Lionel LeMoine FitzGeraldLife & Work

“FitzGerald helped to foster the notion of Western Canada as a beautiful and inviting place. The landscape was not only a locale with economic benefits but also one dominated by nature’s glorious majesty of open sky and a sense of freedom.”

– Michael Parke-Taylor

Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald: Life & Work tracks the development of the artist’s career from his youthful enthusiasm for the writings of Ruskin through formative influences derived from Impressionism and Post-Impressionist artists. The book chronicles FitzGerald’s mature style, from the late 1920s to early 1930s, which captured the quintessential Western Canadian look of land, sky, trees, and—most importantly—penetrating, intense light. Quiet in personality and passionate about art, as both principal and teacher at the Winnipeg School of Art from the 1920s to the 1940s FitzGerald inspired a generation of students. His west-coast sojourns in British Columbia in the 1940s brought about new directions marked by his move into abstraction during the last six years of his life. The book considers how FitzGerald’s art transcends subject matter and empirical observation, addressing universal issues that still resonate beyond the borders of his native home.

Copyright Information

Banner Image: Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald, Pritchard’s Fence, c. 1928. Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, bequest of Isabel E.G. Lyle, 1951 (51/19). © With the permission of Patricia and Earl Green, co-holders of the FitzGerald copyright. © Art Gallery of Ontario.