PROVENANCE
Linchrist Gallery, Windsor
Kaspar Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Ontario
Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, May 2, 2002, lot 101
Private Collection, Toronto

As it did the world, the First World War deeply impacted the artists who would form the Group of Seven. A.Y. Jackson’s first-hand experiences of battle and its traumas, later documented in his work as an official war artist, left him at odds with the act of painting as joyful self-expression, a feeling shared by his companions Lawren Harris and J.E.H. MacDonald. One of the first places they experienced the resonance of beauty again was in the rich and intensely painterly region of Algoma, offering them a source of existential healing.

Mirrored by the emergence of the Canadian identity from the struggles of the war, this textured and rhythmic oil on board was produced at a dawning moment in Canadian painting. Jackson and the Group were synthesizing their personal vision of modernity by combining the European influences of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism with a boldly gestural approach, the goal of which was the expression of the Canadian landscape’s most essential qualities. Jackson successfully achieves that here, imbuing this on-site sketch with the enthralling, exploratory spirit of a new school of Canadian art.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars