FOR a number of years Winslow Homer came to Quebec en route to the Tourilli Club preserves, where he and his brother had built a picturesque camp of their own on the shores of a beautiful lake. Fishing and hunting alternated with sketching or painting on Winslow’s part. Again it is the Grande Decharge that attracts him for the sport of the ouananiche, and for the exceedingly wild and rugged scenes of camp life and on the roaring river or placid lake. These have all been done. Isham says of this work : “To step from a dealer’s gallery into a room filled with his water colors, is as if one left pictures for reality ; you like them if you like the things representedthe mountain lakes, the dark, spruce lined shores, the clear thin air. It is only by making a special effort that his very great artistic merits are recognized, his draftsmanship, his composition, his color, and even when that is done, the tendency is to revert again to the indwelling spirit,the love for the strong, free life of men who fight in the open air against man, beast or the elements, the life that his great namesake sang in the days before history.”
He is a great marine painter as well, and he tells the story of storm beaten coast as but few men have done, with all its moods and tragedies.
In the great world of art, he occupies conspicuous place. He is a Bostonian by birth and a Cosmopolite by habit, but always the outdoor painter of the wild life of our continent wherever found.