Morrice and Lyman in the Company of Matisse in the Company of Matisse

This exhibit organized by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec proposes to examine the seminal dialogue which took place between the founding painters of modern Canadian art, James Wilson Morrice (1865-1924) and John Lyman (1886-1967), with Henri Matisse (1869-1954).

These two Montreal artists frequented the French master at the turn of the 20th century and in its early decades, in France and North Africa. These encounters proved to be decisive not only for the development of their respective pictorial expressions, but also for the entry of Canadian painting into modernity. The exhibit will feature approximately a dozen paintings by the French master as well as some 80 works by James Wilson Morrice and John Lyman: these portraits, nudes, Canadian landscapes and scenes from Venice, North Africa as well as the North of France, the West Indies and the Caribbean share an unmistakable common quest for light and an exceptional mastery of colors. Visitors will be invited to embark on an sensuous adventure taking them to the origins of modern Canadian art.

The exhibition is organized by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, with the generous support of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the National Gallery of Canada.