Clarence Gagnon is best known for his rural Quebec landscape paintings and the illustrations for Louis Hémon’s novel Maria Chapdelaine. Gagnon was also an award winning printmaker, a passionate outdoorsman, and an active promoter of Quebec handicrafts.

Clarence Gagnon was born in a small village in rural Quebec. Although he trained and maintained a studio in Paris for much of his career, he never lost his love of the Laurentians and the Charlevoix region of eastern Quebec which inspired many of his paintings. Gagnon’s mother fostered his early interest for drawing and despite his father’s wishes that he enter business, he began studying drawing and painting in 1897 at the age of sixteen under William Brymner at the Art Association of Montreal.

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