Sold for: $73,250

PROVENANCE
Roberts Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, London, England
Sold sale of Important Canadian Art, Sotheby's Canada in association with Ritchie's, February 25, 2002, lot 69
Property from an Important Private Collection to Benefit a Charitable Foundation

LITERATURE
Ted Herriott, Sunday Morning with Cass: Conversations with A.J. Casson, 1993, pages 130 and 132

Inscribed on verso: "This was painted in 1962 from the road between Combermere and Barry’s Bay originally put through by the early settlers. This area is known as the Madawaska Valley. The hills are the furthest western extension of the Laurentian Mountain Range."

Group of Seven member A.J. Casson succinctly stated, “There aren’t many places in Ontario that Margaret [his wife] and I didn’t hit.” It would be fascinating to have a map of Casson’s explorations on his driving trips across Ontario in search of new painting places. Sometimes he made these trips on primitive roads (he noted the roads north from Barry’s Bay were “terrible”). As well as depicting established towns still in existence today, he sought out remote farms and tiny settlements. Some had formed around mines and the lumber industry, and many no longer exist. In the book Sunday Morning with Cass, he describes his explorations around Combermere and Barry’s Bay in the Madawaska Valley, noting that he also found “a whole bunch of little hamlets. They weren’t villages – just a few houses.” Like his Group compatriot A.Y. Jackson, Casson was attracted to old farm buildings such as these abandoned structures, their darkness dramatically contrasted against the hillside aflame with gorgeous fall colours of gold, orange and coral. The moody sky is typical of Casson – its clouds, depicted in layered planes shaded from light to dark, suggest the fresh coolness of impending rain.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars