Sold for: $46,250

PROVENANCE
Roberts Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Colorado

LITERATURE
Paul Duval, A.J. Casson, Roberts Gallery, 1975, page 103

Although the 1930s were hard times due to the Depression, A.J. Casson was fortunate to have a stable job at the commercial art firm of Sampson Matthews Limited. He explored the Ontario countryside in sketching trips on weekends and holidays, and his output was considerable during this decade. Art historian Paul Duval singled out his “brilliant series of autumn sketches done during…1937 around Redstone Lake” as outstanding. Casson’s oil sketches during this period were characterized by glowing colour and strong design; Duval praised them as “well realized and intensely rendered little paintings, executed by an artist in sure command of his medium and creative powers.” This description certainly applies to this exquisite panel, with its rich autumn colours suffusing the hills and reflected in the water. The birch trunks with their bright patches of white provide a fine decorative screen through which to view the scene.

Casson exhibited widely in the 1930s, with the Ontario Society of Arts, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the Canadian Group of Painters; he also showed his work internationally – at the Tate Gallery (1930) and the Coronation Exhibition (1937) in London, and the New York World’s Fair (1939).

All prices are in Canadian Dollars