Background
Jean-Philippe Dallaire was born in 1916 into a large working class family.
Jean-Philippe Dallaire was born in 1916 into a large working class family.
He studied at the École technique in Hull and at the Central Technical School in Toronto between 1932 and 1935. In 1938 he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Montreal. After being released he took a course in tapestry and apprenticed in tapestry-making in Aubusson under Jean Lurçat.
He is known for his festive scenes peopled by macabre characters. He started drawing when he was eleven years old. In 1936 he set up his studio in the Dominican monastery in Ottawa and began his career painting religious subjects.
In October 1938 the government of Quebec gave him a grant that allowed him to go to Paris and study at Ateliers d"Art Sacré and the studio of André Lhote.
He also worked in his own studio in Montmartre. While in Paris he encountered the work of Pablo Picasso and the surrealists.
Dallaire"s wife was released after six months. He was held in the camp of Saint-Denis, near Paris, for four years.
Dallaire returned to Canada after the war and from 1945 to 1952 taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Quebec City.
He worked for the National Film Board of Canada as a cartoonist for educational films in Ottawa from 1952 to 1956 and then in Montreal from 1956 to 1958. During this period he was also commissioned to create numerous murals. He was among the artists selected to decorate the interior of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, owned by the Canadian National Railway, which opened in 1958.
He contributed a wall hanging.
Others were Marius Plamondon (stained glass mural), Claude Vermette (ceramic tiles), Julien Hébert (bronze elevator doors) and Albert Edward Cloutier (carved wooden panels). In 1959 Dallaire moved to Vence in the south of France where he lived until his death in 1965.