Musée des beaux-arts de Mont-Saint-Hilaire
Virtual Museum of Canada

Roots

Radiating Expansion. Composition of exploding black shapes on a white spatula applied background.

Paul-Émile Borduas, Radiating Expansion¸ 1956, oil on canvas.
Collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts,
gift from Dr et de Mme Max Stern. Photo Luc Bouvrette.
© Paul-Émile Borduas Estate / SODRAC (2013) Borduas’ first stay in France, between 1928 and 1930, was a happy period for him – calm, worry-free and filled with discovery. However, he never forgot his roots and his attachment to Saint-Hilaire. He adjusted to Parisian life and also ventured outside the capital to explore and visit other regions, such as Brittany: «I am well here and happy as a king. Last Friday I came here from Brittany, where I spent a magnificent month vacationing by the sea. Next week I’m leaving for Lorraine, where I’ll be decorating one of the most beautiful little churches – just imagine what a pleasure that will be. France is marvellous, but especially Paris. Because of all this, I don’t feel homesick, even though I think oh so often of my beautiful Canada, Saint-Hilaire and my friends.»

He loved both living in France and the artistic milieu there. He was enchanted with the Impressionists and artists in the Modernist movement, like Picasso. He would have liked to prolong his stay, but for practical reasons he had to come back home.

For a long time, he had a plan to return to Europe with his family. But it seems that his attachment to his native land was stronger than his wish to leave. This attachment endured, even during his exile from 1953 to his death in 1960, as shown by a letter he wrote to Claude Gauvreau in 1958:

«I’d like to be in as good shape as you were when you wrote your last letter. So frank, clear and powerful, it might well have been written at the summit of our “Sugar Loaf,” which fears neither wind nor storm. Far from such heights, I founder: depression, respiratory problems, sunless sky and sunless spirit, no painting. I accept the kind cared that is offered, without much in the way of results. Commonplace and trite, these various ills, alas, follow an all too familiar cycle. A bit of fishing, a bit of love and hunting in my bright country would be the prescribed treatment, but what an extravagant one! »

With time, Borduas created an idealized image of the land where he had spent his happy childhood years and where his art and his family life could flourish. It became the very symbol of well-being and happiness.

Header image: Waterfront road (today chemin des Patriotes), (SHBMSH, Simon Beauregard collection, 18-02)

In a letter Borduas wrote to his friend Guy Viau in April 1947, he discussed his projects and the strength of his attachment to his native land: «My dream of going some day with my dear little family to live in France has fled in the face of the moral difficulties of these troubled times… More and more, as well, I realize how deeply my activities over the past few years have affected me. For years, I thought myself free of any nationalistic spirit, but today I find myself thinking that if I can attain a certain international standing, it is only by continuing to put down roots in the environment where I have been working for several years. So, leaving the country at this time seems impossible to me. In any case, it is impossible that I should take the first steps myself.»