Regional Art Collection

Mass for the Troops in Rots, France, 1981
Ink on paper
43 x 34 cm

Gilbert Bretzloff was born and raised in Ladysmith, Quebec. A stone sculptor, painter, and printmaker, he was also an unofficial war artist during the Second World War. He served overseas as a draftsman for the Intelligence Services at the Headquarters of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division from 1940 to 1945. During the final year of the war, he created a series of watercolours and sketches that depicted scenes of war as he moved with the Allied Front through France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. The Imperial War Museum in the United Kingdom acquired two of his works, and four were purchased by the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. The remaining collection is owned by Carol Bretzloff, along with a series of intaglio and aquatint prints that Gilbert Bretzloff created after the war, titled Memories of a Canadian Soldier from the Second World War. In 2015, the Bretzloff family donated the print Mass for the Troops in Rots, France, 1944 to the Pontiac MRC Regional Art Collection. Gilbert Bretzloff passed away in 1985.