PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the Artist
By descent to the present Private Collection, Vancouver

LITERATURE
A.Y. Jackson, A Painter’s Country: The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson, 1958, pages 172 and 173
Les McLaughlin, "A.Y. Jackson in the Yukon," http://www.hougengroup.com/yukon-history/historical-facts/year/1964/, accessed September 17, 2014

In the fall of 1964, A.Y. Jackson, still a restless wandering painter at the age of 82, planned a seven-week camping trip to the Yukon and Alaska with fellow painters Ralph Burton and Maurice Haycock. Jackson had already painted along the Alaska Highway. In 1943 he and Henry Glyde had been sent there while the highway was being constructed to document the project as part of the Canadian war effort. The two had expected to return in 1944, but were declined permission. In 1964 when an opportunity to return presented itself, Jackson jumped at the chance. Here was a landscape as colour laid bare, a place where he could turn his attention fully to the patterns and rhythms of autumn. In Muskeg on Alaska Highway, Jackson depicts each detail of the North with the eye of a seasoned observer. The river is a chalky silt grey, the distant mountains purple and blue, and the sky is rippled with waves of cloud. The muskeg itself churns with the movement of snake-like plants, painted with Jackson's characteristic brushwork; everything is a riot of October colour.

Jackson had been considerably impressed with the "paintable subjects" as he called them, near Whitehorse when he was first there in 1943. "We could have sketched there happily for a month," he wrote in his autobiography, "but there were eight hundred and fifty miles of highway to be looked over between Whitehorse and Dawson Creek." In 1964 he would have had less distance to cover, and more time to spend with the subjects he had found very appealing in his previous trip. He recalled, "We had heard stories about this part of the country, that it was just a great stretch of monotonous bush. Perhaps it was the crisp October weather with the low sun, the sombre richness of the colour, the frost and patches of snow, the ice along the edge of the rivers, but whatever the reason, we found it fascinating."

In addition to his sensitive paintings, Jackson was a poetic writer, especially when he reminisced about places he had painted. Regarding the landscape on the Alaska Highway, he noted, "Mile after mile of sharp pointed peaks covered with snow form a background, while the road follows the long swinging undulations of open, wooded country - stretches of spruce and poplar, grassland or burnt-over country, lands of little sticks. There was no snow in the valleys, but the ground was rich with hoar frost where the sun could not find it." He had always planned to return to the region, so the invitation from Burton and Haycock would have reignited the desire to work again in a place he had found so appealing 20 years earlier. While he was there, Jackson, who was by then an iconic celebrity in the Canadian art world, gave an interview to the local radio station CKRW Yukon. Broadcaster Les McLaughlin conducted the interview and later recalled that Jackson worked around Dawson and Mayo sketching on the spot, making pencil drawings and completing a number of canvases - one of which was Muskeg on Alaska Highway.

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