Lot 33
MAURICE GALBRAITH CULLEN, R.C.A.
Provenance:
W.R. Watson, Westmount, Quebec
The Estate of Claire Watson Fisher, Victoria, British Columbia
Literature:
Sylvia Antoniou, Maurice Cullen, 1866-1934, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, 1982, page 41.
Exhibited:
300 Years of Canadian Art, The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1967, no. 226.
Note:
Legendary art dealer, William Watson, to whom this painting belonged, and whose gallery was situated on St. Catherine Street in Montreal from 1921 until his retirement in 1958, gave Cullen his first show in 1923 and did so annually until the 1934 Cullen Retrospective held just months before the artist’s death.
Antoniou writes: “Watson’s support and promotion of the artist’s Laurentian landscapes played an important role in Cullen’s production.” A demand rose for the Laurentian paintings and as Watson said: ”He (Cullen) painted very slowly and I would have to put paintings aside collecting them for a year, to have enough to make an exhibition.”
According to a typed label on the stretcher, this work was painted in St. Marguerite.