In the Land of Reverie: The Lady and the Unicorn

From 8 June 2026 to 10 December 2026 | An exhibition of paintings by D. Gagnon-Barbeau

Monday

June

2026

Thursday

Dec.

2026

The Maison Suger invites you to discover the works created by Daniel Gagnon-Barbeau during his spring 2026 residency at the Maison Suger. Entitled "In the Land of Reverie: The Lady and the Unicorn", the exhibition invites visitors to enter a wondrous world of reverie, where grace, interiority and sensibility shape the relationship between the Lady and the Unicorn.

Throughout his career, Daniel Gagnon-Barbeau has produced more than 5,000 works, including around one hundred portraits of Québécois writers, monumental landscapes, and intimate works depicting everyday life. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in cultural centres and museums in Quebec and across Canada, as well as in France and Germany. Daniel Gagnon-Barbeau has been a member of the Rassemblement des artistes visuels du Québec (RAAV) since 1999 and a lifetime honorary member of the Musée des beaux-arts de Mont-Saint-Hilaire (Quebec).

---

Private view

The exhibition’s private view will take place at the Maison Suger on Monday 8 June 2026, from 6 pm.

Affiche Dame à la Licorne — © Daniel Gagnon-Barbeau

A World of Wonder Imbued with Tenderness

The unicorn's luminous presence has endured over time with remarkable vitality. Its ability to move between dream and reality has never ceased to fascinate me. My visits to the Cluny Museum in Paris to see the renowned group of six tapestries of The Lady and the Unicorn have become a cherished ritual.

In these new works imbued with tenderness, I sought to evoke the subtle interplay of inner voices within the harmonious and peaceful relationship between the Unicorn and its Lady, and the sublime richness of their dreamlike world.

Exploring the capacity of colour to evoke emotion lies at the heart of Québécois painter Daniel Gagnon-Barbeau’s creative practice:

I have represented the Unicorn in its equine form, its coat shimmering, speckled here and there with the colours of the flowers from its natural environment, as though in a garden. Its singular horn, flamboyant, coils powerfully in golden spirals above its head. Its tail rises in a luminous upward spiral from its hindquarters. Its forelegs extend in what appears to be a gesture of tenderness towards its Lady, who is deeply pensive.

Surrounded by an aura of otherworldliness, she seems to be listening to a secret message whispered within her heart, perhaps thinking of the inscription on the final tapestry of The Lady and the Unicorn at the Cluny Museum: "My only desire", which scholars have interpreted as meaning that the only desire of love is the beauty of the soul.

Daniel Gagnon-Barbeau