A tribute to the Contemporary Art Society of Montreal

Two portraits of Gabrielle Borduas

The Contemporary Arts Society afforded Paul-Émile Borduas, the group’s first Vice-President, an important vehicle for disseminating his work. His portrait of Gabrielle, his wife, was shown in 1940 at the Society’s second exhibition at the Art Association of Montreal, under the simple title Portrait. At the time, the architect, designer and critic Marcel Parizeau gave an eloquent commentary on the work, underscoring the more refined decorative effect, expansive technique, feeling of intimacy and familiarity in the pose, and the colour and pattern of the dress, all lending it an easy poetry. John Lyman would reproduce the painting in his article on the exhibition that appeared in the magazine The Montrealer in December 1940.

In her portrait of Gabrielle painted the following year, Louise Gadbois conveys an equally decorative vision. The use of delicate pastel hues contrasts interestingly with the artist’s penchant for rapid execution, which adds strength of character to the model. In the two portraits, the penetrating black eyes and crossed arms of this seemingly sought-after model evoke at once openness and composure. A period frame was recently recycled and specially adapted to this new acquisition.

Nudes in figurative and abstract conceptions

Charles Daudelin exhibited with Montreal’s Contemporary Arts Society at the Dominion Gallery in 1943, 1944 and 1946, at Eaton’s in Toronto in 1945 and at the show later remounted for the Art Association of Montreal in 1946. He was one of the cohort of Francophone students whose work was first shown in the Society’s young artist category, and then those – in particular Borduas’s students at the École du meuble – who asserted themselves and changed the very makeup of the group in the face of mostly Modernist, figurative conceptions of art. Daudelin painted Odalisque, or The Sphinx in Paris in the spring of 1948, shortly after he had signed the Prisme d’Yeux manifesto. John Lyman exhibited Rose at that same time at the Art Association of Montreal’s 65th Spring Exhibition.

Moe Reinblatt, Self-portrait in a Green Fedora

From its beginnings in 1939, the Contemporary Arts Society included among its members artists from Montreal’s Jewish community, including Jack Beder, Alexander Bercovitch, Sam Borenstein, Eric Goldberg, Louis Muhlstock and Regina Seiden Goldberg, many of whom were regular exhibitors with the Society. In his case, Moe Reinblatt would take part in Art of Our Day in Canada, an exhibition the Society held at the Art Association of Montreal in late 1940, the only time it would present works by a wider group of Canadian artists who were not members. That show would also include art from the Jewish community’s Herman Heimlich, Harry Mayerovitch and Fanny Wiselberg.

The actual location for View from a Window, looking out on Mount Royal, and that of the side alleyway, where buildings with generic secondary facades overlap, was able to be found thanks to maps and aerial photos from the time, as well as a visit to the site, which has nevertheless considerably changed. Muhlstock would have captured his subject from the back window of a friend’s apartment in the Maplecourt, a newly constructed building at 3540 Durocher Street. In this painting, the artist depicts a built environment comprising a jumble of forms and flat areas of colour, emphasizing in the centre of the composition two trees that autumn has stripped of their leaves. A watercolour depicting an Old Tree was the first work by Muhlstock to have been acquired by the Art Association of Montreal, in 1939.