In the early spring of 1921, A.Y. Jackson traveled to the Lower St. Lawrence. Although he was a native of Montreal, this was his first time visiting the older, smaller villages huddled against the river. Compelled by their charm and the formal effects of the weather and the clarity of the light, he would return here nearly every winter, alternating between the northern and southern shores and traveling across the various towns that populated the area. The village of Saint-Simon-de-Rimouski, nestled on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, was the site of some of Jackson’s best scenes, providing ample opportunity to explore the ramshackle buildings and rolling landscapes that characterized rural Quebec.

The paintings made here reflect the quaintness of the countryside along the river and capture the sense of a rapidly disappearing way of life that attracted Jackson to the area: aging farm buildings anchoring themselves into the sweeping hills, fusing into the roil and tranquility of the natural rhythms of the surrounding landscape. While he would typically stay in Quebec until the late spring, it was in the depths of winter snow that he could best explore the qualities of form, colour and light that kept him returning to the region. This exceptional double-sided painting is a beautiful expression of Jackson’s affection and ease amid one of his most treasured locations.

Jackson would frequently use both sides of his sketch boards, and here both scenes showcase a Quebec landscape buried under lavender swirls of snow. The recto image is dominated by a rolling cascade of softly snowed-in hills, capped by plumes of cloud and a bright frosted sky. A cluster of farm buildings, half buried in the mounds of snow, huddles to the right of the composition. In the centre, tracing a thin route amid deep snowbanks, a small red sleigh heads uphill. The road is marked by teetering electrical poles, marching perpendicular to the pillowy lateral ridges of the hills, while just the very tips of a snow-buried wooden fence mark the boundary of the foreground.

The verso depicts a different farm, perhaps later in the spring than the first scene: the snow has melted to expose more of the buildings and the browns of the distant trees, while here the fence more forcefully emerges from the angular shadows of the snowbanks. The buildings here seem more heavily worn by the season, the roofs sagged under the force of age, and we see the wood frame and weathered shingles of one in detail along the right edge. Again, a horse and sleigh centre the scene. The overall effect of these scenes is a sparkling, crisp view of the specific character of the Rimouski landscape: human and natural environments buried together under the silent stillness of winter.

This lot is accompanied by several exceptional archival items relating to the original sale of the work by Jackson to one Mr. Wilson (all of which can be viewed at Heffel.com), providing rare insight into the provenance and original intent of the painting: a handwritten note from Jackson to Wilson dated January 4, 1944; a cancelled Bank of Montreal cheque made out to Jackson in the purchase amount of $35, dated January 10, 1944; and a typed letter from November 3, 1944, identifying the subject as a village near Rimouski. In the earlier letter, Jackson noted that the work had already been received by Wilson in time for Christmas a few weeks earlier.

Perhaps more interesting, the artist also suggested that even as late as 1943, he had intended to work up the sketch into a full canvas (though he does not clarify which scene). By that time, having earlier that summer taken up a teaching post at the Banff School of Fine Arts, he felt he did not have the time to do it justice, preferring to dedicate his focus to the nearby landscapes of the West (“mostly Alaska highway,” he says in the letter) rather than reflecting on his travels in Quebec.

The compositions here recall the romance and scale of some of Jackson’s best Quebec canvases, such as Laurentian Country, Winter (circa 1926) and The Red Barn (1929, both in the Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario) or Winter Morning, St.-Tite-des-Caps (1937, McMichael Canadian Art Collection). As it stands, this exceptional double-sided painting represents a superb example of Jackson’s vision of rural Québécois life.

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