Laurentian Village, By Clarence Gagnon in Coquitlam, BC

Painter, engraver, and illustrator, Clarence Alphonse Gagnon was born in Montreal November 8, 1881. From 1897 to 1900, he studied drawing and painting under William Brymner at the Art Association of Montreal. In 1904, Clarence Gagnon left for Paris to work in the studio of Jean-Paul Laurens at the Julian Academy. He distinguished himself early in his career by the quality of his engravings, and won a gold medal at the St. Louis Exhibition in 1904 and an honorable mention at the Salon des artistes français in Paris in 1905. From 1909 to 1914 Gagnon moved between Canada, France, and Norway, always working up the sketches he had made in Quebec.