Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, who rose to fame as a pioneer of modernist tapestry during Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, was exposed early to weaving, a traditional practice in many rural communities in the province. The youngest of 11 children in a middle-class family in Trois-Pistoles, a town on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, she lost her mother, a painter, in 1929, when she was just three. Eight years later, in what seems a pivotal encounter, she came across a hand-woven dress that had belonged to her mother Within a year, she had embarked on her life’s path. As she later recalled: “When I was 12, I asked for the instrument that would allow me to express myself: the loom that wove the first steps in my journey towards tapestry.”
Independent Ottawa curator Anne Newlands, a former educator and researcher at the National Gallery of Canada, has written a 192-page hardcover book, Weaving Modernist Art: The Life and Work of Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, about that journey and where it led, recounting her subject’s “lifelong desire to explore colour and textures using beautiful wools.” In evidence throughout is the determination and hard work that guided Rousseau-Vermette’s steady climb from her student days at the École des beaux-arts de Québec through a five-decade career in which she completed more than 640 tapestries, a prodigious body of work. Her death came in 2006, from cancer.
Mariette Rousseau-Vermette’s wool tapestry, “Étoiles,” 1971
was displayed in the Toronto Star lobby until 2014. The design reflects her interpretation of the newspaper’s printing process. (courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
Rousseau-Vermette’s work may be familiar to anyone of a certain age who has spent time in major cultural venues. Among her commissions were theatre curtains for the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and Théâtre Masionneuve at Montreal’s Place des Arts, as well as an ambitious three-dimensional ceiling tapestry for Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto.
Her work was in the fine crafts exhibition at the Canadian pavilion of Expo 67, where it drew praise from acclaimed novelist André Malraux, then France’s minister of cultural affairs. It was included in major exhibitions, such as Three Hundred Years of Canadian Art, which marked the country’s centennial at the National Gallery of Canada. As well, Rousseau-Vermette showed her work internationally, and was included in a group exhibition of contemporary textile art at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the late 1960s.
Mariette Rousseau-Vermette on the cover of “Le magazine de la Presse” on March 23, 1963. (photo by Antoine Desilets)
Yet despite these accomplishments, Newlands, who has written books about Emily Carr and the Group of Seven, realized Rousseau-Vermette was at risk, like so many women before her, of being forgotten. Newlands visited her studio in the Laurentians, north of Montreal, where she found meticulous records that documented her projects, including the initial cartons, or sketches, she used to hone her vision. The studio, large and productive, was a testament to the artist’s skill in both art and business. Newlands details her amazement at the materials it held, including a display of vibrant tapestries that revealed her technical and stylistic innovations.
“Light, in its diverse forms and temperaments, was the unifying and dominant subject,” Newlands writes. “The scale of the works, the warmth and harmony of the colours and the startling originality of the designs, rendered with the utmost technical perfection, left me transfixed and curious about the life and career of the artist who had created these breathtaking works.”
Two pages of “Weaving Modernist Art” show four of Mariette Rousseau-Vermette’s preliminary sketches for works in her series of half circles, along with a finished piece, “Demi-cercle bleu dans le blue,” a 1972 wool tapestry.
Although weaving is sometimes dismissed as mere craft, Rousseau-Vermette identified as an artist who made large-scale works for walls, much as a painter would – all that was different was her choice of materials and tools. Her designs were modern, and her influences many. Along with the Canadian landscape, she admired American artist Mark Rothko’s shimmering colour-field paintings. Her husband, Claude Vermette, a ceramic artist who incorporated his work into architectural spaces, was also pivotal in supporting her career aspirations as they raised a family together. Later in life, she gave back to her community by teaching a new generation of textile artists at the Banff Centre.
Newlands has produced a wonderful book. Well-written, carefully researched and comprehensively illustrated, it offers an accessible account of the development of Quebec’s modernist art scene, useful explanations about technical aspects of weaving, and a generous overview of the artist’s career. It’s a useful guide to a memorable chapter of this country’s cultural history. ■
Weaving Modernist Art: The Life and Work of Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, by Anne Newlands: Firefly Books, 2023.
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