Born in Sainte-Rose, Marc-Aurèle Fortin was a landscape painter, print-maker, and a pioneer of modern art in Quebec between 1920 and 1940. He is known for a personal, figurative painting style characterized by the vivid use of colour, unusual effects of light and shadow, and uncommon perspectives and viewpoints. The majestic trees and other exuberant natural forms that populate many of his canvases convey a sense of loss at the passing of earlier ways of life in the province, while his paintings of the port and neighbourhoods of Montréal express fascination with the transformations of a city undergoing rapid industrialization.