Georges-Edouard Tremblay. Painter. Rug Hooker. Fabric Artist. Pointe-au-Pic, Baie Saint-Paul, Charlevoix, Quebec. Active 1930’s to 1980.
Georges-Edouard Tremblay was a self-taught primitive artist. He was a painter originally, from Baie Saint-Paul and in the mid-1930’s began hooking rugs from his own designs and paintings. He was encouraged to move to Pointe-au-Pic by Alcide Bergeron who was buying almost all of M. Tremblay’s ornamental mats to sell in his gallery; ‘The Little Shop’. (M. Tremblay had perfected the technique of sculpting his mats and they were in strong demand.) He soon opened a school/studio of rug hookers, teaching and supplying them with patterns made from his designs. They were hooked on burlap using dyed wool yarn.
Georges-Edouard Tremblay always signed his mats: “G E T” in the lower right or lower left. He usually put the initials “G T’ on those of his designs that were hooked by others. Some artists hooked the “G T” into the mats and a few hooked their own initials or name into them; Adela Harvey was one artist who signed her name (sometimes just ‘Ida’). There were many others.
Tremblay painted steadily; landscapes of Charlevoix County and village scenes, generally larger ones (18×24 up to 30×40 and even larger. His work was primitive, naive, full of color and often very charming. Many of his paintings were hooked by local workers and sold in galleries and along the country roads-side. I have had one painting by M. Tremblay that was marked on the back with his permission to Adela Harvey to make a hooked reproduction of the painting.
An artist hooking one of M. Tremblay’s designs:
An artist hooking one of G E T’s designs.
A sculpted mat by Georges-Edouard Tremblay:
Georges-Edouard Tremblay. Hooked mat with mark in lower right.
The artist making a pattern in his studio (1930’s):
Georges-Edouard Tremblay. In his studio. 1930’s.
(Photo by Jean-Marie Gauvreau from Les Artisans du Quebec.)
Ref: Artisans du Quebec. Jean-Marie Gauvreau, Les Editions du Bien Public, Montreal, Quebec,1940.
Ref: Charlevoix et ses peintres populaires. Dubé, Richard et François Tremblay, Peindre un pays: Charlevoix et ses peintres populaires, Laprairie: Éditions Broquet, 1989, 160 p. (Collection; Signature Plus), ISBN: 2-89000-105-9;
