Sold for: $50,032

PROVENANCE
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal
The Estate of James C. (Clarence) Wilson, Montreal
By descent to the present Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Thomas R. Lee, Albert H. Robinson: The Painter's Painter, 1956, reproduced, unpaginated
Jennifer Watson, Albert H. Robinson: The Mature Years, 1982, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, reproduced page 36
Paul Duval, Canadian Impressionism, 1990, page 130
Colin S. MacDonald, A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume 7, 1990, pages 2204 and 2205

EXHIBITED
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1959

In his book on Canadian Impressionism, Paul Duval wrote, “For Albert Robinson, Quebec was a complex of pastel grey, pink, and soft blue villages, homesteads and harbours. His canvases are filled with a luminosity that depends on a generous addition of white paint to his pigments. Only rarely, and then in isolated accents, does he use pure colour. It is not surprising, with white as his signal colour, that the majority of Robinson’s compositions represent winter scenes.”

Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Albert Henry Robinson was interested in art from the time he was young, gaining a reputation among his schoolmates as the person to call on should they wish to send a beautifully illustrated love note to another classmate. After high school he worked as an illustrator for the Hamilton Times, and soon saved enough money to go overseas and train in Paris, which he did in 1903, studying at the prestigious Académie Julian. From there, Robinson took summer classes in Normandy and Corsica with the American painter Thomas William Marshall, but had to return home after contracting typhoid in 1905. He was hired to teach art in Hamilton, where little was happening in Canadian art. Good fortune brought private benefactors his way when he met Mr. and Mrs. William Davis, who invited him to set up a studio in Montreal. There, he had the opportunity to meet other artists such as William Brymner and Maurice Cullen, who would profoundly influence his life and career. He also met A.Y. Jackson there in 1910, and they developed a quick rapport, planning a trip to France for the following year. This was an exciting time in French art, and in Brittany the influence of Impressionism was all around them. The two Canadians shared the Impressionists’ interest in capturing the effects of sunlight, in painting the simple beauty of street scenes and in focusing on the small moments in the daily lives of people. These interests would inform Robinson’s work throughout his career, but in France, he ran short of money and was forced to return to Canada once again, just four months after arriving. Back home, he turned his attention to the Canadian scene, and became enamoured of the Quebec landscape. He painted the places outside his door using an impressionistic brush-stroke, setting them in dappled light and infusing them with personal affection. This love of place would last throughout his career, and views such as this one, of Quebec from Levis, would be the mainstay in his work. In them, we see everything through the soft hues of winter’s pale light: towns and rivers are painted in the myriad shades of white that only artists living in places with long winters are able to fully and keenly observe. Two sketches for this important work are known - the first, entitled Quebec from Levis, is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Windsor and the other, entitled Quebec, is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario.

In 1955 a retrospective of Robinson’s work was mounted. It included a catalogue for which Robert Wakeham Pilot wrote the foreword. Pilot noted, “His canvases and sketches with their subtle and distinguished colour delight us by their gently evocative quality. He is what I like to call a ‘painter’s painter’. Some critics have linked his name with that of James Wilson Morrice; for both painters have interpreted the landscape of the lower St. Lawrence, seeing in it their own vision of La Nouvelle France.”

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