Sold for: $26,550

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Quebec
Acquired from the above in the late 1950s by the present Private Collection, USA

LITERATURE
A.Y. Jackson, A Painter's Country: The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson, 1958, pages 28 and 31

In January of 1914 Jackson moved into the Studio Building in Toronto, sharing space with Tom Thomson. In Jackson's autobiography he relates that Thomson "talked of his beloved Algonquin Park so much that I decided to see it for myself. I arrived there late one night in February [1914] and was met at the railway station by Shannon Fraser, who ran the boarding house on Canoe Lake where Thomson made his headquarters. It was forty-five degrees below zero. Next morning it was milder, only twenty below, so I put on my snowshoes and went off exploring. I saw a patch of spruce woods that looked interesting, but I did not investigate it; a pack of wolves which had killed a deer started howling from the edge of the woods..." This was Jackson's first trip to Algonquin, and the fact that Thomson was already well known in the area provided him with all the connections he needed. Later that same year in September and October, he returned to Algonquin with Thomson for a six-week sketching trip. They traveled by canoe, camping at various lakes and painting. As the season drew on, Jackson wrote, "The maple, the birch and the poplar ran their gamut of colour and finally the tamarac tinted to shimmering gold; falling leaves and snow flurries made us aware that the sketching season was over."

Jackson has been documented as returning to Algonquin Park in May of 1941 to appear in the National Film Board's documentary West Wind and much later in July of 1964 to Canoe Lake. However, considering the season depicted and the qualities of the work itself, the painting most likely dates from one of his 1914 trips. Jackson's brush-strokes are fluid, adept and assured, and his keen awareness of colour is in full play in the snow, with its delicate tones of pink, pale green, blue and mauve. It is a fine, fresh sketch executed out-of-doors, capturing the essence of this painting place which was so important to Thomson and members of the Group of Seven.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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