With the Red Ensign waving gently atop a general store in the small community of Washago, this work perfectly captures A.J. Casson’s engagement with the imagery of rural Ontario. His depictions of rural buildings often sit near the centre of the composition, as seen here, and are presented with a portraitist’s eye for detail and character. Such architectural renderings, a central motif in his body of work, showcase his deft skills as a draughtsman while also expressing a warm and idyllic sentiment.

Washago is located on the northernmost tip of Lake Couchiching, which would have been about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the artist’s Toronto home. He expanded this image into a larger studio work, The Village Store (1937), which includes details of local residents and a scattering of chickens pecking at the dirt road in the foreground. That canvas and this sketch beautifully convey Casson’s placement of humanity peacefully within nature. The tradition of landscape painting in Canada has often avoided the inclusion of figures or human-made objects, placing works like these in notable counterpoint. While Casson excelled at expressing the grandeur of nature, he was equally adept at placing his sympathies within human communities.

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