Maurice Cullen. The Bird Shop, St. Lawrence Street, c. 1920.The Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo © AGO./Supplied
The Quebec artist Maurice Cullen would paint outdoors year-round and was well known for his winter scenes, like this snowy Montreal streetscape created around 1920. At the end of an afternoon in early winter – it’s dusk but the shops are still open – a weary sleigh driver and his hard-working horse pull their last load up the Saint-Laurent Boulevard. Through a veil of falling snow, his solitary figure is silhouetted against the bright shop windows that offer conviviality and commerce to the hurrying pedestrians, heads bent against the weather.
The picturesque scene was already becoming quaint when Cullen depicted it: That horse and sleigh would soon be replaced by a delivery truck. And, as the Group of Seven was being formed down the road in Toronto, Cullen’s impressionistic style, partly influenced by the art he had seen in France 30 years earlier, would be succeeded by bolder approaches.
The painting’s title, The Bird Shop, St. Lawrence Street, may seem a bit mysterious since the lit windows provide only the slightest hint of colourful things for sale – and the street had officially become a boulevard in 1905. Researchers have identified the pet store’s location on the east side of Saint-Laurent south of Sherbrooke Street in a building demolished in the 1980s.
Today, the painting subtly evokes the spirit of the winter holidays, juxtaposing the lonely worker in the dark and cold with the promise of light, warmth and human company. Kate Taylor