FINE CANADIAN ART: EXHIBITION AND SALE

FINE CANADIAN ART O C T 2 8 - N OV 7 , 2 0 2 1

W W W. M A S T E R S G A L L E R Y L T D . C O M

FINE CANADIAN ART

1

NE E C CA AN NA AD D II A AN N A AR RT T FF II N

2

M A S T E R S G A L L E R Y L T D.

CONTENTS 4

19th Centur y & Canadian Impressionism

26

The Group of Seven

44

Group Contemporaries

80

Post-war & Contemporar y

119 Fine

Ar t Books

C OV E R I M A G E : A . J. C A S S O N , W I N T E R S U N OV E R O L D T O R O N T O , C . 1 9 5 9 - 6 0

3

FINE CANADIAN ART

4

1 9 t h C ent u ry & C anadian I mpressionism

19TH CENTURY & CANADIAN IMPRESSIONISM 5

FINE CANADIAN ART

6

1 9 t h C ent u ry & C anadian I mpressionism

Franklin Brownell (1857-1946) CAC OSA RCA Byward Market, Ottawa, 1915 pastel on paper signed and dated lower right 8.75x13.25 in. (22.2x33.6 cm.)

Provenance Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal; Arthur Leggett Fine Art and Antiques, Toronto; Private collection, Toronto Exhibited Franklin Brownell (1857-1946), Retrospective Exhibition, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal, Sept. 29 – Oct. 13, 2007, cat. no. 12

Franklin Brownell moved from Montreal to Ottawa in 1887. By this time in his life, he had trained in Boston, and under the significant tutelage of the French painter Adolphe Bouguereau at the Académie Julian in Paris. He eventually became headmaster at the Ottawa Art School, and would teach there until 1900, when he moved on to head the Women’s Art Association of Ottawa, later the Art Association of Ottawa. A member of the RCA, he was also a founding member of the Canadian Art Club. While listing his associations and awards might seem pedantic, it is critical to note how accomplished and connected Brownell was doing the course of his career. He worked with Maurice Cullen and Suzor-Coté, contemporaries in whose work we can see parallels.

Brownell was very content painting in Ottawa and found the vibrancy of the city, with its busy markets, bustling life, and monumental architecture, very appealing. Upon becoming Canada’s legislative capital in 1866, Ottawa was at the center of what was then Canada. Previously called Bytown, the region, including the historic Byward Market, was incorporated into the City of Ottawa in 1847. Between the attractive hustle and bustle of the market and the nearby Gatineau River region, Brownell had ample subject matter readily at hand. This delicate scene depicts that hustle and bustle at the market on a cold winter’s day.

All is bathed in icy sunlight, everyone is wrapped against the cold, even the horses are blanketed as they penitently wait for their sleighs to be loaded.

7

FINE CANADIAN ART

8

1 9 t h C ent u ry & C anadian I mpressionism

Maurice Cullen (1866-1934) AAM RCA

The Little Cache River, c. 1922 oil on canvas signed lower right 18x15 in. (45.7x38.1 cm.)

Cullen Inventory no. 1437

Provenance Laing Galleries, Toronto; Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc.; Exhibited Important Canadian Art: Exhibition and Sale, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal, 2007

Already established as a Canadian artist of note, Maurice Cullen converted from a traditional Academic style – in which he had several years of training – to an Impressionistic, light-infused approach, almost immediately upon his arrival in Paris in 1887. His interest was specific to the Impressionist’s approach to brushwork and to colour, the first of which was free and loose and wild by comparison to Canadian standards, and the latter of which allowed him to explore reflection, shadow, and atmosphere in new ways.

He took these traits back with him to Canada when he returned in 1895, where he applied them to his subjects.

Primarily a landscape painter, The Cache River and the Little Cache River were regular haunts of his, and he painted there in all seasons, bringing his Impressionistic sensibilities to the Quebec landscape. He was a quintessential plein air painter, working out-of-doors year round, even in the coldest of winters, when long periods spent stationary in pursuit of a subject would have been a significant challenge.

9

FINE CANADIAN ART

10

1 9 t h C ent u ry & C anadian I mpressionism

Maurice Cullen (1866-1934) AAM RCA

Lévis from Quebec, c. 1904 oil on canvas signed and inscribed A mon ami Brymner lower right 18x22 in. (45.7x55.9 cm.)

Cullen Inventory no. 1011 Provenance William Brymner, Montreal; Watson Art Galleries, Montreal; Francois Dupré, Montreal; Private collection

Quebec from Lévis, and variations on that view, were a staple in the work of Canadian Impressionist Maurice Cullen. He was a dedicated plein-air painter, as working out-of-doors, he felt, was essential to his ability to render the landscape in the vivid colour that he observed. Even in the dead of winter, when he often stood for hours in snow-shoes, out-of-doors was essential, so that he could accurately render the subtleties of each scene. The shattered, glimmering sky in this work, filled with ice-fog that hangs in the air above the St. Lawrence River, tells us that the temperature is well below freezing. It is this authenticity of experience that brings Cullen’s winter scenes to life. They are evocative of J.M.W. Turner, humble marine scenes of working boats, valiant and determined in their roles in the sea, captured in a still and beautiful moment that belies their industrious work.

Here we see the ferry that ran regularly between Lévis and Quebec City, busting through the pans of ice that float on the river, allowing for the reflection of the golden sky to come through, broken by steam from the ferry as it chugs away from us. This view, painted so often, is the subject in some of Cullen’s masterworks, such as the nocturn Winter Evening, Quebec, c. 1905, in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

The ferry, so iconic because of Cullen’s work as well as that of James Wilson Morrice, has become a character in the cast of Canada’s icons, and is as recognizable as Tom Thomson’s blasted pine or A.Y. Jackson’s sagged-roof barn. It is a symbol of old Quebec, as essential a theme in Canadian Impressionism as haystacks are in the work of French Impressionism.

This work carries the added cache of bearing the inscription “to my friend Brymner” in the lower right corner of the front of the work. Cullen refers of course to William Brymner; artist, teacher, and colleague to many of Canada’s finest early painters. Brymner’s influence as an open-minded, experimental teacher was boundless, his list of distinguished students is even longer than his list of distinguished colleagues, amoung whom he counted Maurice Cullen.

11

FINE CANADIAN ART

12

1 9 t h C ent u ry & C anadian I mpressionism

Clarence A. Gagnon (1881-1942) CAC RCA Bright Winter Day, Baie St. Paul, 1915 oil on panel 4.5x6.75 in. (11.43x17.14 cm.)

Gagnon Inventory no. 395 Provenance Private collection, Calgary

In the spring of 1914, with the threat of war looming in Europe, Clarence Gagnon was facing hard times in Paris. Despite critical success at his March Reitlinger Gallery show Les peinters de niege (Snow Painters), he had not sold many works. When war broke out in July, he was forced to return home to Canada, leaving his printing press and etching materials behind. He settled back in Baie-Saint-Paul, alone, as in addition to the war and poor sales, Gagnon’s marriage was unravelling. He tried to sell some of his European works, but demand was meagre, and to supplement his income he began to hunt, and spent a great deal of time fishing, often selling his catch. These expeditions took him out into the country side around Baie-Saint-Paul, where he captured the winter light and colour of this group of buildings in his neighbourhood. The people of BaieSaint-Paul welcomed him, and gifted him with produce, which he would return with fresh caught trout. His letters describe his own diet, which consisted mostly of apples and fish.

Despite these difficult times, Gagnon’s work from this period is excellent, filled with brightness and optimism, and giving no hint of the uncertain, challenging times he was living through. This charming pouchad is a fine example of his beautiful winter works, painted in a community that had embraced him. He was able to return to Paris briefly in 1917, settling his personal affairs, and in 1919 would remarry, settling back again in his beloved Baie-Saint-Paul with his wife Lucile Rodier, whose certification label we find on the verso of this charming work.

13

FINE CANADIAN ART

14

1 9 t h C ent u ry & C anadian I mpressionism

Clarence Alphonse Gagnon (1881-1942) CAC RCA Les Eboulements, Winter, c. 1920 oil on panel signed lower right signed and titled on label to verso 6.25x9.25 in.

Provenance Galerie Alan Klinkhoff, Montreal / Toronto Private collection, Calgary In the important book Clarence Gagnon, Dreaming the Landscape, the authors quote the private journal of Swiss author Henri Frédéric Amiel (1821 – 1881) who refers to landscape as “a state of mind.”1 Amiel suggests that “each individual landscape possess a certain significance that inspires a particular state of mind in the artists representing it.”2 Amiel further suggests that under this inspiration, the artist projects himself into the work, so much so that his or her personality becomes imprinted onto nature through the landscapes that he or she paints. This is particularly true in Canadian art, where so much of the art historical record is of the land itself.

