Montreal from the Mountain

A classic view of Montreal from the elevated vantage point favoured by many of the early visiting artists from Thomas Davies and James Peachey to W.H. Bartlett and James Duncan. Whitefield, an English painter and lithographer, emigrated to the United States around 1840. He is known to have visited Quebec in 1851, is in Montreal in 1852, and returned to Canada in 1854, painting ‘Canadian scenery from Niagara Falls to Tadoussac and en route visited Toronto, Port Hope, Belleville, Montreal, and many other places; at these centres made precise pencil drawings suitable for use in preparing prints of towns and cities at a later date. …’ (J. Russell Harper, Early Painters and Engravers in Canada, Toronto, 1970, p.330). He published a similar view, ‘Montreal, Canada East. From the Mountain.’, the view taken before the fire of 1852 which destroyed 1,200 houses and sixteen blocks of the city, in his Original Views of North American Cities, no.25 (Montreal, 1852), for which see D. Bellman (ed.), ‘Mont-Royal Montréal Mount Royal Montreal’, racar revue d’art canadienne canadian art review, Supplement no 1, Dec. 1977 (to accompany the exhibition at the McCord Museum, Dec. 1977-March 1978), S.22, fig.9; Spendlove, pp.69-72, and pl.106, and De Volpi and Winkworth, pl.108.