Simone-Marie Bouchard. Fabric Artist. Painter. Sculptor. Baie-Saint-Paue, Charlevoix, Quebec. Active second quarter 20th Century.
Mlle Bouchard lived and worked at home in Baie-Saint-Paul. She made hooked rugs that she sold to tourists, she painted also and made wood carvings as they all did. For these women, Simone-Marie, her sisters and their mother, making ornamental hooked rugs was one of the few ways of earning money during the depression years. And it opened the doors of artistic expression. She drew rural scenes for the rugs and painted them as well. Bouchard met the ethnologist Barbeau and his assistant Jean Palardy during those years; repairing old textiles for Barbeau and making hooked rugs for Palardy (who was also an artist) using his designs. These hooked rugs were sent to Galleries in Toronto and Montreal. By the mid 1930’s Barbeau and Palardy had seen Simone-Marie Bouchard’s paintings and Barbeau soon introduced her to American artists and collectors through shows in local Galleries and shows in New York soon followed.
It was with her paintings that she gained her fame. At one time she was described as Quebec’s greatest primitive painter (Alfred Pellan). She became a member of the Contemporary Arts Society of Montreal and showed her paintings in their exhibitions. In the Spring of 1941 she appeared in shows in Quebec and Montreal with ten of Canada’s modern artists; including Paul-Emile Borduas and Alfred Pellan. She was described as “one of the Contemporary Art Society’s eminent senior artists” and “our most powerful woman painter”. Gilles Henault referred to her pictures as “truly miraculous”.
It should be noted that she was also known as ‘Mary’ or Marie Bouchard. She sometimes signed as S. Mary or Simone-Mary as well as Simone-Marie or simply M.B. There is some confusion over this.
An embroidered needle painting of a pair of Pigeons, Silk on Linen, by Marie Bouchard. Signed M.B.:
Marie Cecile Bouchard. Baie-St-Paul, Que. Needle-point painting. Passenger Pigeons 1930’s.
A link here to the Heffel Auction Gallery with one of her works. A double-sided Oil painting on Silk:
http://www.heffel.com/auction/Details_E.aspx?ID=42252
Ref:A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Vol.1, by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks, Ottawa, Revised and expanded, 1997
Ref: Canadian Women Artists History Initiative website:
http://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist.php?ID_artist=134
Ref: Richard Dube and Francois Tremblay, Peindre un Pays: Charlevoix et ses peintres populaires (Ottawa. Editions Broquet, 1989)
