Charles Huot (Charles Edouard Huot)

1855-1930

Charles Huot was born in Quebec City. Huot showed signs of his love for painting as a boy and completed a study of Christ, which he did in an old chest. His mother discovered the painting almost ten years later. He received his early education at St. Anne de la Pocatière (1866-1970) and at the École Normale Laval (1870-1874) in Quebec City. There his talent was already being noticed and largely talked about. In 1874, Rev. Pierre Lagacé, principal at École Normale Laval, organized a committee to provide funds for students to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. These funds enabled Huot, now 19, to leave Canada and go study in Paris at Alexandre Cabanel’s studio. During this time, he lived with the family of Gustave Lefèvre, principal of the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse Niedermeyer, who also taught him. In 1875 he was finally admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts, where he would follow the classical academic program. Huot was the first of many Canadians from that generation that would go to France and study in Paris. 

In 1876, participating at the Salon de Paris for the first time, Huot received an honourable mention and four of his works were accepted for the annual exhibition of the École des Beaux-Arts. He also exhibited at the 1878 World Fair in Paris. After finishing his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts, probably in 1879-1880, he took part in the salons of 1881, 1882, 1884, and 1885. He also participated in the Black and White Exhibition in Paris in 1885 where he was awarded a silver medal.

During these years Huot worked on various projects. He would make ends meet by working on commissions, but he also made numerous illustrations for the publisher Hachette, Firmin-Didot and Delagrave. He spent his vacations in France and travelled in Europe. A couple of years earlier he had met a pastor’s daughter, whom he married in Berlin in 1885.

The next year he returned to Canada briefly when the Oblates entrusted him with the task of decorating St. Sauveur church in Quebec City. In January 1887 the Oblates officially commissioned 13 paintings. A few days later Huot left to join his wife in Paris and then moved in with his father-in-law in Neukrug (then part of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, now Karczma, Poland), where his wife gave birth to their daughter. He had the use of a large studio for the painting of the five canvases that would decorate the vault of St. Sauveur. The work progressed and by January 1888 Quebec's Le Courrier du Canada reported on the success enjoyed by Huot, who exhibited each work in Germany upon finishing it. The flattering remarks in the Rostock and Schwerin newspapers, which were quoted regularly in Quebec publications, created a favourable climate for Huot, who landed at Quebec with his wife and daughter in late 1889, with his five finished canvases. Unquestionably, the St. Sauveur undertaking launched the painter's career; he could count increasingly on influential connections.

Back at home, Huot set about building up a clientele but he first had to finish the eight other paintings commissioned for St. Sauveur, which would be completed in 1893. By the summer of 1890 he was doing portraits and occasionally landscapes and still-lifes. The following autumn he opened a painting school in his home.

In the years that followed, he completed many commissions for churches in various parishes in Québec City, Beauport and Carleton. The painter also accepted certain projects that ensured him good visibility. He made a canvas for the festival of the Order of Agricultural Merit in 1890, and the photo-engraved reproduction of a drawing of the  Quebec Carnival in 1894. Thousands of the latter would sell in Canada and 30,000 copies of it would be printed in New York.

In 1894 Huot participated for the first time in the exhibition of the Art Association of Montreal, and he would be present again in 1908 and 1909. From 1895 he also taught freehand drawing at the École des Arts et Métiers in Quebec City.

In 1900 Huot had a solo exhibition of some one hundred pieces at the legislative building, where, at least in 1898, he had his studio. The event earned him rave reviews. From then-on and for the next two decades, Huot regularly undertook contracts across the Province of Québec: in Chicoutimi, Rivière-du-Loup, Métabetchouan (Lac-Saint-Jean region), Loretteville. During those years, Huot also participated at the Salons of the Royal Canadian Academy (1902, 1903, 1908) and participated again in 1925.

From 1903 to his wife’s death in France in June 1907, Huot travelled back and forth from Canada to Europe, taking art classes and painting. Huot then returned to Quebec City with his daughter in the summer of 1907 on the same boat as Alfred Laliberté and M.-A. Suzor-Coté.

For the next decade or so, Huot kept working on commissions for churches, working in illustrations, travelling to Europe, studying art and doing historical research for the projects he was working on, some of them taking up to seven years to complete.

By 1920 Huot started reducing his activities. In 1924, however, he drew the medal commemorating the tercentenary of the consecration of New France to St. Joseph, which Alfred Laliberté rendered in relief. He also started working on one last commission from the provincial government but fell ill while painting this work. He never finished the painting but before dying, he expressed the wish that the painting be completed by Ivan Neilson (then director of École des Beaux-Arts, Quebec and Charles Maillard of École des Beaux-Arts, Montreal. They completed the painting in 1930, several months after Huot’s death. Huot died in Quebec City at the age of 75.

Collections:

- National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON)
- Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Montreal, QC)
- Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec (Quebec, QC)
- Museum of Civilization (Quebec, QC)
- Quebec Parliament (Quebec, QC)
- National Commission of Battlefields (Quebec, QC)
- Musée d’Art de Joliette (Joliette, QC)
- Musée du Séminaire de Québec (Quebec, QC)
- University of Ottawa (Ottawa, ON)
- Power Corporation of Canada (Montreal, QC)
- Musée Tavet-Delacourt (Pontoise, France)