From 1936 to 1948, Marc-Aurèle Fortin traveled throughout the province of Quebec, visiting places such as Quebec City and the Charlevoix region. These journeys inspired him to create numerous watercolors, which he later reinterpreted as oil paintings in his Montreal studio. In La croix de chemin, Fortin likely transformed a summer scene from one of his watercolors into a winter setting. In his large paintings with black backgrounds, light appears to radiate from the colorful houses—the pigment itself becoming a source of illumination, particularly in the snow-covered rooftops.

This painting is featured in Marc-Aurèle Fortin: l’homme à l’œuvre by Guy Robert. The author explains that, for Fortin, the rural house held multiple layers of meaning. The first was anecdotal: the artist highlighted a variety of architectural features—roof shapes, gables, chimneys, and roadside crosses typical of Quebec villages. The second was graphic: Fortin altered the forms of houses, departing from straightforward landscape representation. Finally, there was an emotional dimension, revealing Fortin’s nostalgia and sorrow for a rural way of life that was slowly disappearing. He expressed this sentiment explicitly in 1945:

“Rural populations have no artistic taste. They are grossly ignorant and do not understand that what makes a village charming, what gives it its character and attracts visitors, are these ancient houses built by their ancestors. Instead of preserving them carefully, keeping them as they are, they strive to modernize them, giving them a contemporary appearance.”¹

Fortin was not alone in expressing such views—Marius Barbeau, Jean-Paul Lemieux, and others would later voice similarly strong opinions.

¹ ROBERT, Guy, Marc-Aurèle Fortin , l’homme à l’œuvre, extrait des propos de Marc-Aurèle Fortin, cité d’abord par Albert Laberge et repris par l’auteur, page 121,