![Lionel Lemoine Fitzgerald - Summer Afternoon, the Prairie [1921]](http://c2.staticflickr.com/1/470/31593842105_632561b124_b.jpg)
FitzGerald (1890 - 1956) did not study fine art in Europe, rarely straying from his home province. Nonetheless, between 1910 and 1920, he displayed a certain debt to late-nineteenth century French painters like Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro, who sought to record with honest immediacy the effects of light and atmosphere. His first sustained encounter with Canadian Impressionism came after the opening of the Winnipeg Museum of Fine Arts (today the Winnipeg Art Gallery) in 1912, which often displayed canvases by eastern artists like M.A. Suzor-Côté, Clarence Gagnon, and Maurice Cullen. By decade’s end, gleaming canvases like Summer Afternoon, the Prairies mark the culmination of FitzGerald’s Impressionist period.
[Winnipeg Art Gallery - Oil on canvas]