James Morrice

On the second floor of the Art Gallery of Ontario is a room hung with paintings painted by James Morrice, a famous Canadian landscape painter. The moment one walks in to the room, it would be very obvious that it holds a different atmosphere from the rest of the rooms in the Canadian art section. What is most noticeable are the similarities in the scenery and subjects of the paintings. The entire room filled with scenery of the beach and horses makes the viewer wonder if they are all from the same series. Its starts off with Tangiers, The Beach on the first wall while other similar paintings, Lea Ladoret at the Beach appear on one wall, The Surf, Dieppe, on another while Beach at Mers hung on the last wall – each with alike backgrounds but with completely different atmospheres. The room displayed Morrice’s paintings so that they change from one season to another. It creates a dynamic effect so that if you were to spin around slowly in the center of the room you would appear to be traveling forward in time. At one second, you would see scenes of summer with bright sunny views of the beach. The next second you would see rain dripping on people with windy skies and leaves blowing everywhere, and before you know it there is snow on the ground.


James Wilson Morrice - Beach at Mers, 1898
oil on canvas
60.3 x 81.6 cm