André Biéler
The Shoe
Artist
André Biéler
Lausanne 1896 – Kingston, Ontario, 1989
Title
The Shoe
Date
1931
Materials
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
61.3 x 51 cm
Credits
Purchase, Harold Lawson, Marjorie Caverhill, Harry W. Thorpe and Mona Prentice Bequests, inv. 2008.38
Collection
Quebec and Canadian Art
André Biéler’s wife, the decorator Jeannette Meunier, sat for this intimate painting in 1931, the year they married. As she leans forward to buckle one shoe, the other shoe is lying on its side in the foreground. The whole composition is in tension around this seemingly insignificant detail. An atypical subject for Biéler, The Shoe recalls the production of John Lyman, with whom he taught from 1931 to 1933 at L’Atelier, a Montreal art school they co-founded.
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