File

This file focusses on the distribution of and critical reception to the deluxe edition of Maria Chapdelaine and the illustrations that Clarence A. Gagnon created for the book.

In a letter to Clarence A. Gagnon dated October 25, 1933, Philippe Roy, at that time the Minister and Head of the Canadian Legation in France, passes on the "warm congratulations and kind regards" of former Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden, to whom he had given a copy of the book. There are also two letters from the Provincial Secretary of Quebec, Athanase David. One of these missives, dated December 18, 1933, thanks the artist for sending him a signed copy via the Mornay publishing house and mentions the book's popularity in Quebec. In a second letter sent July 27, 1934, David suggests that the original paintings for Maria Chapdelaine be temporarily preserved at the Musée du Québec (now the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec) until such time that he or some other buyer can be found to purchase them, and thus keep the works from leaving the province.

In addition, the file includes a typewritten transcription of a journal article by Fernand Martin about the publication of Maria Chapdelaine in which he praises Gagnon's illustrations, as well as a handwritten draft and several typewritten copies—in French and English—of excerpts from Louis Hémon's novel that were used as captions for the book's illustrations. Two copies of a catalogue, with an introduction by Wilfrid Bovey entitled "Portraits of Quebec," chronicle the Art Association of Montreal's February 1938 exhibition of Gagnon's original paintings for Maria Chapdelaine. A list of works accompanied by their estimated values, which includes twenty or so paintings from Maria Chapdelaine, photographs, etchings and drawings, documents a posthumous exhibition of Gagnon's work organized in 1944 at Université Laval in Quebec City.

Three press clippings complete the file. Two of them, published in November 1945, report on a "Canadian supper" hosted by Jean Désy, the Canadian ambassador to Brazil, to commemorate the arrival in Rio of a merchant ship built by Canadian Vickers Limited for the Brazilian shipping company Lloyd Brasileiro. These articles note that the elegant menus printed for the occasion were illustrated with an engraving of one of Gagnon's Maria Chapdelaine illustrations. The third article recounts the visit of President Getúlio Vargas of Brazil to the 1944 Canadian art exhibition held in Rio de Janeiro, which presented, among others, works by Frank Carmichael, Henri Masson and Clarence A. Gagnon.