Sold for: $31,250

PROVENANCE
Mrs. J.L. Heal, Toronto
Laing Galleries, Toronto
William Edwin Troup, Ontario, 1945
By descent to the present Important Private Collection, Ontario

LITERATURE
F.G. Banting, "With the Arctic Patrol," Canadian Geographical Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, May 1930, page 19
Michael Bliss, Banting: A Biography, 1992, pages 170 and 171

EXHIBITED
Hart House, University of Toronto, Exhibition of Paintings by the Late Sir Frederick Banting, February 13 - March 1, 1943

This work was produced during Frederick Banting’s sketching trip with A.Y. Jackson aboard the government supply ship the Beothic, on its annual run to the eastern Arctic in the summer of 1927. Funded by the federal Department of the Interior to resupply remote arctic outposts and towns, the trip would be Spartan and potentially hazardous, and Banting, encouraged by Jackson, persuaded the government minister to make room for him on the basis of his medical skills rather than his then-unknown artistic ones. Banting reveled at his first holiday since 1918 “free from speeches, lectures, & labs,” as well as the chance to improve his drawing and painting alongside Jackson.

Once aboard, the artists were elated at the expansive and unfamiliar landscape, characterized by low treeless flats, rocky seaside crags and ever-shifting icefields and bergs. Bylot Island would be the first Canadian Arctic soil they would encounter on the voyage, distinguished by what Banting described as “blue, shaggy cliffs” and sharp peaks capped by thick glacial ice that flowed, “fan-shaped,” into the sea before breaking into icebergs. Here Banting captures the dramatic landscape at the edge of the continent, with sweeping mountains pressed between lavender-purple glaciers and frozen greenish-blue sea. This dramatic landscape is an expressive illustration of Michael Bliss’s suggestion that Banting “gloried at being on frontiers—medicine, art, now geography.”

This work was part of the collection of William Edwin Troup of Jordan Station, Lincoln, Ontario, who was a passionate collector and former director of the Lincoln Museum and Cultural Centre (LMCC). The W.E. Troup Collection, housed at the LMCC, contains a wealth of nineteenth-century objects and artifacts related to the Pennsylvania German settlers of the area.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars