Helen McNicoll | An Impressionist Journey | Kathy McNenly
Although I am not an impressionist in style, I have always been an admirer of the impressionists, and I certainly use some of what they have taught us as painters. Their contributions to painting have been a very important part of the evolution in how we see and express the world around us. Most importantly to the impressionists, was taking painting out of the studio and exploring the true expression of nature’s colour, light and mood through direct observation. Paint needed to be manipulated in different ways to come closer to reflecting the complexities of light, colour and atmosphere.
There are some impressionists who rise above the rest. Helen McNicoll is one such painter. She was not only a capable colourist and painter, but also a proficient draughtsman. Drawing is sometimes overlooked by painters in this genre. But I feel that she is the complete package. In her short life, she produced some beautiful paintings. I think she is an artist worthy of a place in art history.
Helen McNichol (1879-1915) was one of the most important impressionist painters in Canada and achieved a great deal of success in her time. Her painting career lasted barely over a dec-ade, but her contribution to the promotion of the style of impressionism in Canada is signifi-cant.
An Impressionist Journey an exhibition of 65 works by Helen McNicoll, is the first Québec retrospective in a century of the Canadian impressionist painter's work.
Helen McNichol was born in Toronto in 1879 and grew up in Montreal. At the age of 2 she contracted scarlet fever and lost her hearing. Her parents were very supportive of her creativity and being from the upper class, provided her with the means and connections to pursue an education in the arts.
As a young student, Helen studied at the Art Association of Montreal. She received training, initially, in the tradi-tional, academic process. She would study under William Brymner, who upon return from training in Paris, would have exposed her to the principles of both naturalistic and impressionist plein air painting. Brymner, in his time as director of the AAM, encouraged many women including those in the Beaver Hall group, to pursue careers as professional artists.
In 1902, Helen travelled to England to study at the Slade School of Art. This school was renowned for it's treatment of women students as equals and was quite progressive in it's time.
In 1905, she would attend a Cornish art school in St.lves run by a Swedish painter, Julius Olsson and his assistant Algernon Talmage. Olsson was quite quite harsh with his students, who were mostly women. He expected them to paint outside in all weather, carry heavy equipment and would often reduce them to tears with his critiques of their work. Helen found his assistant Algernon, more to her liking for teaching approach and admired his work. Emily Carr was also a alumni of this school and like Helen, admired Algernon Talmage. He taught them to see the "sunlight in the shadows". After her time in St Ives, her paintings would always have an airy, sunny quality to them.
It was during this time at St Ives that Helen would meet her best friend and companion for the rest of her life.
Dorothea Sharp was also an accomplished impressionist painter and would become an invaluable travel companion for Helen. Being deaf, was a barrier for communication and Dorothea would be able to secure models and navigate the difficulties of communication for her. They would often paint the same subjects side by side.
They would travel and paint extensively in France, Italy and Belgium. Although she would live abroad for the remainder of her life, she returned often, to Montreal, where she exhibited her paintings in the AAM shows as well as the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts and the Ontario Society of Artists.
Dorothea and Helen would be together working, travelling and exhibiting until her untimely death in 1908 at the age of 35, due to complications from diabetes.
I was aware of Helen McNichol's work, but had only seen a few paintings that are hung in the National Gallery in Ottawa, and art museums in Montreal and Quebec City. But seeing so many of her works, including many in the private collection of Pierre Lassonde, was incredible. Her work is both beautiful and technically very good. She is a true master of impressionist painting.
The show coincides with a Fake or Fortune episode from the BBC, which follows it's art experts proving that a recently found painting his one of her lost works.