Aaron Allan Edson
The Coming Storm, Lake Memphremagog
1880
oil on canvas
60.6 x 107 cm
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec
Photo: Jean-Guy Kérouac

This painting from the collection of the former Premier of Quebec, Maurice Duplessis, who died in 1959, is definitely one of Allan Edson’s most successful works. It shows a landscape in the Eastern Townships, not far from the U.S. border in southern Quebec. The artist shows a great deal of energy in making use of lighting effects that are almost electric, as well as a play of light that typifies the colourful Canadian fall. The artist has captured, like a photograph, the precise moment when everything is calm, just before the storm noisily approaching from behind Mount Orford is unleashed. Clearly, the painter was fascinated by the grand beauty of a wild nature that has not yet been transformed by man. The realist painters of Edson’s generation, who were known as “Luminists,” magnified the beauty of Canada’s vast spaces from east to west.