James Wilson Morrice

Overview

James Wilson Morrice: Paintings and Drawings of Venice is the first comprehensive overview of the artist’s images of Venice, Italy. Living in Paris for most of his life, Morrice (1865–1924) was the first Canadian painter to make regular trips to Venice from the mid 1890s to about 1908. This book situates Morrice within the history of Venice and Venetian art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by looking carefully at his more than one hundred modernist paintings and numerous drawings of “La Serenissima.”

During his lifetime, Morrice’s Venetian pictures appeared in art exhibitions in Paris, London and other European countries, as well as in Montreal and the United States. Constantly cited in exhibition reviews, Morrice was praised for his modernity, and his Venice works have ensured his fame and importance for years to come.