton, 2005. Mary Macdonald Trudel (ed.), The Beaver Hall Group of Women Painters, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal, 2007.

Provenance: Private Collection, Montreal. Exhibited: Groupe Beaver Hall, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal, April, 2007, No.24. Also exhibited at Universite Bishop's, Knowlton Campus, Quebec, April, 2007, No.24.

Note: Collyer's parents were prominent members of the English Protestant society of Montreal and their wealth enabled Nora to study at the Art Association of Montreal under Maurice Cullen and William Brymner. Nora became a gifted educator and taught at the Art Assocation, as well as giving private classes. This canvas depicts subjects that the artist was known for, in particular, the Quebec countryside of the Eastern Townships where her family had a cottage called Hillcrest. Also nearby was the summer cottage called Strawberry Hill that Collyer owned on Lake Memphremagog. She obviously felt at home in the cozy villages and rolling hills of the Eastern Townships. Meadowcroft writes that Collyer's subjects are primarily the farms, orchards and fields and that she often makes a village or farm the focal point of the composition. Walters writes that these landscapes are known for their rich colour and soft rhythms of the rolling hills into which the farms and towns are nestled. In this work, the eye is drawn to the farming village and then gently down the furrowed field to the harrow disk plough in the foreground. The scene on the reverse of this canvas depicts a hill-side village. In particular, the sky is painted in Collyer's typical solid, wavy forms. Meadowcroft quotes Robert Ayer's review of the artist's 1964 solo exhibition at the Walter Klinkhoff Gallery: "She loves ripeness, the fatness of the land, the snugness of the villages in the hills, and celebrates them in full-bodied colour and easy, comfortable rhythms."