Sold for: $31,250

PROVENANCE
Roberts Gallery, Toronto
John Goldie Breckenridge, Toronto
Estate of Mary Breckenridge
Sold sale of Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 25, 2010, lot 124
Private Collection, Vancouver

In 1926, A.J. Casson was invited to join the Group of Seven after the earlier departure of Frank Johnston. At Toronto’s Arts and Letters Club, he had listened to their rousing tales of painting trips to Algoma, Georgian Bay and Algonquin Park and their inspiration in the Ontario north, and now he was one of them. Consciously or unconsciously, a spiritual quality often entered the landscape paintings of the Group– such as the bleak and powerful images of Lake Superior by Lawren Harris. In Casson’s work, it was a more subtle emanation. Still Morning – Bedard Pond is a meditation on the tranquil water and its mirror-like reflections of the sky and a hillside flushed with the yellow and orange glow of autumn. The curved points of the land below Casson’s painting place on the hillside echo the rounded hills beyond, and with this repetition of shape comes a sense of symmetry. Casson worked in a number of styles over the years, sometimes painting elements of the scene in a Cubist manner, but in this work he took an entirely natural approach, reinforcing the soft tranquility of this beautiful vista.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars