Christopher Pratt: Six Decades

by Tom Smart

Christopher Pratt is one of Canada's most prominent painters and printmakers. His reputation was solidified with the celebrated retrospective of his work at the National Gallery of Canada in 2005. The intense realism of Christopher Pratt's art is, at first glance, deceptively simple. But behind the recognizable images lie deeper meanings. Pratt's search for a reality that is magical and mysterious gives his work its uncanny and haunting qualities. Since the day in the mid-1950s when Pratt first saw the painting Early Sunday Morning by the renowned American realist, Edward Hopper, he has perfected his ability to represent the qualities of natural and artificial light. Pratt stands in the line of other great Canadian artists, including Alex Colville, Lawren P. Harris, Jean Paul Lemieux and Lionel LeMoine Fitzgerald, all of whom influenced him and the way he represents the land. Others who figured in his development include Americans Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper and Thomas Eakins. The unique and beautiful island of Newfoundland, with its culture, history, geography and weather, has also influenced his work. This handsomely designed book, published in association with the Art Gallery of Sudbury, traces Pratt's development as a painter and printmaker from his early watercolors through to the iconic paintings of his mature years. It features more than 100 works, all beautifully reproduced, many of which have never been published before. Christopher Pratt was born in 1935 in St. John's, Newfoundland. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art and at Mount Allison University, in Sackville, New Brunswick, and is universally acknowledged as one of the most important Canadian artists of the period. His work is included in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the Musée d'Art Contemporain of Montreal and Memorial University of Newfoundland, as well as in private and corporate collections in North America and around the world. He is represented by the Mira Godard Gallery in Toronto. Pratt lives and works in the village of St. Mary's Bay on the Salmonier River in Newfoundland. Over the years, he has exhibited both nationally and internationally, with exhibitions in New York (1976); at Canada House Cultural Centre Gallery in London, England (an exhibition that traveled to Paris, Brussels and Dublin in 1982-83); and at the 49th Parallel Gallery in New York (1988).

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

176 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2013

Reviews

[Keen Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

QUIET SPACES & MYSTERIOUS PLACES?...

“the house as our first universe.”

Personally, when it comes to such books on art, I prefer a lot less text and er a lot more art, but thankfully the text does thin out and it becomes more about the art around page 90 mark. Though to be fair Smart does a strong enough job of summarising many of the highlights of Pratt’s professional and personal life without detracting too much from the main attraction.

For me Pratt inhabits a nice place somewhere between Edward Hopper and Grahame Sydney. His brand of realism blends the whimsical with the conventional arriving in some truly enigmatic spaces, with otherworldly views and yet somehow you feel struck by a sense of the familiar along with nostalgia and melancholy, a trick which I think owes largely to the light.

Many of these ghostly landscapes, have a clarity, depth and power which has a way of seizing your attention and then slowly draws you in. We tread into all sorts of head spaces, feeling a sense of loss and yearning at some points and then other times we are immersed in so much intense light that you can almost feel it.

There are seascapes which seem to stretch out into oblivion, and house windows which look so cosy and inviting you can almost hear them sticking the kettle on, before they invite you inside to get warmed up.

A great number of his paintings have this amplified realism that there's almost a meta quality to them. Like postcards of puzzles you will never solve and you couldn’t care less, it’s just enough to enjoy all that they have to offer. This is a lovely collection of Pratt’s work and an ideal introduction to anyone who may not be familiar with him.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read a few books on the life and art of the Canadian painter Christopher Pratt and this is by far the best...very highly recommended.

[Tracee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good variety of Pratt’s paintings, some I had never seen before