Death of the painter René Gagnon

Saguenay painter René Gagnon died this Saturday in his home in L’Anse-de-Roche, on the edge of his beloved fjord, following cancer. The 93-year-old artist was renowned for his luminous, energetic and soothing paintings depicting the beauty of Laurentian.

Eric Clement
The Press

“René had felt stomach aches just before the holiday season,” explains the artist’s agent, Marc Durand. He was then put on morphine, before being admitted to the Chicoutimi hospital for surgery. But they discovered that the cancer was not benign. He then learned that he was at the end of his life. His wife, Claire-Hélène Hovington, released him from the hospital, because it was out of the question that he died there. He was installed at home, in a medical bed near the bay window so that he could watch the Saguenay. He died at 6 a.m. this Saturday, surrounded by his loved ones, looking at his Saguenay. »

Passionate about the Laurentian landscape, René Gagnon loved to paint with a knife, in the silence of nature. The knife reminded him of the hand and allowed him to play almost carnally with the material, a pleasure for him. While finding the colors that suited his mood and of course, the landscape. With bucolic renderings, scenes with an imperturbable, harmless and tranquil aspect.

“It’s the magic that operates,” he said to The Press, in 2015. I turn around my painting and I sometimes paint upside down, which sometimes gives more interesting drawings in terms of structures. »

He painted lonely spruce trees, ragged, radiant skies, coastal vistas, seemingly lifeless lakes, northern lights and of course our winters. With canvases where snow is everywhere, “true” whites, impressions of intense or humid cold.

With his bushy hair and eyebrows, his trapper’s hands and the weathered face of a guy who had seen snow, René Gagnon was strong in friendship, talented and hardworking. In his youth, he had frequented the greatest of the time. Ozias Leduc, Riopelle, Cosgrove, Pellan and Marc-Aurèle Fortin, who changed the course of his life.

“It was Marc-Aurèle, when he came to paint near our farm in the summer, who influenced me the most, he told us. By his intelligence, his way of seeing space and harmonies, by his light. He was a genius painter. For me, it’s the biggest. For a huge watercolor, he was asking $2.50 at the time! My father had no money to buy it. This is what gave me the taste to paint and to become an artist. »

Family obligations led the young René Gagnon to work in factories, notably at Alcan, while continuing his apprenticeship in painting. His uncle René Bergeron was an art dealer, but that didn’t make things any easier for him. On the contrary. With his non-conformist walk and an “above average” ego, he didn’t get the recognition in the art world he had hoped for at the start of his career.

He still managed to exhibit in New York in the 1960s and then in Paris in the 1970s. But each time he returned to his five children and his boreal forest. “To find excursions on foot or by snowmobile in order to go and paint alone in the great outdoors,” he said. I started traveling the North on foot and by canoe and settled in L’Anse-de-Roche, which René Richard had discovered and where Marc-Aurèle painted. It is still one of the most beautiful spaces in the world, recognized by UNESCO! »

The fact of not having belonged to any school did not prevent him from carving out an honorable place for himself. In the 90s he toured Asia, exhibiting in Manila, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Kuala Lumpur. He spent several months in Malaysia at the official invitation of the country.

His Montreal gallery presented some of the paintings made during a stay in southern Morocco in 2004. His style and interiority lent themselves well to the desert. René Gagnon was an artist of appeasement with restful works. “They release this moment of reflection, of concentration, this quest for composition that manifests itself in the silence of nature or the studio, we wrote in 2015. They reveal, in any case, an artist devoted to his country of colors, smells, vigor and harmonies. »

“René was also a force of nature,” adds Marc Durand. He never stopped. Last summer, at the age of 93, he created a small lake on his estate so that people in wheelchairs could come and fish for trout. He always had plans. He painted until the end. At the end of November, we presented Pandemic paintings at the gallery. Fifteen new paintings painted since the beginning of 2020. Paul Desmarais, the father, was very fond of the works of René Gagnon. There were some in the Desmarais family home. »

“A great gaze went out, to see from higher up, the beauty of the world, of the spruce trees and the fjords, of which he held the golden rule. […] Thanks Rene! “wrote Marc Durand, in tribute to the painter, his friend.