Horace Champagne

I have just spent most of the day publishing the last of the pictures from the Canadian Rockies, and since I haven't taken many any pictures today, I decided to close with a shot of this pastel by the Canadian artist, Horace Champagne. He was another regular at the Lake O'Hara Lodge, a dignified Anglo Canadian from Montreal. We chatted with him and admired several of his pictures which hung in the lodge. 

One day we were hiking up to Lake Oessa and came across Horace, stool and easel set up in the snow doing a plein air  picture of Lake Victoria nestled in front of the imposing edifice of Mt. Le Froy.  We tiptoed past without disturbing him but he told us at dinnertime that he had had, among other things, a rare sighting of a wolverine.

Some years later we were sitting at dinner with an entertaining woman who was also an artist and a friend of Horace Champagne. I told her that I would love to have one of his pictures but didn't know how to go about asking him. As he wasn't 'in residence' at the time she said, "Oh, just write to him". I did so and got a charming note from him putting me in touch with a gallery in Calgary that handled his 'western' pictures'. The Masters Gallery sent us a number of photographs .

The picture we chose arrived a few days later and we are convinced that it is the very picture he was working on when we ran into him sitting in the snow painting it. No money had changed hands with the Masters Gallery and we were told that we could send it back if it wasn't right, but of course we bought it and it hangs over our fireplace to this day. In fact, when we moved, we redesigned the whole room and particularly the fireplace as a suitable and fitting place for our picture by Horace Champagne.