Ian M. Thom

Remarkable paintings grace the pages of Maria Chapdelaine, a novel written by a Frenchman yet embraced by generations of Canadian readers. Renowned Canadian artist Clarence Gagnon used a meticulous process to create 54 small paintings for Louis Hémon’s early 20th-century story set in the Quebec countryside. Gagnon’s vivid illustrations depict the strength of body and soul necessary to survive such a harsh environment. All of the Gagnon Maria Chapdelaine illustrations are reproduced in this book, with excerpts from the novel. The complete set of paintings resides in the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, where it is considered a rare treasure. Art historian and curator Ian M. Thom in his essay provides insight into Gagnon’s life and an appreciation of his art.

Hardcover | 120 pages
22.5 x 20.3 cm (9 x 8 in.) 
Publication Date: 2020

Amy Novesky 

A beautifully nuanced and poetic story, Cloth Lullaby captures the life of Louise Bourgeois, a world-renowned artist, and tells the story of a relationship between a mother and daughter, the birth of an artist, and how memory is stitched into us all. 

Hardcover | 40 pages
28.5 x 23.5 cm (11 x 9 in.) 
Publication date: 2016

Andrew Hunter

Originally produced to accompany the 2014−2015 touring exhibition of Alex Colville’s work and back by popular demand, this new printing of the highly acclaimed catalogue Colville, is now available in paperback edition.

When Alex Colville died in July 2013 at the age of ninety-two, he left an extraordinary artistic legacy. A key Canadian painter of our age, Colville possessed a peculiar intensity and crisp style of brushwork that probed deeply into the recesses of the human experience. Charting a course through five main sections that explore the complete career of this Nova Scotia painter, the exhibition catalogue begins on the front lines of the Second World War and moves through the artist’s life and times.

Paperback | 168 pages
27 x 23.5 x 1.3 cm (10.6 x 9.2 x 0.5 in.) 
Publication Date: 2017

Dana Claxton (born 1959) is a critically acclaimed, award-winning artist and filmmaker working across film, video, photography, single and multichannel video installation and performance art. Her practice investigates the body, the socio-political and the spiritual within realms of indigenous beauty.

This book consolidates our understanding of Dana Claxton’s dominant and recurring themes―indigenous history, culture, beauty and spirituality. While Claxton’s art often alludes to the destructive legacy of colonialism, it also celebrates the resurgence of First Nations’ presence and contemporary identity. What emerges is an artist delivering works of ever greater power and conviction. With her expansive and genre-defying practice―photography, videos, mixed-media installations, text works, performances and curatorial work―she continues to critically reimagine the space of the gallery to be accessible for wider Indigenous audiences and to uphold new understandings of beauty.

Hardcover | 214 pages
24.6 x 30.5 cm (9.7 x 12 in.) 
Publication Date: 2021

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Many promote Reconciliation as a “new” way for Canada to relate to Indigenous Peoples. In Danser sur le dos de notre tortue : La nouvelle émergence des Nishnaabeg activist, editor, and educator Leanne Simpson asserts reconciliation must be grounded in political resurgence and must support the regeneration of Indigenous languages, oral cultures, and traditions of governance.

Simpson explores philosophies and pathways of regeneration, resurgence, and a new emergence through the Nishnaabeg language, Creation Stories, walks with Elders and children, celebrations and protests, and meditations on these experiences. She stresses the importance of illuminating Indigenous intellectual traditions to transform their relationship to the Canadian state.

Paperback | 222 pages 
14 x 20.5 cm (5.5 x 8 in.) 
Publication Date: 2018

David P. Silcox 

David Milne (1882–1953) experienced life as an artist in turn-of-the-century New York, as a soldier in World War I, and as a contemporary of the Group of Seven in Canada. This book traces the gifted painter's development over the course of tumultuous personal and historical events.  

Paperback | 64 pages 
22.8 x 22.8 cm (9 x 9 in.) 
Publication Date: 2005

David Franklin 

The sixteenth century in Rome was a rich period in art history. Such celebrated masters as Raphael, Michelangelo, Salviati and Vasari practiced in the city during this time. De Raphaël à Carracci. L'art de la Rome pontificale is unprecedented in its comprehensive examination of Renaissance Rome. The catalogue contains contributions from more than forty scholars from Canada and abroad, and highlights considerable new research and a number of discoveries published here for the first time. 

