New Horizons in the Late Nineteenth-Century Novel - Literature and Painting in Quebec: From Imagery to Identity - page 107

4.1 Horatio Walker. Les battures de l'île aux Grues , 1885. Aquarelle sur papier,
43,8 x 59,4 cm. Musée des beaux-arts du Québec, 1934.536. Photo: Patrick
Altman / The Shallows of the île aux Grues , 1885. Watercolour on paper, 43.8 x
59.4 cm. Musée des beaux-arts du Québec, 1934.536. Photo: Patrick Altman.
During most of his career, Walker divided his time between New
York City, where he was highly successful, and the île d'Orléans, his
adoptive rural home, which served as the primary subject matter for his
art, as he states: 'The pastoral life of the people of our countryside, the
noble work of the Habitant, the magnificent panoramas which sur-
round him, the different aspects of our seasons … such are the pre-
ferred subjects of my paintings' (in Harper, Painting , 204). Given this
aim to defend his heritage, David Karel concludes that 'For the
American public, Walker's art represented the otherness - another peo-
ple, living in another age, in another country, with other customs,