Sold for: $56,050

PROVENANCE
A wedding gift to a Private Collector, Ontario, 1930
By descent from the above to the present Private Collection, Ontario

LITERATURE
Wayne Larsen, A.Y. Jackson: The Life of a Landscape Painter, 2009, page 179

EXHIBITED
Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, 1930

Throughout the 1920s up to 1930, when this fine painting was exhibited at the Canadian National Exhibition, A.Y. Jackson rarely missed a winter painting on the “artist trails” on the north and south shores of the St. Lawrence River. The Orchard is a classic subject from this important part of his oeuvre. The snowy orchard hillside is streaked with sunlight and blue shadows, and richly tinted with pastel green, pink, grey and mauve. His close friend the Beaver Hall Group artist Anne Savage aptly described his masterful depictions of winter in this way: “Not only can Jackson give us the soft gentleness of the opalescent snow bank, but he analyses the snow under every condition and delights in handling the curled edges of great sweeping drifts, the sheen on the ice-caked roads, and the fierce sombreness of the Arctic night.” Jackson’s love of rhythm reveals itself in the sinuous lines of the path, the traditional snake fence and the curves of the hillside. The rural house radiates the warmth of an unseen human presence - the perfect counterpoint to the snow-laden orchard in this exceptional Group of Seven-period work.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars