[Document média: P_0074]
Illustration

The lobby of the Hélène de Champlain Restaurant was built largely in accordance with this sketch, although the staircase was moved. The basement pub sketched here was never actually built.

It was based on this drawing straight from the imagination of Frédéric Back that the restaurant La Saulaie was designed.
Combining wood and stone in a strikingly geometric decor, the interior architecture of La Saulaie's main dining room gives...
To create La Saulaie's menu, Frédéric Back used the scratchboard technique.
Fresco depicting Hélène de Champlain and her husband, Samuel, along with an Aboriginal couple. Champlain, the explorer...
The lobby of the Hélène de Champlain Restaurant was built largely in accordance with this sketch, although the staircase...
The basement pub sketched here was never actually built.
Pastel and pencil sketch of the main dining room in the rotunda. Note the seal of Claude Hinton's firm and Frédéric Back's...
Sketch for a small dining room, including many details: fireplace with carved wooden mantelpiece, exposed beams, chandeliers...
Covers for La Roma Antiqua's menus, one featuring a sculptural element designed by Frédéric Back to present different...
Decorative metal panel designed by Frédéric Back and executed by Jo Bergot to divide La Roma Antiqua's bar section from...
Frédéric Back and metal artist Jo Bergot also collaborated on this scene depicting the Roman games, with gladiators...
The gate in front of the stairs to La Roma Antiqua's second floor is topped with griffins, another collaboration by Frédéric...
Menu for La Tour Eiffel. The maritime elements and music evoke Italy and the restaurant's speciality of fish and seafood.


Restaurants

Frédéric Back first met the renowned interior designer and decorator Claude Hinton in 1952, when the theatre and television set decorator Robert Prévost recommended him to design gates for a Montreal restaurant. Their ongoing professional collaboration developed into a warm friendship. It was Hinton's support that helped Back receive an important commission for the stained glass mural in the Place des Arts metro station in Montreal.

Claude Hinton coordinated renovation and interior decoration projects but did not draw. It was thus Frédéric Back who provided him with perspective drawings and construction plans for buildings and even furniture. He was particularly appreciated for his ability to visualize new places to be created and to prepare eloquent sketches to win the clients' approval. He, in turn, was stimulated by the freedom he was given to invent and create things without having to worry about budgets. His collaboration with Claude Hinton ended around 1975 when his intense work in Radio-Canada's animation studio and his dedication to environmental causes left him little time to participate in interior architecture projects.

La Saulaie

In 1965, Claude Hinton was commissioned to build an elegant restaurant on a piece of land that included a brook and a pond overhung by willow trees. It was these trees that gave their name to the future establishment. The land was in Boucherville, across the river from Montreal. All that was on it at the time was an immense concrete slab and a few metal uprights. Frédéric Back did a sketch and plans for a traditional-style building to be erected on the existing foundation. He then did scale drawings of the interior, which was built by an experienced carpenter. It was also Back who designed the stone fireplace and its historical plaque, the sundial and the decorations painted on the kitchen and office doors. He also illustrated the restaurant's menu.

Hélène de Champlain

In the lead-up to the Montreal World's Fair in 1967, rather than putting up a new building for entertaining visiting dignitaries, Mayor Jean Drapeau decided to use the Hélène de Champlain Restaurant on Île-Sainte-Hélène. Claude Hinton, who was president of the Quebec association of interior designers, was given the commission to renovate it. He in turn asked Frédéric Back to come up with ideas for converting this great barn of a restaurant into a place of honour and prestige. Back prepared colour sketches of a luxurious decor with imposing chandeliers, enormous stone fireplaces with carved wooden mantelpieces, rich tapestries and Louis XIII-style furniture. He proposed an indoor gallery to permit people to move from one room to another without disturbing those in the grand central dining room. He also designed interior shutters to visually open up the narrow, deep-set windows and suggested table lamps and a whole series of sideboards, cabinets and stair railings. Practically all of his suggestions were accepted. He was asked to paint a large screen to divide up the restaurant's vast dining room and was given carte blanche for the subject. Since Expo 67, the Hélène de Champlain Restaurant has maintained its elegant cachet and continued to offer superb cuisine.

Roma Antiqua

A former Montreal store converted into a restaurant, La Roma Antiqua opened in 1973. It is built on two floors, with the second floor projecting over the street and an outside terrace. Its interior decoration was designed by Frédéric Back. In addition to murals depicting the ruins of Pompeii, he created decorative elements inspired by the Roman circus games, with the help of metal artist Jo Bergot. He also used a similar theme for illustrating the menus.

La Tour Eiffel

The Italian owner of La Roma Antiqua also owned La Tour Eiffel. Delighted with their work in his other restaurant, he asked the same team to create an Italian decor for La Tour Eiffel. Frédéric Back did a number of painted elements, a fake mantelpiece in relief and a pergola under the stairs. He also illustrated the menu.