La belle province takes its place at the McMichael gallery: See 50 works from master Quebec artists

theglobeandmail.com
Nov. 14, 2014
By James Adams

It’s a love story and a love-of-art story, and in the end the big beneficiary of that passion is going to be the famed McMichael Canadian Art Collection northwest of Toronto.

This weekend the gallery is announcing it will be the recipient of a bequest of some 50 paintings by master Quebec artists collected over 30-plus years by Hamilton-born, Toronto-based entrepreneur Robert E. Fitzhenry and his late wife, Andree Rheaume Fitzhenry, who died at 71 in February, 2013.

The McMichael is, of course, known nationwide for its collection of works by Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven, aboriginal artists, Emily Carr and David Milne. It’s safe to say, though, that its Quebec holdings aren’t as substantial, well-known or celebrated - a situation that will be rectified significantly with the Fitzhenrys’ substantial bequest. The McMichael currently has three works by Jean-Paul Riopelle, but the addition of the Fitzhenry collection will raise that total to eight. The bequest includes seven works by Marc-Aurele Fortin, and eight by Jean Paul Lemieux, among them such striking works as Les mi-caremes (1962), Printemps (1968) and La Nativite (1966). Other artists with works included in the Fitzhenry donation are Clarence Gagnon, Paul-Emile Borduas, Cornelius Krieghoff, Rita Letendre, Robert Pilot and Marc-Aurele de Foy Suzor-Cote.

The public can actually see pretty much the entire Fitzhenry collection right now at the McMichael. Last weekend, the gallery hosted the opening of Eyes on Quebec: Treasures from the Andree Rheaume and Robert Fitzhenry Collection at its Kleinburg space, featuring 43 Fitzhenry-owned works complemented by about 20 from the gallery’s own holdings. The exhibition runs through Feb. 1, 2015.

“We wanted the collection to be in a place where the public could see it,” said Fitzhenry, 84, in an interview explaining the bequest. The couple also wanted that place to have “Canadian artists [hanging] with Quebec artists” and to pretty much guarantee that, in the words of their daughter Alex, the art “[would] not be stored in the basement for years, unseen.” In addition, before she died, Andree was concerned that the collection be kept intact and not sold off piecemeal.

Married on St. Jean Baptiste Day (June 24) in 1984 - it was the second marriage for both; each had been widowed, leaving Robert with four young children, and Andree with one. “We were both art lovers, but Andree even more so because she was a very active painter,” especially of landscapes, said Fitzhenry. Indeed, her first gift to him, given at Christmas in 1982, was one of her own paintings, a pond scene that still hangs in the recreation room of Fitzhenry’s large condominium in downtown Toronto.

Born in Saint-Come, Que., Andree grew up surrounded by “churches, winter scenes, rolling hills” - a milieu, said Alex, that informed many of her mother’s choices when it came to buying older Quebec art. While there was always consultation between wife and husband over what to buy, “a good percentage” of the paintings in the collection were her picks, added Alex.

“Mom bought it, but I was the cash,” Fitzhenry said jokingly to his daughter. He made his wealth by co-founding Woodbridge Foam Corp. in the late 1970s, and if he saw something that struck him forcefully, “it was pretty much a go right away.” Most of the paintings were acquired at auction sales held in Toronto, including a large Riopelle canvas for which Fitzhenry claims to have bid $1-million, his highest-ever purchase price.

The Fitzhenrys were quiet, unflashy collectors. There were no big announcements, no big loans. Their philanthropy was similarly judicious - they donated a couple of Lemieux paintings to the Musee national des beaux-arts du Quebec, and $1-million to fund gene therapeutic research at McMaster University, where Fitzhenry earned a bachelor of arts in political economy in 1954. More recently, to honour his wife, he donated $3-million to his alma mater’s fine arts department to establish the Dr. Robert and Andree Rheaume Fitzhenry Studios and Atrium.

For Victoria Dickenson, executive director and CEO of the McMichael, the promise of the Fitzhenry collection “represents an extraordinary enrichment” of the gallery, adding “new depth... and permitting us to depict the art of Canada from la belle province.”