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I'm just back from a fantastic art-trip, to a historic gem of a place only about 3 hours from Montréal. My husband had mentioned last weekend that he wouldn't mind "going away somewhere for a few days", as we hadn't been anywhere since last fall. I quickly replied that there were two art exhibitions that I'd have loved to see this summer, in Québec City. Within an hour we'd mapped out our plans, chosen dates, and booked a hotel. Luckily for me, my now-retired sweetheart also loves museums!

We chose to stay within Old Québec, an area that many consider to be a living museum; the first North American city to be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in 1985.
Old Québec (Vieux-Québec in French) is the most intact fortified town north of Mexico, and has preserved its colonial architecture for over 400 years.
For those of you who adore architecture or history, I'll be posting soon about the stunning buildings we saw and visited during this trip.

As for the two art exhibitions on my wish-list for this getaway, the first was "Helen McNicoll: An Impressionist Journey", at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Québec's provincial museum of fine arts). There's still plenty of time to visit this retrospective, which doesn't wrap up until January 5, 2025.

I'd been aware of Helen McNicoll's paintings for about twenty years, but it wasn't until the 2020 publication of a book - and accompanying lectures from the Art Institute of Canada - that I truly fell under the spell of her luminous work.
That book was "Helen McNicoll: Life & Work" by Samantha Burton. If I could choose one single sentence to summarize it, this would be it:
"McNicoll maintained a strong attachment to the fundamental principles of 'pure' Impressionism and pushed the style further than any other Canadian artist." ~ Samantha Burton.

From the online introduction to the book:
"Born in Toronto and raised in Montreal, Helen McNicoll (1879-1915) achieved a great deal of international success in a brief career that lasted just over a decade.
Although deaf from the age of two, McNicoll did not let personal hardship deter her from a career in art.

After training at the Art Association of Montreal, McNicoll moved to London, England, to pursue her passion as she travelled extensively through Europe.
McNicoll relied on lip-reading to navigate through her life, and her art took on the unique perspective of an observer who understood isolation.
She quickly became renowned overseas and in Canada for her luminous canvases that engage with issues such as femininity and domesticity, rural labour, fashion, and tourism.

Elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1913 and the Royal Canadian Academy in 1914, McNicoll died in England in 1915 at the young age of 35...
Revered in her own day as technically advanced and "profoundly original," at the time of her death McNicoll had exhibited over seventy works in exhibitions in Canada and England".

My husband viewing Garden, by Helen McNicoll, 1913, with the full painting below:

In short, Helen McNicoll was one of the most important Impressionist artists in Canada, but was then somehow virtually forgotten after her far-too-young death.
This is acknowledged in the introduction to the current exhibition:

"Following a memorial exhibition dedicated to her life and work at the Art Association of Montreal in 1925, Helen McNicoll was virtually forgotten for close to 75 years.
The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec is proud to make a significant contribution toward rightly recognizing a woman artist who grew up in Montréal in the late 19th century and made a name for herself on the world stage.
McNicoll's art was widely celebrated during her lifetime: critics were unanimous in praising the exceptional treatment of light in her paintings and the immersive nature of her subjects.
She was elected as an associate member of the Royal Society of British Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and her too-brief career greatly increased the recognition of... Canadian art on both sides of the Atlantic.
Representing modernity through her luminous Impressionist style and her timeless subjects, McNicoll's paintings invite us to imagine travelling the world alongside the artist.
Adopting this viewpoint, Helen McNicoll: An Impressionist Journey explores the outer worlds that the artist recreated in pencil and paint, as well as the inner worlds she navigated, examining themes of female independence and fulfillment, personal and professional risk-taking, and friendship.
Through more than 65 objects, ... this journey offers a fulsome overview and new considerations of the artist's oeuvre. It is the first exhibition... devoted to McNicoll in nearly 100 years."
~ Exhibition Introduction, "Helen McNicoll: An Impressionist Journey", at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Aug 2024.

The best way to share my passion for this artist is through her own brushstrokes, so I'm sharing some of my snapshots from the exhibition along with their descriptions; I was pleasantly surprised that photography was permitted within this retrospective. So I'm posting a few of my photos of this show today, several more next week, then I'll write about the historic architecture and soul of Old Québec - along with the second of my wish-list exhibitions: "Rembrandt - Etchings from the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen" (also at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, but on until September 2, 2024 and with no photography permitted).

The Apple Gatherer c.1911, Oil on canvas, Art Gallery of Hamilton (Ontario):
"When this work was exhibited in 1911, the Montreal press extolled its radiance: "[it] is one of those delightfully sunshiny pictures of which Miss McNicoll is now an almost perfect master.
The sunlight filtering through the trees, and flickering upon the figure and the ground, is very happily translated."
As exemplified here, McNicol's mature painting style blended Impressionism and plein-air Naturalism:
"[all of her] canvasses possess the same quality of open-air sunshine, disarming all thoughts of labor in the studio."
As her skill developed, her ability to render sunlight convincingly became a hallmark of her style, no matter the subject depicted."
~ Image description, "Helen McNicoll: An Impressionist Journey", at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Aug 2024.

Sunny September, 1913, Oil on canvas, Pierre Lassonde Collection.
"A Toronto-based critic once designated McNicoll "a painter of sunshine [...] with delicious transparent shadows and wonderful reflections, of children in the field picking flowers, and of radiant gardens. She is essentially a 'plein air' artist."
~ Image description, "Helen McNicoll: An Impressionist Journey", at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Aug 2024.

If you're now suddenly planning a trip to Québec City, feel free to reach out via the "Leave a Comment!" or "Contact" sections of this website for some of our other favourite places to visit in Old Québec.