091323 Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB

I woke up alone in a lousy hotel room in Fredericton on September 23rd, 2023.  I was attending Harvest Festival – I was in between a Daniel Lanois concert and a Trey Anastasio show – and I had a morning to kill before picking up my friend Dave at the airport.  I made a brief appearance at the simply terrible complimentary breakfast before heading straight downtown to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.

To be clear, this was no mere whim; not a shoulder shrugging, “I suppose if there’s nothing else to do…” situation at all.  Of course I didn’t come to Fredericton specifically to go to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery but when I realized I’d have some free time in the city the first thing I did was google the gallery’s hours.  Y’see, back when I was a young buck (and just on the cusp of beginning to appreciate art and artists) I was in Moncton working for the summer when a co-worker mentioned to me that he’d heard there were some Salvador Dali paintings in Fredericton.  “Real ones?!?” I asked incredulously.

“Yeah, apparently they’re originals,” he replied.  Well, after a few Yeah Right’s and No Way/Yes Way’s we decided to drive to Fredericton and see for ourselves.  And whattya know…it was true!  And we’re not talking just a small painting of a lobster on somebody’s head or anything.  Of the several real-life, totally original Dali paintings on display at the impossibly small Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the centrepiece was an enormous canvas entitled Santiago El Grande.  Dali had considered it one of his masterpieces.  I found it instantly compelling and utterly hypnotizing.

“This monumental canvas, measuring in at 13 feet high, is a triumphant rendering of Saint James the Great (Santiago El Grande in Spanish), the patron saint of Spain, rising from the sea astride a white stallion and brandishing an oversized crucifix…”

We sat and marvelled at it for two hours straight, then we drove back to Moncton.  This was back in the early ’90’s.  I was still plenty young enough to not at all appreciate the main wing of the gallery, where I shrugged off pieces by the Group of Seven as so many children’s paintings and snickered “I-could-have-painted-that” as I raced past their Maud Lewis collection.

So all these art-appreciating years later I was eager for another crack at the place.

Though the gallery is still located downtown abreast of the Saint John River, I would never have recognized it.  With the help of a massive funding campaign and a few major donations the Beaverbrook Art Gallery had expanded and expanded again until the building itself became worthy of its holdings.  They had even curated a small but nifty sculpture garden on the grounds outside, which is where I began.

Inside, I paid a meagre twelve bucks entrance fee and was immediately rewarded with two large murals by Newfoundland Mi’kmaq artist Jordan Bennett.  M’lady had recently become smitten with his work; she’d ordered a t-shirt from his website that she wears all the time.  And we had just discovered one of his murals earlier that summer up in Bonavista, a commission from one of the the town’s recent Biennale art festivals that was the size of a barn wall.  These two large pieces were new, the artist had just painted them on these two facing walls at the entrance to the gallery’s collection a few months earlier, and they were unmistakable.  

Nice start.

Entering the gallery proper, the first room I visited held the Canadian Collection.  Here were those Maud Lewis paintings, plus Norval Morriseau, Emily Carr, Mary Pratt and her husband Christopher, Alex Colville, Lawren Harris and so many others, and now – more than three decades later – I was able to appreciate them.  

Same goes for the room full of grand Elizabethan works (the gallery boasts the largest British collection in Canada), and the international collection with its classical Dutch and Italian masters, not to mention the modern works by Andy Warhol and others.  And even the astounding “Grandfather canoe” which, at more than two centuries, is the oldest complete birchbark canoe in the world.  

And then of course there was the Dali room, which is strategically placed at the end of the self-guided tour.  And again, it was completely enthralling.  Though this time I spent much less time gaping at Santiago El Grande.  This time I was cultured enough to be able to spread my love of art (and attention span) around the museum a little.  

Speaking of which, the basement of the gallery is given over to new, emerging, and local artists, both as a work space and an area to present the fruits of their artistic toil.  I made sure to give the room the attention it deserved. 

I tell you, for a gallery that serves a city with barely 50,000 people tucked away in the middle of New Brunswick, the Beaverbrook really punches above its weight.  And no wonder, the collection was cobbled together by the absurdly wealthy Lord Beaverbrook* and his high-society art-loving friends.  Heck, three of the Salvador Dali’s were donated to Beaverbrook’s gallery by his friend’s wife Lady Dunn, including the massive Santiago El Grande as well as portraits of both herself and her late husband, which had been commissioned from the artist.  (When he was just a year from dying old Lord Beaverbrook married Lady Dunn, soon to leave her a second inherited fortune.)

Recommended.  Would visit again.

*The Rupert Murdoch of his time, Beaverbrook (born Max Aitken) was a newspaper magnate who became a self-made millionaire before he reached the age of thirty.