Montreal Sulpicians At Montreal Museum

This presentation features a hundred works, many of which are unknown, that are being presented together for the first time: paintings, sculptures, works on paper and decorative art objects. These pieces come from the collections of the Sulpician Fathers and the parish of Notre-Dame de Montréal, as well as other Montreal parishes and several other museums across Canada.

The birth of the Society of Saint Sulpice is closely linked to the Counter Reformation and the great movement of evangelization that blossomed in France in the seventeenth century. In 1657, fifteen years after the founding of Ville Marie – in which the Society's founder Jean-Jacques Olier was involved – the first Sulpicians landed in the New World. They became seigneursof the island of Montreal and of Saint Sulpice in 1663 and of Lake of Two Mountains in 1717. By a decree issued in 1678, they were appointed priests in perpetuity of Notre-Dame, the only parish on the island until 1866. Their standing made them leading players in the development of the colony's architecture and town planning. They encouraged the production of artworks illustrating the Catholic faith and carefully specified the devotional and pictorial content and execution of many of the major works they commissioned locally from the best artists and craftsmen for their missions, chapels and priests' residences.

It is this aspect of our ecclesiastical and religious establishments, which for many years constituted the main sources of employment for Quebec's artists and craftsmen, which provides the context for the exhibition The Artistic Legacy of the Montreal Sulpicians. This exhibition includes works that evoke Montreal landmarks, as well as expressive and typical pieces from buildings that have survived. The exhibition also highlights the foreign influences, of works commissioned by the Sulpicians for their Parisian property and of some of the works imported to Canada, on local production. The strong ties they maintained with the old world also had a profound impact on their patronage of Canadian artists, both in their choice of artists and their sponsoring of apprenticeships. These works, which concern, in particular, the Church of Notre-Dame – both the original and the present building – the Chapel of the Sacré-Coeur, the Way of the Cross at Oka and the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes, bear witness to the Sulpicians' most important accomplishments in the fine and decorative arts. The decoration of these buildings will be shown in a selection of drawings by Gaspard Chaussegros de Léry, James O'Donnell, Victor Bourgeau, Napoléon Bourassa and Maurice Perrault, as well as the artistic production of Europeans and Canadians like Paul Jourdain (known as Labrosse), François Guernon (known as Belleville), Louis Dulongpré, William Berczy, Salomon Marion, John Poad Drake, Antoine Plamondon, Louis-Philippe Hébert, Joseph-Charles Franchère and Ludger Larose, as well as the workshop Les Écores.

To revisit Montreal of yesteryear is also very much a goal of this project, which is in fact both a return to our roots and a heritage preservation project. The exhibition has, in fact, led to the restoration of a large number of works of art and art objects that are of great interest, several of which are being exhibited in public for the first time. Several teams of conservators have been working on this project for many years. Viewing Berczy's Triumph of the Virgin, a painting four metres in diameter that was executed in 1810 for the vault of the original Church of Notre-Dame, alone justifies a visit to the exhibition.

The exhibition is curated by Jacques Des Rochers, the Museum's Curator of Canadian Art. Presented in the nave of the Erskine and American Church, the exhibitionwill give the public an opportunity to visit this building before it is restored and incorporated into the new Pavilion of Canadian Art. This presentation is a unique event, for once the nave is restored, it will not be used to present exhibitions. The Sulpician legacy will be further enhanced by its setting, the Arts and Crafts decor created in the late 1930s by Percy Nobbs, one of the first champions of the art and architecture of Quebec's old churches. The unique opportunity to design the exhibition in this heritage building has been given to renowned architect Pierre Thibault, who has taken a very contemporary approach.

A substantial, illustrated publication, comprising 670 pages and forty-eight colour plates, entitled Les Sulpiciens de Montréal. Une histoire de pouvoir et de discrétion. 1657-2007, edited by Dominique Deslandres, John A. Dickinson and Ollivier Hubert, professors in the Department of History at the University of Montreal, has been published in French only by Fides. Jacques Des Rochers selected the illustrations and wrote the chapter on the fine arts. This publication contains essays by fifteen historians and serves as the official exhibition catalogue. -- www.mmfa.qc.ca