André Biéler: An Artist's Life and Times

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including The
Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret
Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

In his excellent preface, “The Legacy of André Biéler
(1896–1989),” John R. Porter, executive director of Quebec’s
Museum of Fine Arts, praises this reissue of a classic of Canadian art
history as a tribute to both the artist and his historian, whose 1980
text has lost nothing of its original freshness and pertinence. Porter
calls Biéler an artist open to diverse and international artistic
currents, as well as a modern who cares about tradition.

Biéler was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, where his father was both a
teacher and the director of a small college. In 1908, the family moved
to Canada. As a young man, Biéler served in the Princess Patricia’s
Canadian Light Infantry. Sketches he made in Western Europe during World
War I are now held in the Canadian War Museum. After the war, Biéler
went back to Switzerland and Italy, and began painting with tempura on
board and with coloured pencils on paper. Some of these paintings were
dark and moody, yet others were colourful—and all were strong
emotionally.

From 1922 to 1926, the young artist lived with his uncle and original
mentor, and it was this uncle who reconciled Biéler’s dual heritage
of universal modernism and local tradition. After Biéler returned to
Canada in 1930, the Quebec habitat on the Gaspé coast would remind him
of Switzerland. The emotional effects of his paintings during this
period are powerful, and their colours are startlingly strong.

In 1936, Biéler was appointed director of the Agnes Etherington Art
Centre in Kingston, a time when the city was already conscious of its
heritage and, thanks to Biéler, was soon to become one of the best art
centres in Canada. People liked his art, which, according to Michael
Bell, had “a character which stimulates, but does not confront.” In
Kingston, the artist quickly became known for his warmth and geniality,
and his talent as a raconteur. Soon, he faced a new challenge with the
offer to teach at Queen’s University.

Smith’s celebration of a fine artist and her meticulous record of his
“life and times” is a magnificent achievement, one for readers to
savour slowly.