Louis-Philippe Hébert

Heffel Auction House Biography and Notes

At first sight, it seems hard to believe that Louis-Philippe Hébert, born and raised in a small rural community in Quebec, far from any cultural institution, would become one of the best sculptors of his generation. However, in 1869, aged 19, he enrolled as a Papal Zouave, and left for Italy in September of that year. He spent 11 months overseas, and, as he wrote later, visiting churches, galleries and monuments in Rome was an eye-opener, and had a major impact on his life and career. In 1872, Hébert was admitted to the studio of Adolphe Rho at Bécancour, where he was initiated in the art of sculpture in wood. Soon after exhibiting a bust at the provincial exhibition held in Montreal in 1873, he was invited by Napoléon Bourassa, a senior figure of the artistic milieu in Montreal, to join him. The mentoring by Bourassa, an accomplished painter, sculptor and architect, strongly influenced him, and Hébert’s practice underwent a shift. Hébert was the first Canadian sculptor since François Baillairgé to practise modeling. He introduced new approaches to sculpture in Canada, and he attained a status that no Canadian artist had reached until then. When the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts was established in 1880, Hébert was appointed an associate member. That same year he received his first order for a commemorative monument, and a decisive era began for the first Quebec sculptor to work in bronze. The construction of the Parliament Building in Quebec City, begun in 1877, was a major undertaking by the Province, and many artists were involved in order to achieve the finest monument. In 1886, the program for the sculptures that were to adorn the main facade was established, and Hébert, having secured a substantial portion of the commissions, then left for Paris to develop his compositions. The first proposals, exhibited in Quebec City the following year, did not fully meet expectations. Hébert went back to Paris in 1888, settling in Montparnasse, where he was surrounded by other sculptors. Here he conceived Halte dans la forêt—sometimes known as La famille algonquine—which was intended to occupy the most significant position in the whole program of the edifice, in front of the main entrance. The sculpture was exhibited at the Exposition universelle de Paris in 1889, and Hébert received a bronze medal for it, a first for a Canadian artist. The Marquess of Lorne wrote to him soon after the opening of the exhibition in May, to express his desire to obtain a smaller-scale bronze for the art gallery of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. The large bronze was cast in 1890 and was exhibited at the Salon des artistes français before being shipped to Quebec City, where it was unveiled at the Parliament Building in September. Hébert introduced a new theme of Indigenous peoples to Canadian sculpture, which was welcomed with enthusiasm. The pyramidal composition imposed by the surrounding architecture of the Parliament Building is dynamic. The central figure is depicted in a classical manner and the anatomy finely detailed. The woman and two children who surround the central male figure are perfectly integrated, and this is one of the most dynamic groups ever produced by the artist. A year before his death, in 1916, Hébert revisited the composition, then retitled it Algonquins. The plaster for this smaller-scale version of the monumental bronze was sold at Heffel in November 2006. Hébert sold the rights of reproduction of this plaster to Patrick Martin Wickham, who had a few casts made in the early 1920s to satisfy the requests of select collectors. One has been in the collection of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec since 1950, and another entered the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts a few years ago. This cast is finished in a fine brown patina, which highlights every detail of the masterpiece. We thank René Villeneuve, former curator of Early Canadian Art, National Gallery of Canada, for contributing the above essay.