Amiel’s idealist view and the work of Gagnon result in a romantic depiction of the Quebec landscape. The light is a gentle kaleidoscope of pastel, wherein the snow brings every colour of the palette to life by filtering it through white. Gagnon had a particular eye for architecture; the architecture of the village, with a particular affection for certain roof-slopes and certain colours of paint, as well as for the architecture of the landscape, with sweeping valleys neatly bounded by swathes of forest, distant views of the St. Lawrence, and the low mountains of his beloved Quebec. With its beautiful colour and gentle, inviting scene, it is indeed, as the title of the aforementioned book suggests, as if Gagnon has dreamed this landscape.

1. Sicotte, Hélène and Michèle Grandbois. Clarence Gagnon: Dreaming the Landscape, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 2006, page 36 2. Ibid.

15

FINE CANADIAN ART

16

1 9 t h C ent u ry & C anadian I mpressionism

Clarence Alphonse Gagnon (1881-1942) CAC RCA Spring Charlevoix, 1926 oil on panel 9x6 in. (22.8x15.2 cm.)

Gagnon Inventory no. 177 Provenance Private collection, Nova Scotia; Private collection, Calgary

An integral part of the appeal of Clarence Gagnon’s works, and one of the reasons that they are still so fresh today, is the quality of artist’s pigments that he used. He was obsessed with finding good materials, and after the end of the First World War, quality, especially in commercially produced artist’s materials, was in serious decline. As a result, Gagnon began experimenting by preparing his own colours, grinding his own pigments, and preparing them as paint, and then executing works using them, beginning as early as 1922. He ordered his raw materials from Morin et Tanet in Paris1, while researching the paint-making techniques of the Old Masters at the same time. In this, he was a complete success, as his colours remain vivid and clear almost a century later.

Armed with these pigments, Gagnon was a master at the contrast of light and shadow, and in this small panel we see a deeply shadowed foreground, bathed in deep tones of blue, green, and black, offset by a brilliantly lit distance, where the sun bleaches the tree trunks to their lightest shades, and green conifers peak through between them. In the invoices for Gagnon’s 1925 and 1926 Morin et Tanet orders, we see he has purchased seven different blue and green pigments, including four variations of cobalt, which might account for the rich, yet subtle variety of blue and green we see here. Titanium white, only available as an artist’s pigment since 1921, was also on his 1926 order. A strong and stable, exceedingly brilliant white, its introduction to Gagnon’s palette was a game-changer, and adds an intensity that was unattainable with whites he was using prior to that such as flake white (which was partially titanium based), lead white, and zinc white.

1. Sicotte, Hélène and Michèle Grandbois. Clarence Gagnon: Dreaming the Landscape, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 2006, page 137

17

FINE CANADIAN ART

Cornelius David Krieghoff (1815-1872)

The Moccasin Seller signed lower right oil on canvas 10.75x8.75 in. (27.3x22.2 cm.)

Provenance Private collection, Calgary

Depictions of moccasin sellers were very popular subjects in early Canada. In his treatments of them, Cornelius Krieghoff was able to study, and then show off his considerable ability to capture the unique clothing styles, beadwork, and overall beauty of the First Nations clothing. In this work we see a figure wearing a basket with a chest strap, over several layers of richly coloured, and finely detail clothing.

The moccasins in particular are beautifully handled, as are the leggings that the figure is wearing, trimmed with beadwork in colours that stand out brilliantly against their dark colour. A red smock with white dots and what would be trade lace define the larger areas of colour nicely. It is a dignified portrait, alive with detail and sensitively rendered.

18

1 9 t h C ent u ry & C anadian I mpressionism

Cornelius Krieghoff (1815-1872) Indian Hunters at a Portage, c. 1860 oil on canvas 13x18 in. (33.02x45.72 cm.)

Provenance Captain W.A. Dobie, London, England; Watson Art Galleries, Montreal; Private collection, London, England and Montreal; Galerie Eric Klinkhoff, Montreal

Depictions of Indigenous people form a large part of Cornelius Krieghoff ’s very significant body of work, estimated at 1500 – 1800 paintings and prints. After arriving in Canada from Bavaria, Germany, via the United States, Krieghoff settled first in Boucherville, Quebec, and moved frequently while developing his skills as an artist. Indian Hunters at a Portage is circa dated to his time in Québec City, and is a classic depiction of a First Nations life, idealized through Krieghoff ’s hand. Four hunters are pulled up on the edge of a river, two clean their rifles, while one makes a fire in the lee of a large rock. The fourth hunter kneels beside their prize, a woodland caribou. The edge of the river is peace full and calm, with autumn colour and gentle light bathing the scene.

19

FINE CANADIAN ART

20

1 9 t h C ent u ry & C anadian I mpressionism

Helen Galloway McNicoll (1879-1915) ARCA Fishing Boat, Vancouver Harbour, 1912 oil on board 5.5x8.5 in. (13.9x21.6 cm.)

McNicoll Estate No. 52, stamp to verso Provenance The Morris Gallery, Toronto; Peter Ohler Fine Arts Ltd., Vancouver

“In the generation of Canadian artists who emerged from Brymner’s classroom, Helen McNicoll stands apart as a painter concerned exclusively with Impressionism. No other artist expressed with such consistency a sheer delight in the visual world.” 1

The discovery of this remarkable work adds more information to the record on Helen Galloway McNicoll. We have traced her career largely through the titles of her works, and this scene places her on a boat off the coast of Vancouver in 1912. We know she spent much of that year in France, and eastern sojourns across the Atlantic were more easily undertaken at that time than those west to British Columbia.

But with the distinctive Lions summits clearly visible, we know we are looking at the North Shore area of Vancouver. In Squamish, Ch’ich’iyúy Elxwíkn translates to the Twin Sisters – the Lions, and it is likely that this work depicts a Salish Coast or Squamish fishing boat, rigged with sails and tents.

McNicoll’s father worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway and was close friends with William Van Horne, which, in a roundabout way, may account for her being in British Columbia in 1912. With the outbreak of World War One, McNicoll was sent back from France – where she was painting with her companion and fellow-artist Dorothea Sharp – as the Railway was concerned for their safety. Making her way to the west coast of Canada might have been a war-time substitute for her European art practice. A remarkable, and remarkably early (for the west coast) work by this Canadian Impressionist painter, it comes late her short career. Challenged from the beginning – she became profoundly deaf as a result of scarlet fever at the age of two – McNicoll overcame her deafness, her desire to remain single, and built a successful career in Europe and Canada. She died of diabetes in 1915, just six years before Banting, Best, and MacLeod would discover insulin in 1921.

1. A. K. Prakash, Canadian Impressionism, A Journey of Rediscovery. Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2015, page 491

21

FINE CANADIAN ART

22

1 9 t h C ent u ry & C anadian I mpressionism

Lucius Richard O’Brien (1832-1899) OSA PRCA

Ojibwa Indians, Lake Simcoe watercolour signed lower right 12.5x17.5 in. (31.75x44.5 cm.)

Provenance The Collector’s Gallery, Calgary; Private collection, Calgary

Lucius O’Brien made an immense contribution to the early art history of Canada. He was the founding president of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art, which brought professional standards and practices into the Canadian art industry. He settled in Toronto in 1870, and painted his iconic Sunrise on the Saguenay (National Gallery of Canada Collection) ten years later. That work propelled him to success, solidifying his position in the Canadian art echelon. O’Brien was also the art director of Picturesque Canada, a publication that introduced would-be immigrants and early settlers to the scenery of Canada through large format engravings made from paintings and drawings. O’Brien’s own work featured prominently in this publication. He was also an active and prominent member of the Railway School – artists who painted along the lines of the Canadian Railway system as it was being built, and in the early days of its operations. In addition to all these things, O’Brien maintained a steady production of art, working in eastern Canada, as far was as Howe Sound, and in Banff and the Kicking Horse Pass.

23

FINE CANADIAN ART

24

1 9 t h C ent u ry & C anadian I mpressionism

Paul Peel (1860-1892) OSA RCA Little Marie oil on canvas signed lower right 11.75x8 in. (29.8x20.3 cm.)

Provenance Margaret Peel, daughter of the artist; Sold at Waddington’s, Toronto, December 1936; Mrs. J. McGivern, Doursview, Ontario, by descent; Private collection, Calgary

Paul Peel, like many artists of his time, was dazzled by the approach of the Impressionists, which he encountered when he moved to Paris in 1881. He spent five years living and working there, during which time he married and had two children, Robert and Marguerite, the latter of whom was born in 1886, and who may the subject of this work. Peel adored his children and created a series of works using them as models, notably After the Bath, now in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario. He embraced the direct and luminous methodology of The Impressionists in his portraits of his children and is regarded as one of Canada’s finest painters of childhood subjects. His images are bathed in golden light and drenched in sunshine. Idyllic and serene, they are “painted in a high-keyed, superbly controlled palette that prevails from corner to corner of the canvas.”1 Little Marie looks up at us from her clasped hands, sunlight catching the crown of daisies that she wears, her feet crossed as she leans against a small cliff, in a moment of innocent repose. His death from what was likely tuberculosis at the young age of 32 cut short a promising career.

