KLEINBURG, ON.- One of the most anticipated exhibitions of the fall season opened at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection on Friday, October 10, 2014. Morrice and Lyman in the Company of Matisse takes visitors on a pictorial journey through the sunbathed landscapes and bustling marketplaces of exotic painting locales around the world, including Venice, Paris, North Africa, and the West Indies.

More than 130 works by Canadian expatriates James Wilson Morrice (1865-1924) and John Lyman (1886-1967) frame a selection of rarely seen canvases and drawings by the internationally acclaimed French master, Henri Matisse (1869-1954). This is the first exhibition to consider the connection between the three artists, who encountered one another in Paris in the early years of the twentieth century. In the Company of Matisse traces their artistic paths over more than five decades and explores their quest to capture shimmering light and vibrant colour.

“It was admittedly a bold move to bring together the work of these three artists,” said exhibition curator Michèle Grandbois of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. “Although they left little contemporary evidence of their meetings, their associations resulted in a creative surge that had a powerful impact on the conventional Canadian art milieu of the time.”

The exhibition approaches the work of the two Canadian artists in a global context, examining the ways in which they were influenced by their experiences abroad and revealing the impact of their legacy on the development of modern art in Canada.

“Morrice and Lyman in the Company of Matisse reflects the McMichael’s commitment to bringing exhibitions that are unconventional and surprising, and that present new ways of looking at Canadian art,” said Katerina Atanassova, McMichael Chief Curator.

In the Company of Matisse has been reinterpreted and enlarged for the McMichael by Atanassova through the addition of works from private collections in Toronto and Montreal, including paintings and drawings by Matisse, that expand upon the themes of exoticism and the nude. Audiovisual, textual, and archival material offer insight into the lives and experiences of the artists, and works from the gallery’s permanent collection, as well as loaned works by Robert Wakeham Pilot (1898-1967), Will Ogilvie (1901-1989), and Franklin Brownell (1857-1946), position Morrice and Lyman within a broader artistic context.