DCB/DBC Mobile beta
+

As part of the funding agreement between the Dictionary of Canadian Biography and the Canadian Museum of History, we invite readers to take part in a short survey.

I’ll take the survey now.

Remind me later.

Don’t show me this message again.

I have already taken the questionnaire

DCB/DBC News

New Biographies

Minor Corrections

Biography of the Day

LESAGE, DAMASE – Volume XV (1921-1930)

b. 28 March 1849 in Sainte-Thérèse-de-Blainville (Sainte-Thérèse), Lower Canada

Confederation

Responsible Government

Sir John A. Macdonald

From the Red River Settlement to Manitoba (1812–70)

Sir Wilfrid Laurier

Sir George-Étienne Cartier

Sports

The Fenians

Women in the DCB/DBC

The Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences of 1864

Introductory Essays of the DCB/DBC

The Acadians

For Educators

The War of 1812 

Canada’s Wartime Prime Ministers

The First World War

POMMIER, HUGUES, priest, missionary, painter, and portraitist; b. c. 1637 in the region of Vendôme, southwest of Paris; d. 1686 in France.

Little is known of his life before he left for New France, except that he had been ordained as a priest and that he intended to do missionary work in Canada. He sailed in 1663, stopped off at Plaisance (Placentia, Newfoundland), where he exercised his ministry for several months, and did not reach Quebec until the spring of 1664. During the 14 years that he spent in New France, he served the few parishes which were then in the making – Sainte-Famille (Île d’Orléans), Boucherville, Lauson, Contrecoeur, Sorel, and Beauport. The last mention concerning him dates from 1678. He returned to France, where he died in December 1686.

“He prided himself on being a painter, producing many pictures; no one liked them,” wrote Bertrand de Latour* in his Mémoires sur la vie de Mde Laval. It is advisable to distrust remarks of this sort. However that may be, there are in existence at the present time three pictures which were painted between 1665 and 1672 and which are certainly Pommier’s work. One is a good copy of a print by Grégoire Huret representing the martyrdom of the Jesuit fathers in 1648–49. The painting is old, and as Huret’s print arrived at Quebec in 1665, Pommier was the only painter capable of doing it at that time. This picture is in the Hôtel-Dieu in Quebec.

The same institution possesses a hallucinatory portrait, that of Mother Catherine de Saint-Augustin [see Simon], who died on 8 May 1668. At that date Pommier was still the only Quebec painter practising his art and available to paint the portrait of the deceased.

On 30 April 1672 Mother Marie de l’Incarnation [see Guyart] died at the convent of the Ursulines in Quebec. She was buried with great ceremony. But some hours later it was decided to take her body out of the vault in order to have her portrait done. At the beginning of May 1672 Pommier was the only person who could “make a perfect likeness of this gentle face which was stamped with the marks of beatitude.” The original of this portrait was lost in the fire of 1686; there is still in existence however a replica or a faithful copy.

These are the only works of this artist that are known at the present time. Even if he had painted only the moving portrait of Mother Catherine, Father Pommier would have proved his talent as a painter and portraitist.

Gérard Morisset

ASQ, mss, 29, “Histoire du Séminaire de Québec,” par J.-A. Taschereau. Jug. et délib., I, 283. Auguste Gosselin, Vie de Mgr de Laval, I, 446. Bertrand de Latour, Mémoires sur la vie de Mde Laval, premier évêque de Québec (Cologne, 1761), 107. Gérard Morisset, Peintres et tableaux (2v., Québec, 1936–37), II, 23–36.

General Bibliography

Cite This Article

Gérard Morisset, “POMMIER, HUGUES,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 1, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed March 28, 2024, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/pommier_hugues_1E.html.

The citation above shows the format for footnotes and endnotes according to the Chicago manual of style (16th edition). Information to be used in other citation formats:


Permalink:   http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/pommier_hugues_1E.html
Author of Article:   Gérard Morisset
Title of Article:   POMMIER, HUGUES
Publication Name:   Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 1
Publisher:   University of Toronto/Université Laval
Year of publication:   1966
Year of revision:   1979
Access Date:   March 28, 2024