This small, intimate study features Clarence Gagnon’s young wife, Katherine, in the pair’s studio apartment at 9 rue Falguière in Paris. The daughter of Edward Irwin, a successful Montreal fashion merchant, and Catherine McEntyre, a milliner, Katherine first met Clarence in Montreal through her sister Ethel, who had attended the Art Association of Montreal school while the aspiring artist was studying there. After moving to Paris in 1904, Gagnon had the opportunity to see Katherine again during family vacations to the northern beaches and picturesque villages of Brittany and Normandy.

The couple married on December 2, 1907, at the church of Saint-Philippe-de-Roule, in Paris. They shared an interest in Japanese art and design, and like many well-to-do, trendy bohemians in Paris, and Western society at large following the reopening of trade with Japan in the nineteenth century, they became enchanted with Japonisme. Photographs of their apartment, which consisted of a single large bright room, feature Japanese silks, fans, parasols, screens, porcelain and a few Japanese prints.

This infatuation with Japonisme was demonstrated not only in their way of life but also in Gagnon’s production since his arrival in Paris. Indeed, he had painted a portrait of Katherine sitting in front of the sea, dressed in a vermilion-coloured kimono (1904, private collection). Again, in a larger format, he depicted her comfortably seated in the shade of green foliage, dressed in a white kimono with blue and red motifs (1907 – 1908, private collection).

In the charming circa 1908 study that concerns us, the model dressed in the same bathrobe stands three-quarters of the way forward: the young woman with a featureless face is combing her hair, mirror in hand. The light fabric of the robe with its wide sleeves reveals Katherine’s pale complexion. Her gesture with upraised arm enlivens the scene, as do the delicate, colourful patterns that adorn her garment, which are echoed throughout the room: in the wallpaper, the carpet, and even the marquetry of the dark furniture. They create a swirling effect that excites the eye and is only contained by the oblique, horizontal and vertical lines of the picture frames, the wood moulding, the door and the carpet.

In 1907, Gagnon’s fascination with Japanese motifs was at its peak. It was then that he composed his large-scale work Fantaisie japonaise, which he aimed to submit to the jury at the Salon de la Société des artistes français, in May to June of that year. The subject of this large work is geishas grouped under a flowering cherry tree. But the painter was unable to complete his project in time for the Salon. Instead, the work was presented in Montreal and Toronto in 1908 before disappearing in a fire.

The influence of Japanese art and design in Gagnon’s work is evident in a few remarkable paintings of vivacity and freedom, exclusively representing Katherine in a kimono, during the period from 1904 to 1909.[1] Gagnon incorporated many stylistic elements of Japonisme—the framing of the composition, the refinement of the motifs, the bright colours and the flat treatment of the chromatic masses—but his later work would no longer allude to the elements that had fascinated him and his wife in Paris at the beginning of his career.

We thank Michèle Grandbois, co-author of Clarence Gagnon, 1881 – 1942: Dreaming the Landscape, for contributing the above essay, translated from the French.

1. To our knowledge, five works by Clarence Gagnon depict Katherine in a kimono, including Two Nymphs on the Beach and On the Beach, Baie-Saint-Paul, sold by Heffel in May 2021 (both in private collections).