La croix du chemin

From 1936 to 1948, Marc-Aurèle Fortin travelled across the province of Quebec, discovering places such as the city of Quebec and the Charlevoix region. These journeys inspired him to create numerous watercolors, which he later reworked into oil paintings in his Montreal studio. In *La croix de chemin*, Fortin likely transformed the summer scene of his watercolor into a winter scene. In his large paintings on a black background, light seems to emanate from the colorful houses, with the pigment itself becoming a light source, especially the snow covering the roofs.

This painting is featured in the book Marc-Aurèle Fortin: l’homme à l’œuvre by Guy Robert. The author illustrates that, for Fortin, the rural house can have several dimensions. The first is anecdotal: the artist highlights various architectural styles, such as roof shapes, gables, chimneys, and roadside crosses typical of Quebec villages. The second dimension is graphic, where Fortin distorts the shapes of houses, moving away from mere landscape representation. Finally, the affective dimension reveals Fortin's nostalgia and regret for a rural way of life that is gradually disappearing. Fortin explicitly expressed this sentiment in 1945: "Rural populations have no artistic taste. They are grossly ignorant and do not understand that what makes a village charming, what gives it its character and attracts visitors, are these ancient houses built by their ancestors. Instead of preserving them carefully, keeping them as they are, they strive to modernize them, giving them a contemporary appearance."¹

Fortin was not alone in expressing this viewpoint; Marius Barbeau and Jean-Paul Lemieux, among others, would voice similarly strong opinions a few years later.

¹ ROBERT, Guy, Marc-Aurèle Fortin , l’homme à l’œuvre, extrait des propos de Marc-Aurèle Fortin, cité d’abord par Albert Laberge et repris par l’auteur, page 121,

Learn More about Marc-Aurèle Fortin >