MY
FIRST AQUAINTANCE and subsequent friendship with
Clarence Gagnon arose from my interest in etching
and like methods of artistic expression. I had
indulged that taste as far as possible in Boston
and New York, in London, Paris and Holland. When
I came to look at Gagnon’s etchings it was
not with an altogether uneducated eye and my admiration
for the best of them was founded on appreciation
of what the Great Masters had done in that kind.
He is one of the Masters himself and his etchings
will remain as one of our precious possessions.
Admiration
from a distance gradually broadened, first to
correspondence, then to acquaintance, then to
friendship. Beginning in the usual way with expression
of delight on my part, and his reply of thanks,
I find him writing at last in an off-hand way,
“That one of Mont-Saint-Michel is the best
one I ever scratched.” Did he mean best
from a technical point of view or did he recognize
an imaginative intention fully realized; the sordid
foreground and beyond that the vision of the “Mont”
appearing far removed from the earthly in a timeless
atmosphere? I must not be led into such speculation
or into description and praise of my favourites
amongst these plates; whoever owns the least of
them has a treasure. He gave up the practice of
etching all too soon; we have only thirty-four.
It could not have been from any wish to shirk
the labour of creation and of printing, (he was
a master of that subtle branch of the art), for
he was an intense and untiring craftsman in whatever
he undertook. He never entirely gave up the idea
of resuming the needle for I find him writing
me on May 4th, 1925, “I am going to start
some etchings very soon.” But other interests
pressed upon him and he “scratched”
no more etchings.
I
think he was diverted by the opportunity to indulge
in colour-printing when he was urged to illustrate
Le Grand Silence Blanc. Here was a chance
of trying another medium, of solving strange problems;
and he directed all his energies to cope with
the new difficulties to the neglect of both etching
and painting. That might be entirely regretted
if one could overlook one of his finest achievements,
the illustrations of Maria Chapdelaine;
the unique originals and the colour-prints that
transmit as much of their charm as can be conveyed
by a mechanical process. Still it is to be regretted
for it reduced the number of his canvases and
we could ill afford any lessening in that most
important and characteristic activity. However,
we have in these illustrations a series lovely
in design and colour; and they have a value, beyond
but not above that, as a social document. Incident,
character, landscape live on Hémon’s
pages; each reader makes his own pictures, if
he is capable of making any. But Hémon’s
landscape, incident and character had actuality;
they had form, breath, beauty. Gagnon captured
and fixed them for us, and, within the limits
of the book, we have French Canada, with its arduous
life, made real with affectionate and humorous
sympathy. Illustrations can go no farther. Gagnon’s
knowledge of his people and his records of their
land and life were drawn upon but not exhausted.
Before he entered the thorny path of illustrator
he looked forward to a life in his own country
and to the work he had planned for himself there.
That work might have ended in a complete depiction
of Quebec folk and landscape but the result could
not have been more truthful or more beautiful.
The
production of the book was achieved only by the
most intense application and by the constant exercise
of patience with the delays and evasions of the
printers. The irritations wore the artist down
and experience enabled him to give an emphatic
NO to renewed demands from publishers for illustrations
to other books. I saw evidences of that strife
when I was with him in Paris and it gave me a
lasting impression of his power of complete absorption
in the task. That, I think, was his essential
quality; it involved a fundamental thoroughness,
a determination to understand and control, and
a stubborn reliance on himself, governed by a
reverence for tradition. It gave peculiar tone
to all he did, gardening, fishing, encouraging
handicrafts, or arranging exhibitions of Canadian
Art in Paris or London; striving hard and unselfishly
that the work of his fellow Canadians should be
well and truly presented. In criticism how generous
and just he could be! Writing me from London about
the Wembley Exhibition 1925 he says: “The
Tom Thomsons are very fine, I wish I had painted
them! He is for me the greatest Canadian artist
that we have had so far. I wish I could afford
to own one, and I envy those that do; only I fear
that some who own his works do not realize what
beautiful things they have.” He ran away
from the Grand Opening of the Exhibition; he writes,
“I hate these grand ‘pow-pows’”;
it was a characteristic action.
The
thoroughness I have mentioned led him to investigate
the many problems of his two arts and the search
for solutions,—in etching, methods of printing,
paper and ink—in painting, the quality of
colours and the material and preparation of canvases.
In one of his letters, (April 29th, 1921) he writes,
“It was only a few weeks ago that I found
out after six year experimenting and analyzing
what is wrong with artists’ colours made
since the beginning of the war and what is more
satisfactory to me is that I have found out what
to do to make them just like the pre-war make.
In future I shall grind my own colours and will
not be fooled by these colour-makers who are after
all nothing but chemists and artists who have
failed. They are in for profit and bother very
little about what the artist really needs.”
Two years later, (October 8th, 1923), he writes
“now that I am grinding my own colours and
preparing my own canvases I am working hard. It
is heavenly to work with good materials.”
In 1924 he writes of working like a slave, painting
during the day and grinding colours at night.
This
sovereign quality of thoroughness followed him
to garden and trout-stream. I find him rejoicing
over an improvised irrigation system at Baie St.
Paul. He saved his garden during a drought, “by
a system of irrigation of my own. The ‘habitants’
at first thought I was inventing something new
and had very little faith in my system; but they
soon changed when they saw the result.”
I have seen him fishing in Norway, with great
patience, in what he called a “trouty”
stream. I never saw him catch a fish but the failure
was not chargeable to faults in his tackle or
to lack of any skill.
How
rich was his life in Nature and Art! It was his
desire to keep close to Nature and to work under
that influence. He writes of Vermeer, “faithful
to Nature he was. He went to the very best source
of inspiration.” For himself that was the
ideal; “eventually I will settle around
Baie St. Paul to carry on the work I have planned
for myself. I want to give up this vagabond life
and build a small home of my own and have a garden.”
He wrote these words in Paris in a time of great
turmoil in France, political and economic. It
would not have been the retreat to Nature of a
personality baffled by the seeming confusions
and futilities of modern life. His comments on
the situation in France were shrewd and penetrating
and he could have taken his part anywhere, under
any circumstances but it would have been a conscious
effort. His natural bent, his delight were in
other and simpler things. Looking at the life
around him, where it came close to his own artistic
standards, he was alive to the cupidity and unscrupulousness
of a certain class in Paris art dealers, to the
ugly and worthless work of many French painters
and to the gullibility of the people who were
deceived by both.
When
I consider all that he accomplished and the great
creative impulse from which it came, always, in
the end I find myself thinking of him as a friend
and companion. I see him sturdy and self-reliant
with a temperate but intense outlook on life.
A character true to his race and its finest traditions;
not to be deceived by appearances and impulsive
only when conditions were sharply defined between
what he thought right or wrong. Deep in his nature
there was a sweet fount of merriment which had
constant play, and which invigorated and varied
the conduct of his life. I like to remember him
as he talked and laughed, or laughed and talked;
such a mingling was the sound of words and laughter;
and the words were always honest, humorous and
full of good things and the laughter was without
malice. |
