The sketching spot near Pointe au Baril where this on-site work was produced would have been a familiar painting location for A.J. Casson, accessible by car from his home in Toronto. The youngest artist to be a member of the Group of Seven, he would go on from that prestigious association to a long and successful career. He would become one of Canada’s most beloved and collected artists, propelled by the country’s eventual embrace of home-grown art beginning in the early 1950s. It was a success not to be experienced by many of Casson’s friends and associates in the Group, such as J.E.H MacDonald and Franklin Carmichael - a poignant fact of which Casson was most certainly aware.

This gentle yet unmistakable example is, in many ways, classic Casson. It features his skillfully nuanced use of a verdant green in the trees as well as earthy pinks and purples of the rocks, all rendered in the distinctive, stylized forms he explored following his retirement from commercial art around a decade earlier. An important painter throughout his career, Casson’s voice nonetheless speaks with a notable clarity in this essential mid-career period.