Claude Carette born December 17, 1935 in Quebec City and died August 26, 1999 (at 63 years old) in Montreal is a Quebec painter.
Claude Carette was born at Anse-au-Foulon in Quebec City in 1935. As the eldest son of Germaine Boudreault and Leopold Carette's seven children, Carette began painting at the age of ten. He installs his easel on the hillsides overlooking the cliff of the cove and reproduces the landscapes available to him. Several times during his walks, Jean-Paul Lemieux noticed the young Carette paint and suggested that he join the École des Beaux-Arts de Québec where he taught him until 1955.

Upon leaving school, Carette divides her time between painting and the brass mines of Chibougamau to afford the purchase of equipment and the necessary to live. Despite a first solo exhibition at the Palais Montcalm in Quebec City in 1956 giving him some public recognition, the young painter curious and eager for explorations embarks on Europe.
In Paris, he took courses in modern aesthetics from Francastel to the Sorbonne. Training he continues with Professor Sauriol at the University of Aix-en-Provence. A brief academic career, but many encounters and artistic discoveries earned him to exhibit at the Canadian House of Paris in 1958.
Upon his return to Quebec, he participated in the "Salon du Printemps" of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. A series of group and individual exhibitions showcased his work in Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto and New York. After working almost a year in New York, the artist moved to Montreal and frequented the artistic fauna of the time: Germain Perron [archive], Pierrot Leger, Tex Lecor, Georges St-Pierre [archive], Armand Vaillancourt, Gilbert Langevin, Serge Lemoyne, Raymond Lévesque, Marc Gélinas, Janou Saint-Denis, Denis Vanier and Pedro Rubio of Casa Pedro are friends, accomplices or acolytes to name a few. At La Hutte, he meets his wife with whom he undertakes, in 1968, a long North American tour. After several months in Vancouver, where Carette discovers the work of Emily Carr, they continue their journey to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New Orleans, Chicago and Ottawa.

After the Agnès Lefort gallery in the early sixties, following its participation in the exhibitions "North American Watercolorists" at the Ligoa Duncan Gallery in New York and the Raymond Duncan Gallery in Paris, the prestigious Gardner-Rothschild represents it in permanence in the early seventies. Now recognized as both a watercolourist and painter, oils are becoming more important in this decade. The sedentary lifestyle and the rent of a workshop in Old Montreal help the artist to use this medium on watercolor. For these same reasons, he creates more and more large formats. Several of his large-format works are presented at an imposing solo show at the Hôtel Méridien Complexe Desjardins in 1977.
Never abandoning watercolor, his work remains prolific on both canvas and arches. Many other individual exhibitions take place at the Morency and Clarence-Gagnon Art Galleries in Montreal and the Ste-Adèle Art Gallery in the following decade. At the end of the nineties, Carette exiles for a while in the Iles-de-la-Madeleine where he paints his last series of watercolors. He died from a long illness on August 26, 1999 in Montreal.

Museums and collections
• Artothèque of Montreal
• Canada Council Art Bank
• Quebec National Library and Archives - Montreal
• National Bank Collection
• Congregation of Our Lady
• Museum of Francophone America (Collection of the Musée du Québec Seminary)
• Museum of Contemporary Art of Montreal (Lavalin Collection)
• Joliette Museum of Art
• Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
• Lachine Museum
• Laurier Museum
• Louis-Hémon Museum
• National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec
• Regional Museum of the North Shore
• Pulperie de Chicoutimi

Works or files to consult (non-exhaustive list)
• Guy Robert, Painting in Quebec since its origins, Éditions Iconia, Montreal, 1978.
• Guy Robert, Contemporary Art in Quebec since 1970, Iconia Publishing, Montreal, 1983.
• Jean Trépanier, 103 Painters of Quebec, Éditions JT, Shawinigan, 1984.
• University of British Columbia, Fine Arts Library
• National Gallery of Canada, Library and Archives / Canadian Museum of Photography
• Art Gallery of Ontario, Edward P. Taylor Research Library and Archives
• Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Library
• Museum of Contemporary Art of Montreal, Media Library.