Helen Galloway McNicoll

Heffel Auction House Biography and Notes

Helen McNicoll trained in her native Montreal with William Brymner and later, on Brymner's advice, went to England to train at the Slade School of Art. There she saw the work of Philip Wilson Steer and worked both in the studio and outdoors. Following a brief stay in Paris, her style shifted from the colour palette of the Barbizons to that of the impressionists. A lively handling of the paint and a real sense of atmosphere and light animate her best work. The Avenue, which Natalie Luckyj rightly describes as having "a lighter palette and more broken brush strokes", is a superb example of McNicoll's mature work. The space of the work is immediately established by the shadows in the foreground, which are cast by trees outside of the picture frame - these trees are, in fact in the realm of the viewer. The space is developed through the orderly procession of the trees down the avenue and the pattern of light and shadow, as well as the carefully positioned figures. We read the scene as a refreshing fall day, with a slight breeze and a pleasant sun. The eye dances rapidly across the surface of the painting, caught by the rapid brushstrokes and the play of light across the whole composition. McNicoll's care in creating this composition is clear when one examines the placement of the people, particularly the figure with the pink hat in the distance, which draws the eye immediately and echoes the use of pinks in the foreground. As Luckyj notes, there is a "mood of quietude within the everyday" in this work, and the work also displays a quiet and deserved confidence that McNicoll had in her great skill as a painter. Her effective painting career was only 11 years but is one of the high points of Canadian impressionism.