When will Montreal painter John Little be admitted to the museum?

Died on October 29 at the age of 96, the prolific painter John Little has not yet been discovered by museums. At least that’s what his gallerist Alan Klinkhoff, from the gallery of the same name, located a stone’s throw from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, believes.

The Alan Klinkhoff Gallery presents this week a retrospective of the work of John Little. Planned even before the painter’s death, the exhibition entitled Urban painting in Canada was in Toronto last week and is only open to the public until Saturday in Montreal.

Well known to painting enthusiasts due to the quality of his work and his long career that began in the 1950s, John Little remains unknown to the public. And for good reason: reclusive, he never gave an interview and photos of him are rare.

The Réjean Ducharme of painting

His last solo exhibition dates back to 1979 and the experience was not the most pleasant, remembers Alan Klinkhoff. There are some who queued for three days before the opening to have his paintingshe specifies.

People were pushing and shoving each other, there was even a small fight. And from there, he told himself he would never do another solo show. He continued to provide us with paintings, two at a time.

There is only one book about John Little and his work. It was published in 2017 by Alan Klinkhoff who made an edition in English and another in French. The book is based on a series of interviews, the only ones the painter has ever conducted, with of course his gallery owner. Today, Alan Klinkhoff would like, with the permission of John Little’s children, to add the final chapters of the painter’s life before republishing the book.

Although they did not enter museum collections during his lifetime, John Little’s paintings are found in major public and private collections. Hydro-Québec and the National Bank each have two, Loto-Québec has one and Power Corporation has four, including a rare view of Montreal painted in 1975 from the Mount Royal lookout. The Molson family also owns them.

At one time, National League hockey players were tearing up their rink canvases.

Jean Béliveau had them, Vincent Damphousse too, and several other playerssays Alan Klinkhoff, before adding that the painter did not want to produce for this market and that he preferred to concentrate on his street scenes.

Alan Klinkhoff remains convinced that the discovery of John Little by museums will come, since he is the most important urban artist in Canada, even if his subjects are the streets of Montreal, Quebec and some of Ottawa. Already, specifies the gallery owner, his paintings sell for more than those of the painter Adrien Hébert (1890-1967) who is now part of the collections of major Canadian museums.

A painting collector who wishes to remain anonymous believes that John Little’s message on the preservation of old urban neighborhoods and suburbs resonates throughout North America.

The disappearance of the city center as a place to live has happened in several cities in North America. Not just here. The whole phenomenon of post-war modernization happened in New York, Chicago, Detroit.

John Little’s first scenes were in fact painted in a neighborhood doomed to disappear: that of Faubourg à m’lasse where the Maison de - will be built. He then painted in a more surrealist style as evidenced by the canvas Rue Beaudry, de la Gauchetière, Montreal, 1963, painted a few months before the destruction of the neighborhood.

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The painter from the Center-South

In the following decades, he painted the northern section of this sector, which still exists. Wolfe, Montcalm, Beaudry, de la Visitation, Panet, Plessis, Logan, Lafontaine, Champlain streets, all these streets in the Centre-Sud district of Montreal have been immortalized in the paintings of John Little.

Same thing for the streets of the Saint-Henri, Pointe-Saint-Charles, Mile End and Plateau districts. At the beginning of the 1970s, his style transformed and became very documentary, like the photo at the top of this article. This is the style he kept until 2016, the year he stopped painting.

The owner of the Vincent Gallery in Ottawa, Vincent Fortier, believes that John Little is a perfect representative of American realism in the Ash Can School appeared in New York at the beginning of the 20^e century.

We painted urban poetry, in reaction to people who painted beautiful landscapes. We painted the common people, the markets, the suburbsexplains Mr. Fortier.

If you look at Edward Hopper, in the United States, who is probably the most important painter of the Ash Can School, [eh] well John Little and Philip Surrey are the Canadian counterpart of this school, so it is a North American movement.

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For Paul Maréchal, who has been teaching the art market for 25 years at theUQAMthere is no doubt that John Little will one day enter Canadian museums. He gives the example of the painters Paul Caron, George Delfosse and Adrien Hébert who only entered museum collections upon their death, after having painted and repainted Old Montreal.

People like to find these testimonies of a past, of a city which is quickly disappearing. Especially since John Little was very concerned about the preservation of architectural heritage. So, these are testimonies for posterity which are essential.

It also happens that recognition takes time to arrive. Paul Maréchal gives the example of the British painter Samuel Scott (1702-1772), specialized in views of London.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that he gained recognition when people, through his work, saw how much the city had changed!

John Little is already one of the 100 best-selling Canadian artists, underlines Marc-Antoine Longpré, president of the BYdealers auction house. In 2020, the web Rue de la Fabrique, Quebec, sold for $133,000. Another one, The stairs against rue Lavigueur and rue Arago Est, Quebecsold for $121,000.

Currently, a painting is for sale in Toronto for $125,000. In general, the average price of John Little’s works ranges between $5,000 and $75,000.