Roberts, William Goodridge

Born in Barbados into a renowned Canadian literary family, Goodridge Roberts is a central figure in modern art in Quebec and Canada. A founding member of the Société d’art contemporain alongside John Lyman, he exerted a profound influence on Montreal’s art scene through his humanistic approach and his rejection of fleeting trends.

For Roberts, aesthetics lie in the rigorous organization of forms and the accuracy of colors. For him, art is an invitation to meditate on the physical presence of objects, bodies, and landscapes.

He is famous for his views of the Laurentians and the Eastern Townships, painted with broad, fluid brushstrokes that capture the immensity of the horizon without artifice. Roberts redefined the nude in Canada, treating it with direct honesty, devoid of salon eroticism, and prioritizing mass and light over the skin. His studio compositions are exercises in pure painting, where the arrangement of everyday objects becomes a quest for structural harmony.

As an artist-in-residence at Queen’s University and later as a teacher at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts School, he trained many Canadian painters. He was one of four artists selected to represent Canada during its very first participation in the Venice Biennale in 1952.