Hardcover | 482 pages 
32 x 26 cm (12.6 x 10.25 in.)
Publication Date: 2009 
Available in French only

Josée Drouin-Brisebois

De-con-structions focuses on works by Michel de Broin, Jean-Pierre Gauthier, Karilee Fuglem, Tricia Middleton and Annie Thibault, five Quebec artists whose interventions question the museum as idea and context. The installations created by these artists prompt the museum to confront and question its role of collecting, preserving, and displaying art; in their hands, the gallery space itself is transformed from a repository for art into an artist's studio and laboratory. 

Paperback | 32 pages
23 x 20 x 0.5 cm (9 x 7.8 x 0.1 in.)
Publication Date: 2007

Josée Drouin-Brisebois

Dé-con-structions focuses on works by Michel de Broin, Jean-Pierre Gauthier, Karilee Fuglem, Tricia Middleton and Annie Thibault, five Quebec artists whose interventions question the museum as idea and context. The installations created by these artists prompt the museum to confront and question its role of collecting, preserving, and displaying art; in their hands, the gallery space itself is transformed from a repository for art into an artist's studio and laboratory. 

Paperback | 32 pages
23 x 20 x 0.5 cm (9 x 7.8 x 0.1 in.)
Publication Date: 2007

Elise Gravel 

This activity book is designed so that children can draw with a grown-up. Whether each creates their own illustration or both draw on the same page, there are separate instructions for each budding artist. Two pencils, four hands, and a whole world of imagination! 

Ages 3 to 5

Softcover | 96 pages 
23 x 28 cm (9 x 11 in.) 
Publication Date: 2018 

Available in French only

Douglas E. Schoenherr

Great drawings and superb watercolours by seventy major artists from the 18th to the 20th centuries are presented here and demonstrate the strength of the British drawings collection of the National Gallery of Canada. The catalogue, which includes works by such artists as J.W.M.Turner, Samuel Palmer, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt, is the fourth in a series presenting important drawings from the Gallery's permanent collection.

Paper | 196 pages 
20.35 x 26.68 cm (8 x 10.5 in.) 
Publication Date: 2005

Mitchell B. Frank

Some seventy beautiful and gripping drawings from the German-speaking countries of Europe, thirty of them recently acquired, include graceful figure studies by Dürer and Klimt, engaging romantic landscapes by Koch and Hackert, graphic Expressionist sketches by Kirchner and Nolde, and disturbing modern caricatures by Dix and Grosz.

Paperback | 198 pages 
20.35 x 26.68 cm (8 x 10.5 in.) 
Publication Date: 2010

Joaneath Spicer

Second in an ongoing series focussing on selected masterpieces from the permanent collection of prints and drawings from the National Gallery of Canada, this catalogue features nearly fifty of the oldest and most emotionally evocative sheets by Dutch and Flemish masters, from Gerard David to Rembrandt and Rubens.

Paper | 188 pages 
20.35 x 26.68 cm (8 x 10.5 in.) 
Publication Date: 2003
Only available in French 

Sonia Couturier

Executed between the 17th and 19th centuries by artists such as Jacques Bellange, Charles de La Fosse, François Boucher, Jacques Louis David and Edgar Degas, the seventy works featured in this volume highlight the richness of the French drawings in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

Paper | 188 pages 
20.35 x 26.68 cm (8 x 10.5 in.) 
Publication Date: 2004
Available in French only

David Franklin

Seventy of the finest Italian drawings from the 16th to the 18th centuries in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada are featured in this volume. Brilliant examples by such artists as Giulio Romano, Parmigianino, Annibale Carracci and Piranesi were selected and described. This is the first in a series of catalogues presenting selected treasures from the Gallery's permanent collection.

