PRICE: $8,750

PROVENANCE
Important Canadian Paintings, Drawings, Watercolours, Books and Prints, Sotheby's Canada, May 17, 1976, lot 44
Irving Ungermann, Toronto
Masters Gallery, Calgary
Canadian Art, Joyner / Waddington's, Toronto, November 25, 2008, lot 48 as In the Park
Mayberry Fine Art, Winnipeg
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
"Spring Art Exhibition," Montreal Witness, March 26, 1909
Thomas R. Lee, Albert H. Robinson: The Painter’s Painter, 1956, unpaginated
Jennifer Watson, Albert H. Robinson: The Mature Years, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, 1982, pages 11 – 15

EXHIBITED
Art Association of Montreal, 25th Spring Exhibition, March 26, 1909, exhibited as Montreal from St. Helen’s Isle, catalogue #309

A native of Hamilton, Ontario, Albert Robinson first worked there as a newspaper illustrator prior to studying in Paris from late 1903 to 1906. Returning to Hamilton, he worked in the studio of John S. Gordon but in late 1908 he moved to Montreal. In the catalogue of the April 1909 Spring Exhibition at the Art Association of Montreal, his address was given as 10 Phillips Square. Among the four works he showed that year was a work titled Montreal from St. Helen’s Isle, priced at $200. Robinson exhibited another canvas titled Montreal from St. Helen’s Island priced at $150 at the Spring Exhibition in March 1911 (cat. no. 248). That work was sold to the vice-president of the art association, F.E. Meredith, so it was probably not the same work titled Montreal from St. Helen’s Island shown at the Royal Canadian Academy exhibition in Ottawa in November 1912 (cat. no. 187).

Though later mistitled In the Park, this painting is clearly a view of Montreal from St. Helen’s Island. However, given Robinson’s use of the same title for what are evidently differing paintings, the dating raises questions. Between 1909 and 1912, he painted a number of canvases depicting shipping in the port of Montreal at different times of day. In the fall of 1911, he painted in Brittany with A.Y. Jackson: his brushwork became more textured, often applied in parallel bands, and his colour in a higher key than what we see here.

In this work the foreground figure and water are brushed smoothly and the foliage in the trees painted in light touches. The surface is relatively smooth, unlike his port scenes of 1911 and 1912. Jenifer Watson, author of the 1982 catalogue of Robinson’s work, has noted that his paintings of 1908 to 1909 are relatively small, about 31 x 46 centimetres—the dimensions of this canvas. It is likely this painting was the work exhibited in 1909, though the comment by the journalist in the newspaper the Montreal Witness lends confusion: “The impressionistic school is said to be ably represented by … A.H. Robinson, one of whose pictures is an ambitious rendering of Montreal as seen from St. Helen’s Island.”

We thank Charles C. Hill, former curator of Canadian art from 1980 to 2014 at the National Gallery of Canada and author of The Group of Seven: Art for a Nation, for contributing the above essay.

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