Farm at Sainte-Rose

With its traditional houses nestled under the foliage of majestic elms, the importance of the Sainte-Rose landscape in Fortin’s work is well known. Indeed, collectors and critics would make the iconic elm the symbol of his oeuvre. In Farm at Sainte-Rose, the great trees fill most of the canvas with strokes of green, which do not accurately reproduce elm leaves but give movement to the surface of the painting. Between the branches, fluffy clouds echo the masses of foliage. This subjective vision stamps the artist’s work as modern within the Canadian context, even though his subjects and more conventional discourse distance him from modernism. Fortin considered this painting one of his masterpieces.