Paper | 176 pages 
20.35 x 26.68 cm (8 x 10.5 in.) 
Publication Date: 2003

Sonia Couturier, Pierre Rosenberg

Eighteenth-century Rome was a cosmopolitan centre that became a mecca for artists, collectors, and enlightened art lovers. It was also the primary destination for artists from France wanting to perfect their craft. This work highlights the artistic effervescence of the Eternal City, where French artists were able to study ancient monuments and masterpieces of sculpture and painting, benefitting from the protection of influential patrons with a passion for the arts. Featuring more than one hundred works, this volume offers an exceptional selection of drawings and prints together with a large number of paintings. It presents works by artists regarded as among the most significant of their day, in particular Hubert Robert, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and Jacques-Louis David.

Softcover | 256 pages 
23 x 28 cm (9 x 11 in.) 
Publication Date: 2011

Ian M. Thom

Nearly seventy years after her death, Emily Carr's works continue to capture the grandeur of British Columbia's landscape and define our vision of the nation. This small-format book showcases the breadth of Carr's career, and includes more than one hundred of the artist’s best and most memorable works.

Paperback | 152 pages
18 x 20.5 cm (7 x 8 in.) 
Publication Date: 2013

Pan Wendt 

“The struggle to realize and to express my nature is my life’s meaning.” — Erica Rutherford 

Erica Rutherford: Her Lives and Works accompanies a career-spanning retrospective exhibition of this multidisciplinary Canadian artist and transgender pioneer. 

An artist, actor, filmmaker, farmer, teacher, and writer, Erica Rutherford’s remarkably multifaceted career took her across several countries and continents before settling on Prince Edward Island in the 1970s. There she established herself as a painter and printmaker, using art to engage in a reflection on gender construction and agency. 

This remarkable retrospective includes reproductions of more than 65 paintings, prints, and drawings, as well as personal photographs. An interview with Rutherford’s widow, artist Gail Rutherford, accompanies critical essays by scholars and curators examining Rutherford’s stylistic evolution from dark semi-abstract collages to hard-edged Pop Art. Says editor and curator Pan Wendt, “In retrospect, Rutherford’s work represents a courageous and often solitary mission of working through questions that are only now part of the mainstream public discourse.” 

Hardcover | 176 pages
22.2 x 28.6 cm (8.7 x 11.3 in.) 
Publication Date: 2025

Jenna Rainey 

This beautifully illustrated and inspiring guided watercolor-a-day book is perfect for beginning watercolor artists, artists who want to improve their watercolor skills, and visual creatives. From strokes to shapes, this book covers the basics and helps painters gain confidence in themselves along with inspiration to develop their own style over the course of 30 days. Featuring colorful contemporary art from Mon Voir design agency founder and Instagram trendsetter Jenna Rainey, this book’s fresh perspective paints watercolor in a whole new light. 

Paperback | 224 pages 
20.8 x 24.1 cm (8.2 x 9.5 in.) 
Publication Date: 2017

Winning Title (Pictorial), The Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada, 2025 

Sonia Del Re and Kirsten Appleyard

Delve into Canada’s premier collection of international drawings and discover never-before-seen artworks straight from the vault. Founded in 1921 and the first of its kind in the country, the National Gallery of Canada’s Department of Prints and Drawings boasts ever-evolving, world-class holdings of historical drawings dating from the 15th to the 20th century, in every medium – from graphite to ink, pastel to watercolour. Enjoy this rare opportunity to view works by Gustav Klimt, Théodore Géricault and Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, among many others, including newly acquired sheets and little-known but historically significant drawings that for conservation reasons are usually kept in the dark. The selection is wide-ranging, featuring everything from preparatory works for paintings to subjects drawn from history and mythology, portraits, landscapes, forays into abstraction and poignant explorations of the human condition.

Celebrate the legacy of the Department of Prints and Drawings first-hand through this captivating exhibition and richly illustrated catalogue marking its recent 100-year anniversary.

Feuille à feuille. La collection de dessins dévoilée is organized by the National Gallery of Canada. The publication is made possible with support from the Getty Foundation through its “The Paper Project: Prints and Drawings Curatorship in the 21st Century” initiative.

Hardcover | 203 pages
Publication Date: 2024

Also published in English under the title Gathered Leaves: Discoveries from the Drawing Vault