1879 -1915 · Canada, London and Cornwall

Vibrant sun, divided touch and independent female figures make Helen McNicoll an essential voice of Canadian impressionism.

Helen Galloway McNicoll was born in Toronto in 1879 and grew up in Montreal. Scarlet fever contracted at the age of two caused significant hearing loss; she learned to read lips and nevertheless pursued an international career. She studied at the Art Association of Montreal with William Brymner, then left for England for the Slade School of Fine Art. In 1905, the Cornish School of Landscape and Sea Painting in St Ives fully introduced her to outdoor work. McNicoll met the British painter Dorothea Sharp, who became her friend, traveling companion and sometimes her model, there McNicoll met the British painter Dorothea Sharp, who became her friend, traveling companion and sometimes model. Together, they traveled across England and Europe in search of gardens and beaches fields and rural scenes bathed in light. McNicoll adopts a bright and fragmented touch, colorful shadows and a solar palette. His subjects - women reading, children playing, rural workers - are rarely constructed for the male gaze. They appear absorbed in their activity and masters of their space. In the shade of the tree vibrates the light filtered by the foliage around a figure at rest. In the shadow of the tree vibrates the light filtered by the foliage around a figure at rest. In the shadow of the tent, textile protection, the outdoors and the brilliance of the landscape vibrate. Elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1913 and then to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1914, McNicoll helped to make impressionism known in Canada. His career, however, it only lasts a little over ten years. She died in 1915 in Swanage, at the age of thirty-five, from complications of diabetes. A commemorative exhibition brought together one hundred and fifty paintings in 1925, measuring a remarkably fertile corpus. The "Helen McNicoll" selection notably compares In the Shadow of the Tree and In the Shadow of the Tent. His reading favors the material.

McNicoll paints light as freedom: it passes through the canvas in quick touches and envelops women and children who exist first and foremost for themselves.