1. Duval, Paul. Canadian Impressionism. McClelland & Stewart Inc. Toronto, 1990. page 16

25

FINE CANADIAN ART

26

T h e G ro u p of S even

THE GROUP OF SEVEN

27

FINE CANADIAN ART

28

T h e G ro u p of S even

Alfred Joseph Casson (1898-1992) CGP CSPWC G7 OC POSA PRCA

Winter Sun Over Old Toronto, c. 1959 - 60 oil on board signed lower right 30x36 in. (76.2x91.4 cm.)

Provenance Roberts Gallery, Toronto; Canadian Industries Ltd. Collection, Toronto; The Art Emporium, Vancouver; Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal; Private collection, Montreal, 1987; A.K. Prakash & Associates Inc, Toronto Private collection, Calgary Exhibited Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1962; Centre d’Art, Shawinigan, Quebec, 1962; Stewart Hall, Pointe Claire, Quebec, 1962; St. Joseph’s Seminary, Trois Rivieres, Quebec, 1962; Exhibition of Contemporary Canadian Art, Rochester, New York, 1963; St. Mary’s College, Brockville, Ontario, 1963; East York Public Library, Toronto, 1963; Parkdale Public Library, Toronto, 1963; Cookesville Central Library, Toronto, 1964; C.I.L. House, Montreal, Quebec, 1964; Saint John high School, Saint John, N.B., 1964; Rodman Hall Arts Center, St. Catharines, Ontario, 1965; Orillia Public Library, Orillia, Ontario, 1965; 48th Canadian Chemical Conference, Montreal, 1965; Confederation Art Gallery and Museum, Charlottetown, P.E.I., 1965; Cowansville Art Center, Cowansville, Quebec, 1965; Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta, 1965; University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1965; Calgary Allied Arts Council, Calgary, Alberta, 1965; Séminaire de St. Hyacinthe, St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, 1966; C.I.L. House, Montreal, Quebec, 1966; Sarnia Public Library and Museum, Sarnia, Ontario, 1966; Séminaire de St. Jean, St. Jean, Quebec, 1966; University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, 1966; Boucherville Civil Center, Boucherville, Quebec, 1966; Barrie Public Library, Barrie, Ontario, 1966; Hamilton Art Gallery, Hamilton, Ontario, 1966; The Engineers Club, Toronto, Ontario, 1967; Stewart Hall, Pointe-Claire, Quebec, 1967; South Peace Art Society, Dawson Creek, British Columbia, 1967; C.I.L. House, Montreal, Quebec, 1967; University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, 1967; Nationalism in Canadian Art, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, B.C., 1979; Art Gallery of Ontario, 1989; Canadian Masterpieces, Water Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal, September 2008; Collector’s Treasures, Eric Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal, October 2020; Literature CIL Catalogue, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, cat. no. 6, Montreal, 1962; CIL Collection Brochure, Confederation Art Gallery, listed, Charlottetown, PEI, 1966; CIL Collection, Brochure, CIL House, Montreal, 1966; Roger Boulet and Paul Duval, The Canadian Earth: Landscape Paintings by the Group of Seven, Toronto, 1982, illustrated in colour p. 79;

29

FINE CANADIAN ART

Alfred Joseph Casson’s innate sense of design shapes and refines all of his work, especially his late works, such as this magnificent panel depicting winter in old Toronto. A masterful work with a storied exhibition history, it is a rare find outside of a museum collection. We are looking at a mixed-use building, with shops on the main floor and residential apartments above, in a period of winter thaw. While reminiscent of Lawren Harris’s urban scenes from The Ward in subject, that is where the comparison ends, as Casson has removed all social commentary from the scene, giving us colour and light and form alone. There are no advertisements, no signs, nothing with words - he has turned these regions into blocks of muted, neutrallyvoiced colour. Similarly, all comments on class, caste or socio-economic states have been removed. We have instead and tour de force of simple design, where pattern, the tonal range of a limited palette, and refracted light take centre stage. “He preaches no sermon, makes no social comment. He does not probe our guilty conscience of make us feel ashamed. He simply distills for us a scene of ... monumental calm and offers it to us as a purely aesthetic experience.”1 In this regard, A.J. Casson’s works are a unique passage in Canadian art, and of this type, Winter Sun Over Old Toronto is a masterpiece.

1. Gray, Margaret, Margaret Rand and Lois Steen. A.J.Casson. Gage Publishing, Toronto, 1976, page 56

30

T h e G ro u p of S even

31

FINE CANADIAN ART

32

T h e G ro u p of S even

Lawren Stewart Harris (1885-1970) ALC BCFSA CGP FCA G7 OSA RPS TPG Woods, Algoma, c. 1918 oil on board signed lower left signed and titled to verso and inscribed with 11 10.5x13.5 in. (26.7x34.3 cm.)

Provenance Dominion Gallery, Montreal; Estate of Theodosia Dawes Bond Thornton, Montreal; Sale of Heffel Fine Art Auction House, Thursday, November 25, 2010, lot 160; Private collection, Calgary

This delightful Algoma Woods scene is a close-in, classic Lawren Harris panel. Here, Harris has caught the woods in their autumn colours, with the end of summer showing in the limey greens, and fall clearly having arrived in the orange tamaracks and red shrubs. Thinly painted on an unprimed board, it has the many of the traits of his pre-Group of Seven period. Note the board showing through around the edges of the trees, and where the trees border the sky.

Harris’s time in Algoma was a critical phase in his development as an artist. It was there that he recovered from the trauma of WWI, where his Group period style began to form, and where he found his footing the act of plein air painting. Energetic and lively, this work comes from the venerated estate of Theodosia Dawes Bond Thornton. Thornton was the daughter of Frank Lorn Campbell Bond, who had a distinguished career with the Canadian railway service. As a child, she travelled with him in his private rail car, gazing out the window at the Canadian landscape. As a teen and upon visiting the National Gallery of Canada, she snuck into “the forbidden room” where the Group works were on display. “That was the Canada I saw!” she would later say, and her passion for the art of the Group of Seven would turn into a lifetime of thoughtful and careful collecting. She worked directly with Max Stern at the Dominion Gallery in Montreal, the source for this work.

33

FINE CANADIAN ART

34

T h e G ro u p of S even

Lawren Stewart Harris (1885-1970) ALC BCFSA CGP FCA G7 OSA RPS TPG On Cally Layton Lake, Algoma, 1918 oil on board signed lower left titled and signed to verso 10.75x14 in. (27x35.6 cm.)

Provenance G. Blair Laing, Toronto; A.K. Prakash, Toronto; Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary; Private collection, Calgary Exhibited Lawren Harris: Works from Private Collections, Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary, Oct. 22 - Nov. 1, 2016

Cally Layton Lake is likely so-named for the owner of the small cabin we see, peeking through the dappled colours of the fall forest in this delightful 1918 Lawren Harris Algoma work. That year, on the heels of his discharge from the army in May, Dr. James MacCallum famously took Lawren Harris to Algoma to help him cope with the trauma of the war. In addition to his own experiences, Harris had lost his only sibling Howard, who was killed in action. The wound left by the death of Tom Thomson the prior year was still raw, and Harris suffered a breakdown of some sort, likely (under today’s diagnostics) to have been depression. Nature, suggested MacCallum, was the answer. Indeed it was, as the beauty of the Canadian landscape of Algoma in autumn took hold of Harris’s senses, and compelling him to paint.

While research does not reveal a place either now or then called Cally Layton Lake, in the cottager’s oral history of the many unnamed lakes in the region, small bodies of water were often informally referred to by the names of the cottagers nearby. Regardless of the source of the place name, Algoma was a source of healing for Lawren Harris, and the inspiration for many exciting panels. Not only was it beautiful, especially so when seen through eyes seeking something positive to gaze upon, but it was a change from Algonquin Park, where Harris had worked before the war, and where Tom Thomson had met his premature end.

Exploring the freshly revealed landscape visually renewed Harris’s faith in humanity, gave him a sense of purpose, and drove forward the desire to express something new in Canadian Art. Thus, Algoma is fundamentally intertwined with the formation of the Group of Seven.

35

FINE CANADIAN ART

36

T h e G ro u p of S even

Alexander Young Jackson (1882-1974)

ALC CGP G7 OSA RCA RSA

Diamond Lake, Brantford oil on panel signed lower right signed and titled to verso 10.5x13.5 in. (31.75x40.6 cm.)

Naomi Jackson Groves Inventory No. 2063 Provenance Sam Borenstein, acquired directly from the artist; Private collection by descent; Galerie Eric Klinkhoff, Montreal

A. Y. Jackson’s sunlight depiction of Diamond Lake is a tapestry of colour, with bleached logs accentuating the centre of the scene and radiating outwards and reflecting at the edge of the lake. This work comes from the collection of Samuel Borenstein, a fellow artist with whom Jackson painted after meeting him in 1958. Borenstein’s riotous brushwork and vivid colour has much in common with Jackson’s, they seem perfect painting partners.

