Sold for: $295,000

PROVENANCE
Estate of the Artist
By descent to the present Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Memorial Exhibition of Paintings by the Late Helen McNicoll, RBA, ARCA, Art Association of Montreal, 1925, listed page 5

EXHIBITED
Art Association of Montreal, Memorial Exhibition of Paintings by the Late Helen McNicoll, RBA, ARCA, November 7 - December 6, 1925, catalogue #34

Helen McNicoll developed as an artist during a period when the role of women was dramatically changing. However, even though she was a professional artist trained at the Slade School in England who was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists and became an associate of the Royal Canadian Academy, it took time for a broader recognition to develop. In 1925, a decade after her untimely death, the Art Association of Montreal held a retrospective of her work, in which this gorgeous painting was included. More recently, McNicoll’s stature as one of Canada’s finest Impressionist painters has been widely established. The Mother is an outstanding example of her light-filled paintings of women and children, depicted in outdoor settings awash with sunlight and filtered, dappled shadow. The lushly painted grassy field recalls the settings of French Impressionists such as Claude Monet. Not only are her paintings beautiful in their depictions of summer landscapes, but they reveal the artist's great empathy for the women and children who were her subjects. In The Mother, McNicoll captures a moment of sunlit stillness, where this moment of tenderness is everything.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars