Birge Harrison: Quebec

"Sunrise from Quebec" by Birge Harrison

"Birge Harrison's passionate love for the white beauty of the snow has led him very far North at times. During several winter seasons he made his headquarters in and around the picturesque old city of Quebec. It seems as if in and about that old city Birge Harrison found his best inspiration. 

During the winter of 1910 he had the good fortune to inhabit a tower room in the Chateau Frontenac, that most beautiful of hostelries, which clings like a swallow's nest to the cliffs above the picturesque old city. The front windows of this circular apartment looked down over the snow-laden roofs of the lower town, and on across the vast St. Lawrence to the heights of Levis on its further shore; while the windows to right and left commanded the ice-bound river for many miles both up and down stream. Here he secured the motives for a remarkable series of pictures. In each it is a panoramic or bird's eye view of the great river with portions of the lower town, or the wharves in the immediate foreground. 

He approached each theme with the true poet's vision, and because of the very sincerity of his approach, added to each much of his own personality. He taught his own students to "Remember that art is nature as the artist sees it... Be reverent before nature and honest with yourself and your art will ring true every time. All of you, it is true, will not sing the song of the nightingale because you are not all born nightingales, but the blackbird's lay is sweet, and the thrush and the oriole fill the woods with melody. Even the homely robin and the linnet have modest little notes of their own which are pleasant to the ear of a dewy April morning.'

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Birge Harrison: Poet Painter" by Charles Louis Borgmeyer.)