This intimate work is filled with charm. The sweep of the shore, the lyrical red boughs, the blend of the reflected foliage in the lapping water, and the curves of the brushwork overall create a pleasing visual swirl, held in by the blue sky and the multi-hued blue water .

37

FINE CANADIAN ART

38

T h e G ro u p of S even

Frank Hans Johnston (1888 - 1949) ARCA CSPWC G7 OSA Sun Tipped, 1919 oil on panel initialed F.H.J. lower left titled and signed Frank Johnston to verso 8.5x5.75 in. (21.6x14.6 cm.)

Provenance Peter Ohler Fine Arts Ltd, Vancouver; Private collection, Calgary

Frank Johnston’s early works are best categorized as Impressionism, they have more in common with works of that genre than with the Group of Seven, which he would help to found in 1920. In 1919, when Sun Tipped was painted, Johnston was concerned with the beauty of the natural world, it’s light, its atmospheric effects, and its lyric appeal.

Sun Tipped shows us Johnston’s keen observation of nature, his delicate and expressive brushwork, and his skill in composition. The work was executed in Algoma, just as fall begins to touch the forest, and would have been painted on the second of the famous boxcar trips, organized by Lawren Harris from 1918 – 1922.

The first trip (to Canyon and the region of the Agawa River, along a siding at Mile 129) was such a success, that in September of 1919 a repeat of the expedition was arranged, and Johnston, Harris, J.E.H. MacDonald, and A.Y. Jackson (who replaced Dr. James MacCallum after the first trip) return to the same area.

It was on these boxcar trips that the seeds of the future Group of Seven were sown, and where the artist who would form it reveled in the landscape. “It was a paradise for the creative adventurer in paint in the Canadian North.” Harris would later note, “a rugged, wild land packed with an amazing variety of subjects.”1 Sun Tipped speaks to the moment that marks the change of seasons, when green moves into yellow in the deciduous trees of Canada’s boreal forest, and to the moment when Impressionism leads to The Group, a remarkable time in Canadian art history.

1. Roger Burford Mason. A Grand Eye for Glory” The Life of Franz Johnston. Dundurn Press, Toronto, 1998, page 32

39

FINE CANADIAN ART

40

T h e G ro u p of S even

Arthur Lismer (1885-1969) AAM CGP CSPWC G7 OSA RCA

Forest Interior Near Tofino, 1962 oil on board signed and dated ‘62 lower left 21x16.5 in. (53.3x1.9 cm.)

Provenance Private collection, Calgary

In 1952, after the conclusion of a touring retrospective of his work, Arthur Lismer took an extended vacation to Vancouver Island. It was during this trip that he discovered Long Beach and Wickaninnish Bay, and a new chapter in his work began. He worked in direct response to the west coast environment, and works from this period reflect the nature of the forest, the beaches, and the verdant life that so fascinated him there. Dennis Reid wrote that this wild landscape pushed his work to new heights of expression, with “extravagant texture, rough, crude forms, and extremes of tone and hue”.1 Particular trees he encountered there would recur in his works, evoking, as Reid notes “ the memory of Emily Carr.”2 Striking works, these homages to individual trees demonstrates the powerful ability of the natural world to drawn and hold our gaze. Lismer returned to Long Beach repeatedly, painting the forest as well as the beach, executing works that border on expressionism in their style. His forests were moody and rich, often, as we see here, focused on the base of a magnificent tree. Lismer painted 16 summers at Long Beach, where a cove, south of Wickaninnish Beach and where he had found a cottage that suited his needs, would later be named for him. In relative solitude, he bathed himself visually in the forest, always, as he said “expecting to see Emily Carr appear from behind a tree.”3

1.Reid, Dennis. Canadian Jungle, The Later Work of Arthur Lismer. The Art Gallery of Ontario. 1985, page 50 2. Ibid.

3. Op Cit., page 53

41

FINE CANADIAN ART

42

T h e G ro u p of S even

Arthur Lismer (1885-1969) AAM CGP CSPWC G7 OSA RCA Rocks and Pine Trees, Georgian Bay, 1938 signed lower right oil on board, double sided 16x20 in. (40.6x50.8 cm. ) Provenance Private collection

This work likely depicts Georgian Bay, it has all the traits and characteristic of having been painted at one of his preferred locations there, somewhere in “The Happy Isles” as he called them. A very dynamic work, swirling and tightly composed, we seem to be looking straight down a cliff face into the valley below, with a river or lake’s edge beyond that. Lismer experimented with composition often, the tangled, dense growth of the Georgian Bay shorelines required this, it was not an easy subject to tackle. The work also has echoes of his west coast tangles, and Lismer had been to Hawaii in 1938, as well as Australia and New Zealand the year before.

43

FINE CANADIAN ART

GROUP CONTEMPORARIES

44

G ro u p C ontemporaries

45

FINE CANADIAN ART

46

G ro u p C ontemporaries

Frederick Henry Brigden (1871-1956) CSGA CSPWC OSA RCA

Falls on the Bow River oil on canvas 24x32 in. (60.9x81.3 cm.)

Provenance The Collector’s Gallery of Art, Calgary; Walker’s Fine Art and Estate Auctioneers, 2009, lot 24; Eden Art Gallery, Toronto; Private collection, Toronto; Heffel Fine Art, June 2020; Loch Gallery, Calgary; Private collection

Frederick Brigden is best known as a commercial artist, he worked as an engraver and illustrator for the Toronto Engraving Company for many years, a firm which he would eventually head and rename as Brigden’s. Brigden was able to travel west and paint at Lake Louise, at Outpost Lake, and in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. This lovely waterfall in this work is bathed in sunlight and the forest leading to it opens in an inviting manner, a testament to Brigden’s ability to arrange and compose, drawing us into the very centre of the scene.

47

FINE CANADIAN ART

48

G ro u p C ontemporaries

Emily Carr (1871-1945) BCSFA CGP Surging Sea of Undergrowth, c. 1934 oil on paper stamped lower right 36x24 in. (91.4x60.9 cm.)

Provenance Dominion Gallery, Montreal; Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Monteral; Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary; Private collection, Calgary Exhibited Emily Carr: A Retrospective Exhibition, Masters Gallery Ltd., March 13-20th, 2013

I’ve learned heaps in the paper oils—freedom and direction. You are so unafraid to slash away because material scarcely counts. You use just can paint and there’s no loss with failures. I try to do one almost every day. I make a sketch in the evening and a large paper sketch the following morning—or vice versa.

- April 5, 1934, Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr, p. 731-32

In the 1930’s, Emily began to spend more and more time camping and working outside in and around Victoria. So urgent was her desire to capture the life force of nature that she started to paint using a daring oil-on-paper technique that she devised. She bought inexpensive manila paper and white house paint that she mixed with artist’s colours and thinned with gasoline. This innovative method was not only much less expensive but it proved to be highly effective as it combined the fluidity and fast-drying properties of watercolour and the intensity of oil. Emily was able to work very quickly and directly, confidently applying her diluted paints in broad, sweeping motions, infusing her work with movement, rhythm and spontaneity.

We thank Monique Westra for contributing the above essay.

49

FINE CANADIAN ART

Paul Archibald Octave Caron (1874-1941) CPE CSGA RCA

A Laurentian Wayside Inn, 1937 oil on canvas signed lower right titled and dated ¬1937 to verso 20.25x26 in. (51.4x66 cm.)

Provenance Canadian Fine Arts, Toronto; Mayberry Fine Art, Toronto

It is no surprise when we look at the brilliantly coloured works of Paul Caron, to find that he began his career as an ornamental stained glass designer. His works, laden with snow as we see here, seem lit from behind with a brilliant, clear light. Having studied with the auspicious teachers William Brymner and Edmond Dyonette at the Art Association of Montreal, he also worked as an illustrator, a common practice at a time when making a living, supporting oneself and one’s family from painting, was a precarious practice. Scenes with the subject we see here are a staple in Caron’s body of work; families loading sleighs, at crossroads travelling, and plodding through impossibly deep and deliciously white snow, with blue sleighs and red blankets contrasting brightly to the snow. Caron’s shadows on snow are visually pleasing as well as informative, they tell us the snow’s depth, is crispness or wetness, its age, or its newness. To be a landscape painter in Canada, an understanding of snow is a must, and Caron was particularly skilled in blending white with a subtle yet vast array of colours to convey a myriad of different information to us. Thus, it is also no surprise that his wintry works were very popular as Christmas card illustrations, conveying as they do, the bright beautiful whites of winter.

50

G ro u p C ontemporaries

Nora Frances Elizabeth Collyer

(1898-1979) BHG FCA

Low Tide, c. 1938 oil on board signed lower left 14x12 in. (35.6x30.5 cm.)

Nora Collyer was an original member of Quebec’s Beaver Hall Group of painters. A recent touring exhibition and major catalogue of their work has shed more light on this group of painters, many of whom were women, and many of whom are lesser known than the quality of their work merits. Collyer was the youngest of the Group, and one of the most accomplished. She exhibited widely, her work was included in the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley and the 1939 New York World’s Fair, wherein she became known for her skill in handling composition, for having an eye for the transient effects of light, and for the richness of her jewel-toned palette.

51

FINE CANADIAN ART

52

G ro u p C ontemporaries

Frank Charles Hennessey (1893-1941)

Winter in the Laurentians, 1929 oil on canvas signed and dated 1929 lower left 25.5x26.5 in. (64.8x67.3 cm.)

Provenance Sale of Waddington’s, Canadian Art, May 31, 2005, lot 15; Mayberry Fine Art, Toronto; Private collection

Frank Hennessey’s life and career have been given far less attention by the Canadian art world than is deserved. He may, in fact, be one of the most under-rated artists of his time. He visited the Canadian arctic as early as 1908 – long before Harris and Jackson – and worked out-of-doors without championing that practice as something new and unique to him, and as naturalist and illustrator, he had not only the ability to keenly observe what he saw, but the knowledge within which he could frame it. In the heyday of the Group of Seven, the practice of working as a commercial artist (as many of The Group did) came to have negative connotations attached to it. So too, did those who were not able, or simply preferred to not take the risk of abandoning commercial work and painting purely at their own behest. This stigma still applies to some extent today, and as a result have thrown many an artist into the shadows. Hennessey is one of these. His airy, brilliantly lit works were widely appreciated during his lifetime, so much so that he was included in the “elite group of Canadian artists who exhibited at the iconic 1924 British Empire Exhibition in Wembley, and in the 1927 Exposition D’Art Canadien at Le Musée Jeu de Paume in Paris.”1 In this latter show, the work included was loaned from the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

1. http://pentictonartgallery.com/frank-hennessey-collection. Accessed October 14th, 2021

53

FINE CANADIAN ART

54

G ro u p C ontemporaries

Randolph Stanley Hewton (1888-1960) BHG CGP RCA Sketch, Baie St. Paul oil on board signed lower right signed and titled to verso 9x11.5 in. (22.8x29.2 cm)

Provenance Private collection, Toronto

Randolph Hewton is the product of both good fortune and excellent timing. He had the opportunity to study under William Brymner at the Art Association of Montreal in 1908 and immediately following that, funded by some friends, to travel to Paris to attend the Académie Julian for two years. He met A.Y. Jackson in Paris, and the two would paint together en plein air there, and back in Canada, where they exhibited together in 1913. French modernism had heavily influenced both of their styles, and their joint show was a critical and financial failure. Hewton was forced to take other work to support himself, but would continue to paint with Jackson, who introduced him to other Quebec painters. He was active in the professional associations that supported art, and served as Principal of the Art Association of Montreal from 1921 – 24, and was elected to the RCA in 1934. He was invited to show with the Group of Seven at their inaugural exhibition, and came to know them and their circle, sketching with a wide variety of fellow-painters, and would become a founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters, which supplanted the Group upon their demise.

This beautifully coloured sketch depicts a favourite sketching ground of both his, and A.Y. Jackson’s, that of Baie St. Paul. While the location and the choice of subject, a church, two horse carts, and two wayside crosses may remind us of Jackson, the colour and composition are uniquely Randolph Stanley Hewton.

55

FINE CANADIAN ART

John Douglas Lawley (1906-1971) Caleches on Mount Royal oil on panel signed lower right 12.75x16 in. (32.4x40.6 cm.)

Provenance Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal Galerie Eric Klinkhoff, Montreal

In summer and winter, John Lawley loved to paint the cabstands at Mount Royal. Always colourful, always the site of activity, the Mount Royal cabstands feature in the work of many Quebec based painters.

They are as iconic in that province as the Parliament Buildings are in the City of Ottawa. He has captured them here in autumn, yellow leaves litter the ground and hang brightly from the trees that still shade the cabs.

With a lovely impressionist feeling, the spokes of the cab’s wheels and the awnings over the cabs themselves are highlighted in the same yellow, tying the whole scene nicely together.

56

G ro u p C ontemporaries

Henrietta Mable May (1877-1971) ARC BCSA BHG CGP

Clotheslines, Montreal oil on board, double sided signed with the artist’s address and titled Sketch on label to verso 10x14 in. (25.4x35.6 cm.)

Henrietta Mabel May was a member of the Beaver Hall Hill Group of painters, a collective of Montreal-based painters, most of whom had met at the Art Association of Montreal. They were joined as a group by their shared rejection of “isms” stated their first President, A.Y. Jackson, who also espoused individual expression as their chief concern. As a result of this, we find a wide variety of expression in the work of the Beaver Hall Group as a whole. A thread of continuity comes in the high quality of instruction they all had access to, and the fact that they had all studied under William Brymner (1855 – 1925), one of Canada’s most important art teachers at that time. Brymner was very encouraging of modernism, urging his students to follow new paths, to explore their own creatively to its fullest, not only to create something new, but to look at new things in order to aid in this creation. Mabel May was one of the first female students to study under him, and he introduced her to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, that latter of which most obviously influences her work. She would travel to France in 1912, working there with famous Canadian expat, James Wilson Morrice.

In her work, we have a fine sense of rhythm and movement, presented to us in rich and clear colours.

She took inspiration from contemporary music, which at that time included the strong influence of modern jazz. This appealing out-the-window scene shows us laundry drying outside in winter – a task not easily accomplished – and is as jaunty and brightly optimistic as whomever it was that decided to dry their clothes in the sunlight of the cold Quebec winter.

57

FINE CANADIAN ART

58

G ro u p C ontemporaries

David Brown Milne (1882-1953) CGP CSGA CSPWC City on the Hudson New York, c. 1913 signed lower right watercolour and gouache on illustration board 16.75x14.875 in (42.6x37.8 cm) Milne Catalogue no. 105.16 Inscribed by Patsy Milne: Bronx Inscribed by others: <#12> // <59> Inscribed by the Duncan Estate: 382 Inscribed by David Milne Jr.: cat / Milne Estate Exhibited Possibly: Art Association of Montreal, 1924, 44 as The City on gallery list; Possibly: Arts Club, Montreal, 1924;

The time he spent in New York was a critically important phase in the early development of artist David Milne. He left Paisley, Ontario in 1903, gravitating to New York in search of education, experience, and exposure to art. He was there when The Ash Can School held their first independent exhibition, read Emerson and Whitman, and soaked it all in. From 1910 – 1912 he focused on atmospheric effects in his work, painting in an Impressionist manner. He had seen an exhibition of Cézanne’s watercolours at the Stieglitz Gallery in 1911 – the first North American showing of the artist’s work. Milne instantly began down a new path, using colour to define spaces, using separate colours to describe shapes, and most importantly, using negative space to define the whole. In 1913, as we see in this work, he turned his attention to structure and form. Milne was throughout his life, an incredibly driven painter. He would pursue his ideas relentlessly, exploring them multiple times until he had completely devoured their possibilities. The Armory Show, which he saw the year this work was painted, must have been a revelation. Over 2,000 works of art were on view, everything from van Gogh to Raoul Dufy, who, as a fauvist painter using eclectic colour, would certainly have interested Milne. City on the Hudson exemplifies his New York years not only by its subject, but in its Celanese treatment of structure, and the role played by the negative spaces in the work.

59

FINE CANADIAN ART

60

G ro u p C ontemporaries

David Brown Milne (1882-1953) CGP CSGA CSPWC

Woman at Easel in Room Mount Riga, N.Y., 4 March 1922 watercolour on paper signed and dated March 4, 1922 lower right 15.25x18 in. (38.8x45.7 cm.)

Milne Catalogue No. 204.73 Provenance Milne Estate; Marlborough Godard Gallery, Toronto; Peter Bronfman, Toronto, 1972; Private collection, c. 1980; Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary; Private collection, Calgary

Primary Sources Duncan Catalogue EW-167, Woman at Easel in Room, National Gallery of Canada; Mount Riga Painting Note 66; Mount Riga Painting Note 66: M.R. 66. Watercolor. Marth 4th. Half sheet. Before starting thought of the angular shape of the upper part of the room and of the difference in line between the pillows and the furniture. The detail is interesting but there is no new development.

In March of 1922, David Milne would have been living in Howard Sherman’s summer house, south of Boston Corners at Mount Riga. Milne had been working in the austere and unusual dry brush style of watercolour that we see here for about a year, although he had used it before when he was working for the Canadian War Memorials Program and was stationed in France and Belgium in the summer of 1919. They were not well-received – this was often the case with Milne’s work – and yet he persisted in exploration of this type of watercolour application, wherein he sketched the bones of the image on paper with a very heavily saturated pigment and a very dry brush. He experimented with coming back into the work and applying water over these marks to allow them to flow and blend, as we see in some of in his Reflections series of watercolours, or left them scratchingly dry as we see here. He felt this latter technique was an approach that no one had taken with watercolour before, and this uniqueness spurred him on. In hermetical isolation the winter of 1920-21, in a small cabin he had built purely for this purpose, he read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and explored this technique. Encouraged by James Clarke, Milne’s long-time friend, confidant, sounding-board and art dealer, Milne pushed this technique to its sparest, using two or three pure colours, eliminating all extraneous detail and allowing for absolutely no colour blends. Ironic, as he was using a medium that is, above all other art media, so easily blended. He would go on to experiment with drypoint printing, an expected outcome of his dry brush watercolour work, albeit reached by a less than obvious path. Milne always believed that his work had to be viewed in series form, rather than one individual work at a time, and the works that he created in the winters of 1921 and 1922, in isolation, or of his wife Patsy – who is likely the sitter here – are remarkable works of creative exploration and innovation.

61

FINE CANADIAN ART

62

G ro u p C ontemporaries

David Brown Milne (1882-1953) CGP CSGA CSPWC

Mat Keenahan’s Hilly Farm Palgrave, Ontario, 1932 oil on canvas signed, probably in 1935, lower right: David Milne Inscribed by others: 18 18.875x21.875 in. (48x55.6 cm.)

Milne Catalogue No. 302.191

Provenance Vincent Massey, Ontario, 1934; Michael Wright, London, England, 1937; By descent to Michael Wright Jr., London, England; Robertson Galleries, Ottawa, 1958; Jules Loeb, Toronto; Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary; Private collection, Calgary Exhibited National Gallery of Canada, Loeb Collection, 1970, cat. no. 33, travelled to Sir George William University, Montreal; Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg; University of British Columbia, Vancouver; Mendel Art Gallery of Windsor, Windsor; Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke; Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton Literature National Gallery of Canada, The Mr. and Mrs. Jules Loeb Collection, 1970, catalogue no. 33, reproduced as Untitled; Susan Chykaliuk, David B. Milne’s Return to Canada: a Study of the Temagami, Weston and Palgrave Years, 1929-1933, published 1986, p. 122 as Bridesmaids Caps Primary Sources Milne to James Clarke, Sunday [c. 14], Sunday [c. 21], copied with additions 3 Oct 1932 (quoted below); Milne 1934 sale list, 32; Massey inventory, as 32A, Mat Keenahan’s Hilly Farm

63

FINE CANADIAN ART

Letter from Milne to Clarke, Sunday [c. 21], August, 1932: You remember the bride’s maid cap over [Mount] Marcy?

Something like that. Line clouds. I have got more out of line clouds than any other kind this summer.

Very little out of pillow clouds, least of all where the sky is filled with them, too monotonous, too much repetition. Last week (October) I got a sky that reminded me very much of the brides maids cap, a sort of a fog cloud but in line on this principle.

Rather unusual, particularly here.

The hat shape - without being conscious of it - repeated slighting in the lower ground counter and in the bases of some of the trees. The upper third of the canvas blank. The cloud shapes here and in several others on the same plan go with the earth shapes. They give variety to the shapes and there is a feeling of surprise, a kick, from the sharp division, not between earth and sky, but between clouds and blank sky.

From Milne 1934 Sale List: #32 ‘Mat Keenahan’s Hilly Farm’, Palgrave, 1932. The clouds at the horizon motive.

David Milne’s correspondence with his art dealer James Clarke gives us extraordinary insight into the working habits of this painter. Obsessive, particular, and single-minded, Milne’s scrutiny of his own work was intense. He wrote letters to Clarke that reveal this intensity, such as the one quoted above, wherein he explores not just the clouds and their shape, but the space between the clouds and the sky. It was the demarcation of the two that he felt created “a feeling of surprise, a kick... between clouds and blank sky”, wherein lay the interest and his satisfaction with the work.

Milne painted the same subjects repeatedly – if not obsessively – exploring the same view in varying light, with a different palette, with a drier or more heavily wetted brush. He had a habit of sitting on his porch and, while watching the sun go down, blinking repeatedly, focussing on the after-images that would then register in his mind. Like negatives, or x-rays of a scene, this way of looking at things – through the after images – is just one example of Milne’s intensity of commitment to his art practice, and in the paths he took to expand ways of seeing, which for him were the path to painting. When the atmosphere or weather presented him with new conditions, as we see that it has in his description of the unusual fog in the October sky in his letter, he was all the more compelled to try and render what he saw, filtered, shaped, and represented to us through his uniquely creative eye.

64

G ro u p C ontemporaries

65

FINE CANADIAN ART

66

G ro u p C ontemporaries

David Brown Milne (1882-1953) CGP CSGA CSPWC Wild Flowers on the Window Ledge I, 1942 Uxbridge, Ontario, 2 May 1942 watercolour on paper inscribed: Wild Flowers on the Window Ledge; by Duncan: W-306 14.5x22 in. (36.9x55.9 cm.)

Milne Catalogue No. 403.111 Provenance Duncan / Picture Loan; Mrs. Ralph Norton, West Palm Beach, Florida, 1949; E.R. Hunter, West Palm Beach, Florida, 1970; David Silcox, Toronto; Private collection, Toronto Exhibited Hart House, Ajax, University of Toronto, 1947; Norton Gallery and School of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, 1984 Literature David Silcox, David Milne: Life and Work, p. 330 References Duncan Catalogue W-355 as Wild Flowers on a Window Ledge, National Gallery of Canada; Kathleen Milne, Notes on Paintings, 2, 3 May 1942, outlined below: From Kathleen Milne’s Notes on Paintings: May 2 [1942] Watercolour, Still life & Street scene [Wild Flowers on the Window Ledge I, 403.111].

May 3rd.

Above, 2nd vers[ion] Comp[osition]. Foreground large brick, glass of flowers & glass dish.

These hold attention either thro[ugh] colour or detail & movement goes across, str[eet] scene in background incidental.

Background street scene simple & varied. People, cars, b[ui]ld[in]gs, trees (very reduced). Colour.

Foreground commences at left with large brick, yellow, green, black, red.

Distinctive but too simple to hold attention long. Then a glass of flowers - adders’ tongue, trillium, dutchmen’s britches. Much varied in shape & colour, yellow, mauve, red, outlined in black, delicate, in strong contrast to brickwhich uses much the same colours massively, The glass dish simpler but don in detail & with delicacy. All on black ground (window sill) Background - uses same colours with reduced emphasis. All detail simplified. Considerable variety in shapes. On white ground. While the foreground is of greatest interest the background is not sufficiently reduced & picture tends to divide into two parts.

Contrast of textures used i.e. sparkle of glass dish & solidity of brick. Outlines for the most part clean cut, blurred foggy texture of washed over line employed a little but not as an important factor in the movement of the picture.

67

FINE CANADIAN ART

Upon viewing the work of Canadian master David Milne, we often find ourselves first asking the question, “what am I looking at?” His prints look like paintings, and his paintings look like prints. Milne was obsessed with the way paint could be manipulated on a surface. In his oil paintings, we often have a very watercolour-esque treatment, one that seems unnecessary. Why create such fine washes and blends in oil, when watercolour can easily make those kind of marks? And conversely, why, in watercolour, lay down such undefined, burred lines, when Milne’s excellent dry point prints could result in a similar effect? But that was Milne. He was constantly pushing the boundaries of possibility with his art media, and would then analyze the results in depth. We see from the detailed notes he has made on this work, his scrutiny of his accomplishment, what is successful about it, and why. He would then take this learning in to the next work, exploring one aspect such as colour, or the translucent effect of water in a glass container. Of this work he tells us that the windowsill is brick, painted using the same colours he has used to render the flowers, a delicate bouquet of trilliums, adder’s tongue, and dutchmen’s britches. These sit, dangling into a delicate bowl, which in detail contrasts to the sparkle of the water in the glass vase. He analyzes every aspect of the work, noting in the end that it is the movement of the work over the line and detail that succeeds as an “important factor” in the picture. David Milne is unquestionably of the finest creative minds in the Canadian art historical record.

Obsessive, self-scrutinizing, and incredibly demanding of his own capabilities, his vast body of work is testament to the act of creativity.

68

G ro u p C ontemporaries

69

FINE CANADIAN ART

Walter Joseph Phillips (1884-1963) ASA CPE CSPWC RCA Summer Idyll, 1926 coloured woodcut, ed. 80 of 100 18.5x12.5 in. (46.9x31.8 cm.)

Provenance The Smith Art Gallery, Winnipeg; Collection of Ralph and Sonja Estelle, Victoria

Summer Idyll is Walter Phillips’s tour de force of the colour woodblock print. His largest format print, it required 16 blocks to pull, all of which were designed and cut and the print run of 100 begun, when Phillips realized he had made an error in the registration of the work. True to his standard of perfection, he destroyed the prints he had pulled and began again, resulting in a suite of technically precise, masterfully executed and serenely beautiful prints.

70

G ro u p C ontemporaries

Walter Joseph Phillips (1884-1963) ASA CPE CSPWC RCA

Grain Elevator at La Salle, 1931 coloured woodcut signed and initialled WP lower right 7.6x12.2 in. (19.3x30.9 cm.)

Provenance Private collection

La Salle, Manitoba, is home to a number of historic grain elevators today. In Phillip’s time in Winnipeg, they would have been normal images in the skyline, perhaps even commonplace. They are rare today, and have become wistful reminders of the days of the wheat kings. Phillips’s depictions of farming of all types in Manitoba record a picturesque period in the visual history of the Canadian prairies.

71

FINE CANADIAN ART

72

G ro u p C ontemporaries

Robert Wakeham Pilot (1898-1967) CGP OSA PRCA

Farmhouse, Piedmont, P.Q., 1949 oil on canvas signed and dated 49 lower middle 18x24 in. (45x60 cm.)

Provenance Sale of Sotheby’s Canada, Monday May 27, 1985, lot 871; Loch Gallery Inc., Winnipeg; Private collection, Calgary

Above all other subjects, Robert Wakeham Pilot loved to paint the landscape of Quebec. From his step-father Maurice Cullen, he learned a fine technique and the fundamentals of a sound studio practice, and from his contemporaries – in particular A.Y. Jackson – he inherited a love of the ramshackle fences, wayside crosses, the rolling hills of Quebec, and the honest, no frills world of the habitant, presented to us here as a joyously coloured, tranquil scene.

73

FINE CANADIAN ART

74

G ro u p C ontemporaries

Albert Henry Robinson (1881-1956) CGP RCA

At the Store, 1921 oil on canvas signed and dated lower right 13x16 in. (33x40.6 cm.)

Provenance Albert H. Robinson; Private collection, Calgary (direct from the artist); Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary; Collection of Don McMorland, Calgary; Mayberry Fine Art, Winnipeg; Private Collection, Ontario Exhibited Art Association of Montreal, Annual Exhibition, 1921; Hommage à Albert H. Robinson R.C.A., Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal, 1994

The summer of 1979 I acquired this A.H. Robinson canvas from a family in Calgary. Peter Ohler Sr. had left for his annual summer vacation to Gibsons B.C. and I was left in charge. I received a call from Calgary auctioneer Frank Hall, he had been to a home to appraise antiques and thought I should visit the family to look at paintings they had. It was to be my first acquisition of a historical Canadian work and one by A.H. Robinson. The painting was in it’s original frame with it’s Art Association of Montreal label, I examined the work and asked the family how they came to own the work. They said that their parents were neighbours of the Robinson’s and had received the painting as a gift from the artist. After discussions I left with the painting having paid $8500 and the first thing I did was call Peter Sr. and tell him I had spent $8500 of his money. His reply was “put it away until I get back in September”.

- Rod Green, October 25, 2021

This delightful Albert Robinson from 1921 depicts his favourite season of winter, wherein a somewhat dejected horse waits for the absent occupants of the raspberry-coloured sleigh to return after their time in a store. Robinson was a keen observer of winter, aided and supported in challenging pursuit by his sketching companion and fellow winter-lover A.Y. Jackson. They would work together, out-of-doors, in all kinds of winter weather, depicting the St. Lawrence and the villages along its banks in storms, on sunlit winter days, and blanketed in ice. Robinson and Jackson took a sketching trip together to France in 1910, where their ideas of colour and light were set afire by the French avant-garde of the time: Impressionism. As one of the most influential movements on modern painting, Impressionism changed the way we see the world, and Robinson returned to Canada, to see our landscape with new eyes. And through a new range of colours.

Jackson’s influence, along with that of James Wilson Morrice can be seen in Robinson’s work, but his palette is all his own. Art historian Joan Murray wrote that he introduced Canadians to “...an unusual colour element – pinks, corals, dark blue. His skies are coloured boldly and unrealistically like a stage-set backdrop. And he orchestrated the effect of space. He was concerned throughout his painting career, short as it was, with the creation of a more simplified, powerful form – he wanted to eliminate the trivial.”1 1. Murray, Joan, as quoted in Macdonald, Colin S. A Dictionary of Canadian Artists. Vol 7., page 205

75

FINE CANADIAN ART

76

G ro u p C ontemporaries

Ethel Seath (1879-1963) BHG CAS CGP Sleighing Scene, Charlevoix pastel on paper signed lower right 8.5x11.5 in. (21.6x29.2 cm.)

Provenance Drummond Family Collection, Quebec; Viktor Gordin, Toronto; Private collection, Invermere; Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary; Private collection, Calgary; A.K. Prakash and Associates, Toronto; Private collection, Toronto;

Ethel Seath was a pioneer artist. Despite societal expectations of women in Montreal in the early 1900s, she had a successful career as a commercial artist alongside her career as a professional artist, and was a constant in the Montreal art scene, participating in exhibitions, teaching, mentoring, and driving the development of art in Canada forward as a founding member of the Beaver Hall Group and the Canadian Group of Painters. She began her commercial career as a newspaper illustrator and at the time was the youngest artist working in ”black and white” in Canada, having taken a position at The Montreal Witness in 1896 at the age of seventeen. Talented from the start, she built on her experience with additional training, moved from The Witness to The Montreal Star, and took classes at The Art Association of Montreal under William Brymner and Maurice Cullen.

Her paintings carry a thread of naivete from her childhood into her adult work. Lyrical, with a fine sense of colour and rhythm, Seath’s work is keenly felt and intuitive. She would show at the watershed British Empire Exhibition at Wembley as well as the New York City World’s Fair in 1939. With her work in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada as early as 1951, Seath’s name should be far more common in Canadian art historical discussions than it is. As an educator, her attitude toward creativity in children set her apart, and her ideas, ones that flowered in the work of her students, broke with Victorian traditions of restraint and conformity. Seath made a critical contribution to Canadian art, not only in her own work, but in the doors that she opened for her students. This charming pastel Sleighing Scene evokes a particular moment in Canadian winter, when hoarfrost coats everything, and the trees, fenceposts, and buildings, even the horse and figure driving the sleigh, seem to be dusted with fine crystals of snow.

77

FINE CANADIAN ART

Ethel Seath (1879-1963) BHG CAS CGP Champignon No. 1 – Toadstools oil on canvas board signed lower left signed and titled on label to verso 15x20 in. (38.1x50.8 cm.)

Provenance Arthur Leggett Fine Art & Antiques, Toronto; Private collection, Toronto Exhibited Canadian Group of Painters: 1945-46 Exhibition, Art Gallery of Toronto and Art Association of Montreal

Ethel Seath’s paintings can be seen in complete contrast to her work as a commercial illustrator.

Referred to as an artist who worked in “black and white” she would have created line drawings for three prominent Montreal newspapers; The Montreal Witness, The Montreal Star, and the Family Herald. When the opportunity came to teach at The Study, a new art school that had just begun operations in Montreal, Seath’s creativity was unleashed. With a particular purpose behind them, newspaper illustrations were about conveying information, telling the story, and allowed for little creative expression, if any. By teaching, not only could she talk about creativity, but she was required to demonstrate it. All the ideas that had no room to show themselves in her commercial work began to explode. Toadstools is just such a work. Swirling and churning, the forms of chanterelles seem to burst off the board, catch themselves and swirl back again, only to unfold outward in another direction, swirling there and then turning back again. It is a wonderful, organic, lyrical still life. Such a simple thing, a tumble of mushrooms on an indiscernible surface, it is a composition that stays on just this side of realism. Butterfly-like, assuredly painted, it is a confident and thoroughly expressive work. The only thing it has in common with newspaper illustration is an extraordinarily deft and skilled use of black.

78

G ro u p C ontemporaries

Jori (Marjorie) Smith (1907-2005) CAS EGP

Portrait of a Child, 1952 oil on canvas, double sided signed and dated 52 lower right 20x15.5 in. (50.8x39.4 cm.)

Marjorie Smith was a member of the group of Montreal painters who grew out of shared training at the Art Association of Montreal, an influential school that was a chrysalis for so many of Canada’s great painters. Smith went on to establish a style all her own, but perhaps influenced by her friend Jean Paul Lemieux. Her portraits of children, most often single, and women, also as single sitters, uses colour freely and applies it with a vivid an expressive hand.

79

FINE CANADIAN ART

80

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

POST WAR & CONTEMPORARY 81

FINE CANADIAN ART

Maxwell Bennett Bates (1906-1980) ASA CGP CSGA OC RCA

Woman on Blue Sofa, 1961 oil on board signed and dated 1961 lower right 19.5x15.5 in. (49.5x39.4 cm.)

Maxwell Bates’s expressionist figures are a mainstay in Calgary’s art history, and Woman on Blue Sofa is a classic example of his unapologetic approach to figurative subjects. Nothing is prettified, noting is softened, and the figure and the setting appear almost as one, with pattern and shape taking centre stage in his characteristically flat planes of space. With quirky colour and bold brushwork, Bates’s work is a unique chapter in western Canadian art.

