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City’s oldest art gallery celebrates
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Photo by Martin Chamberland
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Jean-Pierre Valentin in front of the gallery.
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Galerie l’Art Français, circa 1935.
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Seventy years — few businesses have that longevity. Especially an art gallery.
$"/>
$"/>Lucienne and Louis Lange, a Belgian couple, founded Galerie l’Art Français on Laurier Avenue in 1934. Business was extremely difficult then and even the rich had little desire to buy art. In the beginning they showed works by artists from France, but they were also aware of the importance of the artists from Quebec. Marc-Aurèle Fortin, who was to become one of Quebec’s most creative artists, lived around the corner on St. Urbain Street. With a compulsion to paint and not anxious to sell his works, storage became a problem for Fortin. When the Langes offered him free storage space, he promised to give them exclusive selling rights. For $200 you could have purchased a large oil and paid it off with $5 a week. Those paintings now go for well over $100,000. By the 1940s along with Fortin, the Langes were offering art by now other well-known Quebec artists such as Philip Surrey, Henri Masson, Stanley Cosgrove, Goodridge Roberts and René Richard.
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$"/> Lange died in 1956 and his wife continued to run the gallery until 1975 when Jean-Pierre Valentin purchased it.
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$"/>“I knew little about Canadian art,” said Valentin, “but I always had a passion for collecting. It was only after I finished my degree in International Trade in Paris that I managed to combine my two great pleasures, art and travel. For eight months of the year I would jet between Stockholm and Tokyo, Milan and Montreal, selling mostly lithographs by surrealists artists, Ernst, Miro, and Dali to galleries and private collectors.”
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$"/> On his first trip to Montreal, Valentin met Madame Lange. “She became a good client and a great mentor. At 26, a little travel weary, I jumped when she casually mentioned selling the gallery. I had enjoyed many visits to Montreal and felt Canada and this city in particular, with its interesting cultural diversity, and so many opportunities for learning and growth, was a place that I could happily call home.”
$"/> Along with his first wife Anne-Marie, Valentin started to make his mark in running this venerable old gallery. He learned quickly and recognized early the talent in Miyuki Tanobe, who arrived from Japan in 1971. The artist has become legendary for her Montreal street scenes: The Bagel factories, the depanneurs, the Jazz Festivals, the Old Port. In November 1980, collectors lined up for three days to buy one of Tanobe’s works. After the doors opened, the exhibition sold out in 12 minutes. Along with Tanobe, Valentin has built up an impressive stable of diversified artists that include Louise Scott, Christian Deberdt, Geneviève Jost, Henry W. Jones, Claude Le Sauter and Pierre Lefebvre.
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$"/>In 1986 Valentin decided he should be near the Museum of Fine Arts, so he moved the gallery to Sherbrooke Street and gave it his own name.
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$"/> Among moments cherished by Valentin, are talking about Matisse with Jean-Paul Riopelle and discussing a 1929 drawing with an aging Louis Muhlstock. “I’ve had the satisfaction of helping put together some great collections of Canadian Art with many diverse and fascinating people. It’s still a pleasure meeting young clients for the first time, and still a thrill to find and sell a great Canadian masterpiece to a passionate collector.”
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$"/>To celebrate the anniversary, a cocktail party will be held at the gallery on September 8 from 5 to
$"/>8 p.m. On display will be a number of major works that have been loaned from clients
$"/>who have purchased them over the last several decades. Among them will be two by Fortin. The exhibition will continue until September 25.
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$"/>Happy 70th. Until 120!
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2004-09-07 09:13:23
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