Stanley Morel Cosgrove was a painter, draughtsman, printmaker, muralist, and educator. He was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada where, other than for education and travel, he lived his whole life and died.

His most famous mediums are oil on canvas, oil on wood and fresco*(1). He also did drawings in charcoal, Conte crayon*, ink and graphite. His prints are primarily serigraphs*. Works in other mediums are rare. His subjects were landscapes (primarily forests), figures (primarily women), portraits (primarily women), nudes (always women), and still life. His styles were Expressionism* and Fauvism*. His work with its distinct simple forms, limited palette, pastel colours, distorted shapes and recurrent subjects is easy to recognize. The numerous AskART Image examples are good illustrations of its range.

Quote: "They're not trees. They're not trees at all. They're just perpendiculars and horizontals. That's what they are to me. Why do I repeat them? Repetition is what painting is all about, repetition of themes, repetition of subject matter. Paint. That's all a painter wants to do." - Stanley Cosgrove (1980).

He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Montreal (1929 -1935) (2) under Charles Maillard (see AskART), Henri Charpentier (1888 - 1967), Maurice Félix (see AskART) and Joseph Alfred Saint-Charles (1868 - 1956); and at the Art Association of Montreal (1936) under with Edwin Holgate (see AskART). He also studied in Mexico City (1940-1943) on a bursary from the Province of Quebec, at the Academia de San Carlos under Manuel Rodriguez Lozano (see AskART) and fresco techniques privately with José Clemente Orozco (see AskART).

When he returned to Montreal he taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from 1944 to 1958 and in 1960. He devoted himself to painting full time after 1960, for the rest of his life.

His travels include New York City for two months on his way to Mexico in 1940 and France in 1953 on a Canadian government overseas fellowship.

He was a member of the Contemporary Arts Society* (1939), the Canadian Group of Painters* (1950) and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts* (Associate 1951, Academician 1967). His friends and painting companions included Edwin Holgate, Jori Smith, Jean Paul Lemieux, Goodridge Roberts and Joseph Jean Palardy (see all in AskART) (3).

In addition to exhibiting with the above organizations he exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts eight times between 1936 and 1964. He also exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa) in "Four Painters of Quebec" (4) in 1949 and with B.C. Binning (see AskART) in "Binning - Cosgrove" at the Art Gallery of Toronto (5) in 1951.

He had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Quebec, Quebec City in 1939 and at the Art Association of Montreal (6) in 1944. His works were also included in several Canadian landmark exhibitions including "Panorama of Painting in Quebec: 1940-1955" at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art in 1967; in "Three Hundred Years of Canadian Art" at the National Gallery of Canada in 1967; in "Canadian Painting in the Thirties" at the National Gallery of Canada in 1975; in "The Contemporary Arts Society: 1939 - 1948" at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art in 1981; in "Modern Art in Quebec: 1916 - 1946" at the National Gallery of Canada in 1982; and in "Eye on the Work" at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art in 1997.

Recently his works were included in "Max Stern: The Taste of a Dealer" (7) at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal in 2004; in "A Dealer for "Living Art": Selected Works from the Max and Iris Stern Donation to Montreal" at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2005; and in "Celebrating 35 Years of the Firestone Collection of Canadian Art" * at the Ottawa Art Gallery, Ontario in 2008.

His works are avidly collected. They are also in numerous public collections including the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston, Ontario), the Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton), the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (B.C.), the Art Gallery of Hamilton (Ontario), the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Confederation Centre Art Gallery & Museum (Charlottetown, P.E.I.), the Joliette Art Museum (Quebec), the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa, Ontario), the Owens Art Gallery (Sackville, N.B.), the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery (Concordia University, Montreal), the Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan), the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax), the Museum of Quebec (Quebec City), the Ottawa Art Gallery (Ontario), the Winnipeg Art Gallery (Manitoba), the Vancouver Art Gallery (B.C.), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Fredericton, N.B.) and the National Gallery of Canada. According to the Canadian Heritage Information Network there are 219 Cosgrove works in museums across Canada.

Cosgrove was an important Canadian artist and his work is illustrated and discussed in most books about Canadian art history and Canadian modern art. There are also the monographs Cosgrove (1980) by Jules Bazin and Cosgrove (1989), by Jacques de Roussan (see AskART book references).


Footnotes:

(1) The two most mentioned examples of Cosgrove murals are the one he worked on as a student with Orozco for the hospital Jesus de Nazareno in Mexico City and the one at the entrance of the philosophy and science wing of the Collège de Saint.Laurent in Montreal. Cosgrove was, however, a major promoter and teacher of the medium in Canada.

(2) The dates of his attendance at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts vary across sources; we have used those provided by the National Gallery of Canada. The Art Gallery of Ontario, for instance, in its book of 1970 by the same name uses 1927 to 1931 and Benezit (1999) uses 1935 to 1937. The two Canadian artist dictionaries MacDonald and Westbridge use 1928 to 1935. See AskART book references.

(3) In addition to being a teacher Holgate was a lifelong friend and the two of them collaborated on a mural for the 1939 New York World's Fair. Cosgrove painted in the Charlevoix region of south east Quebec in the 1930s with Jori Smith, Jean Paul Lemieux and Joseph Jean Palardy. In 1953 he travelled in France with Goodridge Roberts.

(4) The other three were Paul-Émile Borduas (see AskART), Goodridge Roberts (see AskART) and Irène Legendre (b.1904).

(5) Renamed the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1966.

(6)The AAM became the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1948.

(7) Max Stern was one of Canada's most important art dealers. He was born in Germany in 1904 and died in Montreal in 1987. He obtained a doctorate from the University of Bonn in 1928 after having pursued studies in art history throughout Europe. Stern moved to England during the Second World War and subsequently immigrated to Canada. He was the manager of the Dominion Gallery of Fine Arts for two years before he bought it in 1944 with his wife Iris Westerberg. In the years that followed, the Dominion Gallery became one of the most vital and influential art galleries in the country. He and his wife are known for the dedication they showed towards artists, collectors, and public institutions. Stern received the Order of Canada (CM) in 1984 and an honorary doctorate from Concordia University in 1985. Stanley Cosgrove had an exclusive contract with Dominion Gallery from the 1940s which gave him the financial security to concentrate on painting. Some other artists who had similar arrangements with Dominion were E.J. Hughes, Goodridge Roberts, Jean-Philippe Dallaire, John Lyman and Marian Scott (see all in AskART). Stern was also a dealer for Henry Moore, Jean Arp, Aristide Maillol, Emily Carr and Jean-Paul Borduas (see all in AskART). Quote: 'dealers get rich buying art, not selling it' - Max Stern (Stern's estate sold Dominion Gallery to new owners in 2000). Sources: The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; and Ben Uri Gallery, London, England.

* For more in-depth information about these terms and others, see AskART.com Glossary http://www.askart.com/AskART/lists/Art_Definition.aspx

Prepared and contributed to askART by M.D. Silverbrooke

He was born in 1911, in Montréal. He studied Fine Arts in Montréal and works on oil and charcoal mediums.

He studied with Jori Smith and Jean-Paul Lemieux. In 1939, he obtained a scholarship from the government to go study in Paris. But the war started so he went to New York and Mexico instead. He spent four years paintings with the great muralists Orozco, Lozano and Rivera. When he came back, he became a teacher at the Fine Arts School in Montréal until 1958. After that, he dedicated himself to paint until he passed away in 2002. His pieces of art are famous for his landscape, portrait and still life, in the tradition of the subtleness of the light.

Collections: His pieces of arts can be found in public and private collections mostly across Canada and the United States.

Source: Galerie d'Art du Château Frontenac