A retrospective overview highlighting Fortin’s contribution as a painter, etcher, watercolourist, and pastelist; a landscape artist that left an indelible imprint on Quebec’s collective imagination. Marc-Aurèle Fortin: The Experience of Colour, was the first major museum exhibition devoted to the artist in more than 45 years, and featured over hundred paintings, prints, drawings and watercolours produced between 1909 and 1949. The exhibition presented views of Sainte-Rose, Île d’Orléans and the Charlevoix, Gaspé and Saguenay regions, depictions of the Quebec countryside of his day. It also included a lesser-known but equally important aspect of his work: cityscapes. These urban views prove him a keen observer of the irreversible changes that modernity was bringing to Montreal in the 1920s and 30s.

Produced by the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec