The work is the crowning achievement of a series of monochromes titled Homages (Hommages) that Sullivan created in 2002 and 2003 and exhibited during her 2003 retrospective at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal as emblematic of her painting at the turn of the twentieth century. Several of her friends, artists who inspired her, had recently passed away: painter and sculptor Ulysse Comtois died in 1999, the Automatiste Marcelle Ferron in 2001, and her former husband, Paterson Ewen, in 2002. She thought about them often while she painted, and decided to name a monochrome from the series she was working on after each of these friends. She dedicated the best and largest to Ewen “because he was the greatest of all painters.”   This Spotlight is excerpted from Françoise Sullivan: Life & Work by Annie Gérin.