PROVENANCE
Dominion Gallery, Montreal
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Dennis Reid, Alberta Rhythm: The Later Work of A.Y. Jackson, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1982, page 198

The rivers in the Gatineau area were a favourite subject for A.Y. Jackson. After his move to the small Ottawa suburb of Manotick in 1955, his regular sketching trips to small towns in western Quebec increased in frequency. In March and April of 1967, Jackson spent six days in the small municipality of Ripon, QC, where he would have made a study for this painting along the Petite-Nation River that runs through the town.

Early Spring, Rivière des Nations exemplifies the intentional, flowing brushwork that Jackson often employed when painting Quebec landscapes. As Dennis Reid wrote:

In his later sketching he seems to become more and more particular in his close observation of texture and atmosphere, as well as in his exact, physical response to form. Each image increasingly is conceived as a continuum, the fluid passage from form into form eased by countless subtle observations of the more-or-less comfortable union of all things in nature.

The contrast of the light blue sky, reflected in the water, and the orange colouring of the newly uncovered ground enlivens Jackson’s rendering of melting snow along a riverbank, evoking the brightness of a crisp spring day.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars