PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the Artist by Francis Bruce Brown, Toronto
Acquired from the above by a Private Collection, Ontario as a wedding present in 1949
Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 19, 2008, lot 113
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Paul Duval, A.J. Casson, My Favourite Watercolours, 1919 to 1957, 1982, page 7

In the 1920s, Casson and fellow Group of Seven artist Franklin Carmichael worked to revive watercolour as a medium, and in 1925 founded the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour. A pivotal Lake Superior sketching trip with Carmichael in 1928 brought Casson’s technique to a peak, and on their return, the two artists lobbied to devote a special room to their watercolours in the 1930 Group of Seven exhibition. The eloquence of these works proved to be a resounding success. As Duval writes, “His compositions had acquired a sure formalization, his washes were laid with a consummate assurance and the boldness of his colour revealed a brilliance and depth then rarely seen in the medium.” Casson had a great interest in the drama of rock formations, such as in his paintings of the La Cloche Hills and the falls below York River, and here uses the geometry of the jutting rock formations in the foreground to great effect against the tranquility of the lake. He then echoes their structure in the sculpted forms of the illuminated clouds, making this striking composition a meditation on symmetry and grandeur in nature.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars