Sold for: $109,250

PROVENANCE
By descent to the present Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Joan Murray, Helen McNicoll: Oil Paintings from the Estate, Part Two, Morris Gallery, 1976, reproduced plate 6, unpaginated

EXHIBITED
Morris Gallery, Toronto, Helen McNicoll: Oil Paintings from the Estate, Part Two, February 7 - 21, 1976, catalogue #6

Helen Galloway McNicoll was one of Canada’s few early female Impressionists. Her exuberant style, vivid palette, and clearly discernible and consistently made brush-strokes are the hallmarks of her works, influenced by the light-loving movement of Impressionism. Her observations of domestic and rural life—delicate and serene—have a sense of quiet to them, perhaps a result of McNicoll having become deaf after contracting scarlet fever as a child. McNicoll’s scenes are harmonious and tranquil, directly observed and sincerely felt. In her figurative scenes, the landscape in which the figures are placed is always given equal treatment, and here, a simple field of stooked wheat received her full attention. The light is brilliant, the wheat golden, the sky a silvery blue and the distant fields touched with pink, which is echoed in both the stubble and the stooks. As is often the case with Impressionist works, the simplicity of the method of painting belies the complexity of the scene, speaking to McNicoll’s ability to fully observe and then to paint the effect of natural, stunning and yet simple beauty.

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