Montreal painter John Little dead at 96

One of Montreal's best-known painters died this week at the age of 96.

John Little captured the city's working-class neighbourhoods and highlighted an architecture that is fast disappearing.

His friends remember how he started capturing the city.

“Here was this anglophone from the Town of Mount Royal, very well established, going downtown all the time to walk along the tracks, to peer down into back yards of these various working-class neighborhoods. And he was fascinated by the activity and the hockey rinks and the real-life activity,” said Terry Mosher, a cartoonist for the Montreal Gazette.

Little began his career in the 1950s and built a solid reputation for his impressionist style, where details mattered.

Alan Klinkhoff, an arts dealer, sees his city in the paintings.

“Of course, our church spires that resonate in Montreal from around the country. It's just the essence of essentially a working-class neighborhood,” he said.

“Sometimes you'll see a one of our old sorts of milk carts being pulled by horses, going up the street, kids playing, you know, the corner store.”

Little painted everything in the city – from the Sud-Ouest up to Pointe-Saint-Charles, and from Little Burgundy to Hochelaga.

He was also notorious for staying away from the media spotlight

“Anybody who knew him or was familiar with him knew of this wonderful, shy, very sort of self-effacing artist, a man with a tremendous sense of humor. You could never, ever, ever get him to talk about himself,” said Mosher.

Mosher says Little was passionate about one thing though – sports.

“He took all this interest in baseball and hockey and that sort of and he kept statistics and he loved to make lists. And the best all time players of the 1920s, he kept all this stuff,” said Mosher.

Mosher owns a few of Little's paintings. But his favorite remains a very personal one he drew for him when he was just nine years old.

“And that all came from this first sketch that he had done of me as a little league ballplayer playing downtown,” he said.

“Isn't that nice? With my mom and dad proudly and behind me. I pride this as much as I do any of the paintings that I own of his.”