Sold for: $32,450

PROVENANCE
Mrs. Dean Hughes, Ontario
Private Collection, Toronto
By descent to the present Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Dennis Reid, Bertram Brooker: A Retrospective Exhibition, National Gallery of Canada, 1979, page 17, reproduced page 53

EXHIBITED
Hart House Art Gallery, Toronto, Bertram Brooker, November 1937
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Bertram Brooker: A Retrospective Exhibition, 1972, traveling, 1972 - 1973, catalogue #19, label on verso

After encountering Group of Seven artist Lemoine FitzGerald in Winnipeg in 1929, Bertram Brooker abandoned abstraction in favour of realism. He then produced nudes, portraits, still lifes and landscapes, with approaches ranging from a stylized realism to the use of elements of Cubism. By the 1930s, Brooker was working for the Toronto advertising firm J.J. Gibbons but needed more time to paint, and in 1934 he arranged a shorter workweek. This proved fortuitous, as Dennis Reid wrote that “the years from 1934 to 1937 are, with the abstract period from 1927 to 1930, the most prolific, coherent, and generally successful of his whole painting career. Paintings such as...Fawn Bay...are penetrating in their realism, dynamic in composition, and harmonious in colour and texture.” Fawn Bay, with its strong sense of volume, is an outstanding work by this important early modernist. The contrast of the smooth, rounded trunks of trees anchored in boulders against the rough-hewn texture of the split-rail fence is particularly striking. The glowing golden field and a glimpse of shining water in the distance give a transcendent feel to this strong image.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars