Sold for: $29,500

PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the Artist by the present Private Collection, Edmonton, 1956

LITERATURE
Dennis Reid, The Group of Seven, National Gallery of Canada, 1970, reproduced page 216
Paul Duval, A.J. Casson, Roberts Gallery, 1975, pages 53 and 55, the 1928 graphite sketch entitled Ice House, Port Coldwell, in the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, reproduced page 52

EXHIBITED
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, The Group of Seven, June 19 - September 8, 1970, traveling to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, September 22 - October 31, 1970, catalogue #170

In fall of 1928, fellow Group of Seven members Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson and Franklin Carmichael invited A.J. Casson to join them in an October sketching trip to the north shore of Lake Superior. They established a campsite a few miles from Port Coldwell on bare rock in the lee of a giant spruce, looking out over the lake and Pic Island, described by Paul Duval as “probably the most fabled small parcel of land in Canadian art.” While there, in spite of the difficult weather (rain and snow), Casson produced drawings and oil sketches. (The drawing for this fine work is in the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.)

The ice house at the small settlement of Coldwell Bay was an interesting subject—Harris also painted it, and his oil Ice House, Coldwell, Lake Superior is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Hamilton. The starkness and grandeur of this area was at first challenging, but Casson soon acclimatized, and Duval writes that “among the approximately thirty oil sketches the artist took back to Toronto...were some of the best he had yet achieved.”

All prices are in Canadian Dollars