Dominion gallery of fine art montreal

DEFINITION

The Dominion Gallery of Fine Art, first located in the Keefer Building on St. Catherine Street West in Montreal, was founded by Rose Millman in December 1941. Max Stern, a recent ??migr?? from Germany, joined the Gallery as managing director in October 1942. He became Millman's business partner in 1944 and purchased the Gallery outright in 1947. In 1950, Stern moved the business to 1438 Sherbrooke Street. From the outset, the Dominion Gallery mainly promoted art by living Canadian artists. The inaugural exhibition at the gallery, held in March 1943, featured paintings by Goodridge Roberts (1904-1974). The Roberts exhibition was the first in a series at the Dominion Gallery during the 1940s devoted to contemporary Canadian artists, Jacques Godefroy de Tonnancour (1917-2005), Paul-Emile Borduas (1905-1960), John Lyman (1886-1967), Emily Carr (1871-1945), and Stanley Cosgrove (1911-2002) among them. The Dominion Gallery was the first gallery in Canada to provide artists with a guaranteed annual income, allowing them to devote time to their art without the necessity of having to earn a livelihood by other means. In all, the Dominion supported thirty-two Canadian artists with contracts. Having exhibited and sold mostly contemporary Canadian works during the 1940s and early 1950s, the Dominion Gallery changed course in the mid 1950s, when it became more actively involved in selling international art. Especially important was Stern's focus on international sculpture, an interest aided by the lifting of Canada's import duty on sculpture in 1956. Over the next few years the Dominion Gallery developed the largest private collection of international sculpture in Canada, selling works by such artists as Henry Moore (1898-1986), Hans Arp (1886-1966), Aristide Maillol (1861-1944), Emilio Greco (1913-1995), and Marino Marini (1901-1980). The Gallery also promoted the work of Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), becoming the agent for the sale of Rodin sculptures from the Mus??e Rodin in the early 1960s. In 1967, on the fiftieth anniversary of Rodin's death, the Gallery paid tribute to the artist with a major exhibition of his work. Following Max Stern's death in 1987, the Dominion Gallery continued to organize important exhibitions of Canadian and international art under the direction of Michel Moreault, an employee of the gallery since October 1968. The Gallery was closed in December 2000. The Dominion Gallery building and name was purchased by Robert Landau in 2001 and reopened in 2005. Source: http://www.gallery.ca/english/library/biblio/ngc029.html#aseries10