“Unison” by F.R. Scott

 

Signature by F.R. Scott, Klanak Press, Vancouver, 1964

What is it makes a church so like a poem?

The inner silence -- space between words?

The ancient pews set out in rhyming rows

Where old men sit and lovers are so still?

Or something just beyond that can't be seen,

Yet seems to move if we should look away?

It is not in the choir and the priest.

It is the empty church has most to say.

It cannot be the structure of the stone.

Sometimes mute buildings rise above a church.

Nor is it just the reason it was built.

Often it does not not speak at all.

Men have done murders here as in a street,

And blinded men have smashed a holy place.

Men will walk by a church and never know

What lies within, as men will scorn a book.

Then surely it is not the church itself

That makes a church so very like a poem,

But only that unfolding of the heart

That lifts us upward in a blaze of light

And turns a nave of stone or page of words

To Holy, Holy, Holy without end.

Books on the Beaver Hall Artists

Back to the Beaver Hall artists. I highly recommend a film, available on YouTube, "By Woman's Hand"; made by the National Film Board of Canada in 1994; the film gives some of the history of Prudence Heward and two other members of the Beaver Hall group who were also Heward's friends, Anne Savage and Sarah Robertson. At 13:51 there is a photograph of William Brymner and a class of art students, some of them are future prominent members of the Beaver Hall group; included in the photograph is Darrell Morrisey, an artist I have researched since 2010.

Books that might interest you.

 

Catalogue for the 1920s Modernism in Montreal exhibit,
published by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2016

The Women of Beaver Hall, Canadian Modernist Painters by Evelyn Walters,
Dundern Press, 2005

The Beaver Hall Group and its Legacy by Evelyn Walters,
Dundurn Press, 2017

Painting Friends, The Beaver Hall Women Painters
by Barbara Meadowcroft, Vehicule Press, 1999

Periodical from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, issue 15, 2016

The Beaver Hall Artists

More photographs taken at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' 1920s Modernism in Montreal exhibition, 2015.

1920s Modernism in Montreal exhibit, MMFA

I'll go back and identify the artists of these paintings, all were exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' 1920s Modernism in Montreal exhibit in 2015. For instance, the first painting below is of St. Patrick's Church from the rear of the studio of the Beaver Hall artists.

This is St. James Cathedral, renamed Marie, Reine de la Monde around 1950
which was the year of Mary; it's just a few blocks west of Beaver Hall Hill

St. James Cathedral, Marie, Reine de la Monde

This Seventh Day Adventist Church is located in Upper Westmount

One of the two towers at the College de Montreal;
on the north side of  Sherbrooke Street West across from Fort Avenue 

Of course, this is where we began, looking down on the entrance
of Morgan's Department Store on the corner of Union and Ste. Catherine Street West

More on Darrell Morrisey

It isn't much but at least Darrell Morrisey (one of the "forgotten" Beaver Hall artists) now has some recognition; people know that she existed and that she was an artist. To this end, I wrote an essay on her and she was included in the Museum's 1920s Modernism in Montreal exhibit--in fact, this was a major exhibition at the Museum--and she was included in the catalogue published for the exhibition. Not much, but better than nothing. . .

From the MMFA's 2015 exhibition of the Beaver Hall artists

Bottom left, one of two extant paintings by Darrell Morrisey

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Here we are in October 2015 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on Sherbrooke Street West in Montreal, we're visiting an exhibition of the Beaver Hall artists; this building is where the Art Association of Montreal relocated in 1913. Banners for the 1920s Modernism in Montreal exhibit hang on the outside of the original building on the north side of the street; a newer building (the Jean-Paul Desmarais Pavilion, that opened in 1991) is located directly across the street; next door to the original museum building is the Marc Bougie Pavilion, that opened in 2010; the Marc Bougie Pavilion used to be the Erskine and American (Presbyterian) United Church until it was repurposed as an exhibition space for Canadian Art and a concert hall. 

For many years I have felt that the Museum is one of the great attractions to visiting Montreal and to enjoying living here. 

Opened in December 1913, this building replaced the AAA's Phillips Square location;
it is now one of several pavilions that comprise the MMFA; the original 1913 building is now the 
Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace

  

The Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace

The Marc Bougie Pavilion, note the addition of exhibition space at the rear of the building;
this was originally the Erskine and American (Presbyterian) United Church

Interior of the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace

Interior of the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace