At the Foot of the Mountains

Gaston Rebry was born on October 30, 1933, in Wevelgem, Belgium, the son of legendary cyclist Gaston Rebry Sr., who was one of the most important cyclists of the first half of the twentieth century and winner of three Paris-Roubaix races. Following his father's athletic path, the younger Gaston became a successful competitive cyclist in his own right, winning 48 out of 50 races he participated in and claiming the junior championship of Belgium at age sixteen. During this period, he also studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Menin, where he was awarded First Prize twice. However, his father's sudden death from a heart attack in 1953 at age 48 profoundly affected him, leading to his complete abandonment of competitive cycling.

Following this tragic loss, Rebry emigrated to Montreal in 1954 at age twenty-one to live with his sister and process his grief. He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal from 1954 to 1956, continuing his artistic studies while earning his living as a traveling salesman. The Canadian wilderness made a profound impression on him, contrasting dramatically with the pastoral landscapes of his Belgian homeland. He became familiar with the work of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, whose understanding and portrayal of landscape inspired him and influenced the development of his artistic style. In 1960, he became a Canadian citizen and settled in Repentigny.

During his early years as an immigrant, Rebry worked in commercial illustration while gradually establishing himself as a painter. It took ten years before he achieved sufficient recognition and financial stability to devote himself full-time to painting in 1972. Initially, he painted houses, villages, and portraits, but eventually focused exclusively on landscapes for over twenty years. In 1970, he moved to Saint Boniface, near Shawinigan in the Saint Maurice Region, where he found deep inspiration in the Quebec landscape. His first solo exhibition was held at the Cultural Center in Shawinigan in 1978, followed by his first exhibition outside Quebec in Toronto in 1984.

Rebry's artistic philosophy centered on his profound connection with nature, which he approached not through direct copying but through reconstruction and interpretation. He was fascinated by light and its nuances in water, sky, and forest, observing these effects during his walks through the wilderness. Rather than portraying nature exactly as he saw it, he would reconstruct scenes by removing certain elements and adding others to create something new and unique. His work depicted an untouched, primeval landscape—a lush, green paradise where sky, forest, and water ruled supreme, nature as it existed before human settlement or even the migration of native populations.

His paintings captured the Canadian wilderness with strong technical skill, featuring Quebec landscapes that included old houses, sugar bush cabins, woods, and the countryside around the Maurice region. The influence of the Group of Seven was evident in his work, though he developed his own distinctive style with softer color tones. He particularly favored winter and fall scenes, with winter paintings showing rounded forms and branches drooping under snow, while autumn works featured brighter colors. His compositions often depicted tall, thin trees competing for light or falling over each other in natural chaos, with simplified forms and sharp edges rounded off to create waving circles of color beneath streaked skies.

Rebry's work gained significant recognition, and his paintings were collected across Canada despite his exhibitions being primarily in Quebec. His reputation reached the highest levels of Canadian society, with former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien frequently presenting his paintings as gifts to foreign dignitaries, including Pope John Paul II in 1998. By the end of his career, art investment specialists ranked him among the top fifty painters with the highest investment potential in Canada. His work is held in corporate collections including Alcan, Bell Canada, Power Corporation, Shell Canada, SNC, La Laurentienne, and Desjardins. Rebry died on January 5, 2007, leaving behind a significant artistic legacy that captured the beauty of his adopted homeland through nearly fifty years of communion with the Canadian landscape.