The Globe’s annual Christmas painting: Rivière du Gouffre, Baie St. Paul

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In the depths of a Canadian winter, there is a February day when the sun at noon is finally high enough to melt some snow. It is that new brightness that Clarence Gagnon represented in his 1920 landscape Rivière du Gouffre, Baie St. Paul, part of the Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The artist observes the town from across the river, which runs into the St. Lawrence in the Charlevoix region of eastern Quebec, and notes how the shadows that afternoon are lengthening but the light is still strong.

Gagnon, who grew up in rural Quebec but spent much of his career in Paris, was best known for winter views set in Charlevoix or the Laurentians. He would have painted this scene from life on a return to Canada. Yet it was created for the French market where there was a ready appetite for his exotic landscapes with sinuous shapes hiding their identities beneath white blankets flecked with blue.

In French, les neiges d’antan, or the snows of yesteryear, is a catchphrase for nostalgia, meaning “where has the past gone?” There is a tinge of something sadly bygone in this landscape both for the expatriate painter a century ago and for today’s viewer, so acutely aware of shrinking snow cover with all its implications. More obviously, Gagnon’s painting celebrates the beauty of winter, wonderfully mirrored in the running river’s open water. And, comforting thought in these particularly dark days, Rivière du Gouffre offers the promise of spring: the light now grows stronger with each passing day.

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