Sold for: $61,250

PROVENANCE
Aggregation Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Alberta

LITERATURE
Brian Brennan, “Doris McCarthy: May 7 – 21, 2005, Mountain Galleries at the Fairmont, Banff Springs Hotel, Banff, AB.,” Galleries West, April 30, 2005, para. 3, https://www.gallerieswest.ca

Doris McCarthy’s affinity for the Rockies began with her first trip there in 1937, when she stayed at a YMCA camp on Lake Edith followed by two weeks at remote Lake Maligne, where she stayed with park warden Charlie Matheson and his artist wife, Mona. After a long break, she returned yearly from 1974 to 1980, painting at such stunning locations as Banff, Golden and Jasper, and this work is from her trip in 1978. Forty years of teaching gave McCarthy the freedom to travel and paint, and she enjoyed getting away to these wild locations where she could experience the majesty and solitude of the mountains. Of the Rockies, she said, “I am increasingly familiar with the forms of particular mountains—whether it’s Mount Assiniboine, or Three Sisters or whatever—because they have an individuality with which I have become familiar, which I love.”

This painting features strong sculpted mountain forms, which, while solid on the right, seem to dematerialize on the left. Here, some of the mountain masses are transparent, which gives a fantastical feeling to the work. Diagonal streaks descend from the sky over the most distant range of peaks, like sunrays filtered through clouds. Spring in the Rockies is an extraordinary painting, in which McCarthy explores both imaginary and ephemeral atmospheric effects.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars