Image: The Museum of Fine Arts, Mont-Saint-Hilaire ; SONeill 5x7 1
The Museum of Fine Arts, Mont-Saint-Hilaire is presenting 'Correlieu retrouvé', a solo exhibition by painter Mathieu Laca that runs from 20 June to 27 September 2026. The exhibition is built around the legacy of Correlieu, the atelier-résidence Ozias Leduc created in 1890 on the family orchard in Mont-Saint-Hilaire and named by the artist as “un endroit où le cœur est en tout.” According to the museum’s exhibition text, the studio became a meeting place for artists, poets and intellectuals of the period, including Paul-Émile Borduas, before being destroyed by fire and demolished in 1983.
Laca’s project brings that vanished site back into view through painting, drawing and constructed imagery. The museum says the exhibition gathers portraits of three major figures associated with Mont-Saint-Hilaire — Ozias Leduc, Paul-Émile Borduas and Jordi Bonet — along with images that borrow from their styles and visual quotations from their works. The corpus is made in oil or charcoal, and the installation also includes poetic maquettes recreating the trio’s atelier-residences in space. The show extends beyond Correlieu itself to evoke the Maison Paul-Émile-Borduas, designed and built by Borduas, as well as the Tudor-style main building of the Manoir Rouville-Campbell, where Bonet lived in the 1970s.
The exhibition text describes Laca as having immersed himself deeply in the art of the three masters, including by travelling through the countryside to visit the many churches decorated by Leduc. It also frames the project as more than an act of homage. Laca identifies a core theme for each artist’s work and uses those ideas to structure his own response: goodness for Leduc, freedom for Borduas and mystery for Bonet. In the museum’s account, Laca takes art history off the page and into his palette, using it to open “new horizons of meaning” and to approach the present through those three terms.
The museum is also pairing 'Correlieu retrouvé' with 'De bonté, de liberté, de mystère', an exhibition drawn from its collection and from loans, which also runs from 20 June to 27 September 2026. The museum says that since its founding in 1995 it has built an important art collection that includes works by Ozias Leduc, Paul-Émile Borduas and Jordi Bonet, while continuing to develop collaborations with private collectors. For this presentation, the works on view include major pieces from the museum as well as Borduas works loaned from the Collection Liliane and André Lacroix, the private collection of Anithe de Carvalho and Marcel Saint-Pierre, the Collection Yvon Brind’Amour and the Collection Payeur-Saint-Pierre.
That second exhibition is presented as a complementary context to Laca’s project, bringing drawings, paintings and sculpture into dialogue with the three artists at the center of 'Correlieu retrouvé'. The museum says the selection highlights unique works by Leduc, Borduas and Bonet and offers an opportunity to address foundational aspects of each artist’s production. Together, the two exhibitions place Laca’s contemporary response alongside the museum’s holdings and loaned works tied to the same historic circle.
The museum has also announced public programming tied to the exhibition period. 'Visites guidées avec Mathieu Laca' are scheduled from 4 July to 27 September 2026, with detailed dates listed on 4 July, 19 July, 1 August, 16 August, 29 August, 30 August, 13 September and 27 September. The 16 August session is paired with a conference by Monique Lanthier, and the 30 August session is followed by a talk with Étienne Beaulieu, author of 'La pomme et l'étoile'. On the same site, the museum also lists 'Les contes au Domaine Ozias-Leduc en 9 tableaux' on Saturdays from 4 July to 29 August 2026, an activity in which author and storyteller Yoda Lefebvre of La Grande Trappe draws on Ozias Leduc’s work for a narrative built around nine emblematic works.
