u/Gray-Jay-

French Impressionism was a relatively short-lived movement, but Impressionism as an international influence had a longer, more geographically diverse afterlife. While French art was already moving through Post-Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism, Impressionism spread widely, developing variants particular to different countries and landscapes.

Canadian Impressionism wasn’t France arriving late; it was more Impressionism transformed by place.

Take Maurice Cullen, one of the pioneers of Canadian Impressionism. Pioneer is maybe an odd term for an early 1900s impressionist but the local environment presented a different challenge: snow, ice, low winter sun, coloured shadows, and the shifting colours of winter light. Impressionism reconfigured around Canadian conditions and place.

The first image: Devil's River near Mont-Tremblant, 24 1/4 x 32 1/4, c. 1931, shows how far Cullen carried those ideas into the ‘30s. The Impressionist inheritance is there, in the broken colour of the clouds, coloured snow, reflected light, and blueish distance, but the landscape itself is painted in fine detail and seems carefully composed.

The second image: a tiny 6 × 7 oil, March on the Cache River, c. 1922, is closer to the immediacy of an Impressionist sketch. It’s not one of Cullen’s dazzling masterpieces, it’s a rough little sketch I picked up, but it’s harsh and intensely about place: snow and ice, dark snow-dusted woods, cold blue-green water and a rough shack that makes me shiver. The work was once owned by Cullen’s stepson, Edward Pilot.

Maw’s etching captures the Round Room at Eaton’s College Street. Maw was an architect and member of the Society of Canadian Painter-Etchers and Engravers (CPE).

Designed by Jacques Carlu, the Round Room is one of Canada’s outstanding Art Deco interiors. Lady Eaton was the driving force behind the project, and it crowned Eaton’s flagship store for nearly a half century. After Eaton’s bankruptcy it was saved from demolition and restored as The Carlu, now a private event venue and National Historic Site of Canada.

Prints I’ve collected showing local history through CPE members.

Samuel H. Maw - King Street, Toronto. Features Commerce Court, completed in 1931. It remained the tallest building in the British Empire until 1962.

Samuel H. Maw - Round Room, Eaton's College Street. The Round Room was a celebrated Art Deco dining space on the 7th floor of the former Eaton's College Street department store (1930). Now restored as a National Historic Site and event venue, The Carlu.

Nicholas Hornyansky - Snowbound downtown, Toronto (1938). Aquatint. Looking southwest from St Michael’s Cathedral. Features Commerce Court in the centre and The Royal York Hotel (1929) to its right.

Stanley F. Turner - Massey Music Hall (1919). National Historic Site.

Stanley F. Turner - Queen Street, Toronto (1922). Depicts the Orange Parade with Old City Hall and the clock tower in the background. During the 1920s, the Protestant Orange Order was at peak political power in Canada.

Owen Staples - Toronto from Ward’s Island.
Commerce Court and The Royal York Hotel in the distance.

A few photos spanning over 100 years of canoe art—from the largest private collection of original Canadian art featuring the canoe.

Watercolour