Because the geese showed up so often in his work, some art critics thought they might be self-portraits or some kind of totem. But artist Bonnie Baxter says Riopelle incorporated the birds into his artworks for the simple reason that they were available. Baxter knew Riopelle well, working with him for almost a decade as the master printmaker of all his engravings. “He loved nature, and there are a lot of geese here, and they fly over,” she explains. “Nature and wildlife were always part of everything he did.”

In 2023, the centenary of his birth, Riopelle’s appreciation for Canada’s wildlife is on display in multiple art exhibitions across his native Quebec and as part of a retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, an extravaganza that will pair Riopelle’s work with that of his contemporaries. Other exhibitions this summer include a show at Galerie Montcalm in Gatineau, Que., highlighting prints of animals, birds and plants, and a showcase at the library in Montmagny, a Quebec town close to tiny l’Isle-aux-Grues (Island of the Cranes) in the St. Lawrence River where Riopelle lived his last years painting and watching geese flying to and from nearby Île-aux-Oies (Island of the Geese).

Over the years, Jean Paul Riopelle has become a mythological figure in his home province of Quebec, where Quebecers are dazzled both by his international success and his reputation as a “wild man,” says Michel Cheff, curator of the Galerie Montcalm exhibition, adding: “He represents the true myth of the artist.” The tales are legion, including one where the artist is said to have tossed some of his valuable paintings into a Parisian fireplace — after a few drinks, of course — when he ran out of wood to keep the fire burning. 

Riopelle’s fame took off in the 1940s in Canada and in France, where he lived for three decades. In Canada, he joined the Automatistes movement of Quebec artists whose 1948 anti-establishment manifesto, Refus Global, is credited with helping launch Quebec’s Quiet Revolution.