82

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Ronald Bloore (1925-2009) FCA OC R5 RCA RSC

Untitled, 2002 acrylic on board signed and dated to verso 48x60 in. (121.9x152.4 cm.)

83

FINE CANADIAN ART

84

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Paul-Émile Borduas (1905-1960) RCA AUTO CAS QMG

Sans Titre, 1954 watercolour signed and dated 54 lower right 20x24 in. (44.5x59.7 cm.)

Borduas Catalogue No. 2005-1013 Provenance J. Ron Longstaffe, Vancouver; Private collection, Radium Hot Springs; Masters Gallery Ltd, Calgary; Private collection Exhibited Vancouver Art Gallery, 1984; Masters Gallery Ltd., Paul-Émile Borduas Retrospective, September 11 - 21, 2014;

Famously, and on the heels of the Refus global, in 1953 Paul-Émile Borduas left Canada for the United States. After some time in Provincetown, he eventually ended up in Greenwich Village, where he would encounter the explosive and arresting work of the American Abstract Expressionists. Adding fuel to an already raging fire, the work he saw had a profound impact on his own. Françoise Marc-Gagnon tells us that Borduas’s work in watercolour was where he worked out new directions. In them, Borduas explores things he has seen, ideas that have been spurred by them and determines how he will respond. In works such as this untitled watercolour from his second fall in New York, we can see the influence of Jackson Pollock, where the white background (here the cream of the paper) plays a critical role in the whole. Not quite dripping, but on the very edge of doing so, this work is much more complex than a first glance tells us. There is control, precision, and restraint in the application of paint. Watercolour can be an angry beast despite its reputation as a user-friendly medium, and here Borduas has controlled the image with the skill of a wary animal tamer. No area is messy, blurred or over-worked, he has allowed the pigment to move and blend when only he wants it to, without resulting in colour chaos.

85

FINE CANADIAN ART

86

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Jack Hamilton Bush (1909-1977) ARCA CGP CSFA CSPWC OSA P11 November #16, 1956 watercolour on paper signed and dated November 11, 1956 lower right 24.5x30 in. (62.2x76.2 cm.)

Provenance Jack Bush, 1956-1974; Park Gallery, Toronto, 1958; Estate of Jack Bush, 1974-2005; Miriam Shiell Fine ARt, Toronto, 2005; Newzones Contemporary Art Gallery, 2005; Private collection, Calgary; Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary; Private collection, Calgary, 2013; Private collection, British Columbia, 2015 Exhibited Jack Bush: New Paintings, Park Gallery, Toronto, 1958, related exhibition pamphlet, cat. no. 28, n.p.;

In the fall of 1956, during the month of November, Jack Bush was working on a series of watercolours wherein pale shades of primary colours were first laid down, then partly obliterated by a large area of dense, saturated black applied over these colours. Upon receiving the news of the death of his fellow Painters Eleven artist Oscar Cahén, who had died in an horrific car accident at the age of forty, the black intensified in an expression of grief. According to Sarah Stanners, the Canadian authority on Jack Bush, the November #18 - November #22 works comprise the Oscar’s Death series. This work, November #16, seems to foretell the tragedy.

87

FINE CANADIAN ART

88

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Jack Hamilton Bush (1909-1977) ARCA CGP CSFA CSPWC OSA P11 Disappearing, 1969 acrylic polymer on canvas signed, titled and dated to verso 51x37 in. (129.5x93.9 cm.)

Provenance The artist, 1969; David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto, 1969; Ken Moffet, 1969 - 1972; David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto, 1972; Janet Winkler, 1972; Miriam Shiell Fine Art; Marianne Friedland; Private Collection, Toronto; Udell Gallery, Edmonton; Private Collection, 2013; Exhibitions An exhibition of paintings by Jack Bush from private collections, Miriam Shiell Fine Art, Toronto, ON, 2005; Jack Bush, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON, 2014-2015; Literature Mayer and Stanners, Jack Bush, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Canada, 2014, cat. no. 99, illustrated pp. 207., 249.; Miriam Shiell Fine Art, An exhibition of paintings by Jack Bush from private collections, exhibition catalogue, 2005, illustrated, n.p.; Toronto International Art Fair, Art Toronto 2003, exhibition catalogue, 2003, illustrated p. 178

Jack Bush took his ideas from his life’s experience. The Sash series comes from a dress his wife wore in the early 1960s, the Jazz works have an obvious inspiration in music, but the Spasm series, which this work is from, come from a deeply personal experience. In 1969, Bush had a severe attack of angina, which hospitalized him and threatened his life. The fluttering shapes are taken from the electrocardiogram readouts, which Bush contemplated in the conversations he had with his doctor. As soon as he was able he returned to the studio, using the imagery in works that convey his fear – first as blips (later called “heart throbs”) that are aggressive and echo the pain he felt – then as smoothed out flying shapes that are less sinister – then into fluttering, almost butterfly-like shapes that move upward, rather than rain downward on the canvas, and that feel optimistic and uplifting. It was as if he created these works to comfort himself, to work through the experience, and to express the impact the health scare had on his outlook on life. Interestingly, the blips, or flutters, are painted in light colours that belie the serious information they convey. As if to contain, or settle them, bars of strong colour, solid and assured, border the other half of the work. These bars of colour, steady and upward moving as they are, serve to quell the uncertainty implied by the flutters, lessening and contrasting their threat. An uplifting and optimistic work, Disappearing speaks to Bush’s improved health, his optimism, and to the continued evolution of his paintings.

89

FINE CANADIAN ART

90

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Jack Hamilton Bush (1909-1977) ARCA CGP CSFA CSPWC OSA P11

Sunsout, 1973 acrylic polymer on canvas titled, signed and dated Jan. 1973 to verso 66.5x93.5 in. (168.9x237.5 cm.)

Provenance The Artist, 1973; André Emmerich Gallery, NY, March 1973 - June 1973; Robert J. Denison, NY, 29 June 1973; Robert Miller Gallery, NY; Waddington Shiell Gallery, Toronto, 1978; K.M. Graham, Toronto, c. 1978 - 2008; Private collection, 2008 Exhibited Jack Bush: New Paintings, André Emmerich Gallery, New York, 1973; Jack Bush, Theo Waddington Gallery, Toronto, 1978 Bibliography Karen Wilkin, Jack Bush, 1984, illustrated p. 160; Mayer and Stanners, Jack Bush, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Canada, 2014, pp. 26, illustrated p. 27

Jack Bush’s works fall into neat, orderly periods, one following on the heels of the next, each being thoroughly explored before he moves on. In the 1970s he experimented with the ground, blending and layering colour in a break from works from the 1950s and 1960s, and recalling some ideas from the 1940s. This work comes from his Fringe series, wherein the bars of colour border larger areas of uniform space. He had developed these ideas, and explored this arrangement of form, in the 1960s, and in the 1970s would begin to modulate the surface in the large area of space. He had switched from oil to acrylic in 1966, and this quick drying paint freed him from some constraints, and added others. He also experimented with tape to give the bar ends their torn feel.

Here, he has used the bars to both border and contain the larger space, space that is visually textured and mottled and has an organic feeling to it. Wood-grain like, the ground is neutral despite its varied colour, and contrasts beautifully to the pink, blue and orange of the bordering bars. With its evocative title, Sunsout is a fine example of his return to a mottled ground, the Fringe Series, and his maturing and extraordinarily interesting body of work.

91

FINE CANADIAN ART

92

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Oscar Cahén (1916-1956) CGP CSGA CSPWC OSA P11

Objet d’art, 1953 oil on masonite signed lower right and dated 1953 on label to reverse 48x36 in (121.92 x 91.44 cm) Provenance Private collection, Toronto; Ken MacDonald, Winnipeg; Private collection, Calgary

Exhibited Royal Canadian Academy of Art, Art Gallery of Toronto, cat no. 11, Nov. 1953 – Jan. 1954; Richard Bowman, Oscar Cahén, William McCloy, Cecil Richards (sculptor), Art Gallery of Toronto, May - June, 1954; Hart House, Toronto, 1954; The Oscar Cahén Memorial Exhibition, Ontario Society of Artists, Art Gallery of Toronto, 1959; Oscar Cahén: First American Retrospective, Ringling Museum of Art, Florida, cat. no. 9

Oscar Cahén’s short life – he died tragically at the age of 40 - was filled with drama and intrigue.

Escaping from Nazi-occupied Prague, he fled to England in 1939. Considered a German Jew by the British, he was arrested as an enemy alien and interned for 2 years in Quebec. Upon his release, he worked as a successful illustrator in Toronto. In the late 1940s he became involved with avant-garde art and was a founding member of Painters Eleven. Cahén was prolific and versatile, working in different styles and media. This flamboyant painting is an outstanding example of the brilliantly-hued paintings of the 1950s which are considered to be his best work. It is both painterly and graphic. Loosely articulated fields of irregularly shaped colour areas are juxtaposed to a riot of drawn circles and squares compressed within an ascending “tree” shape. This dynamic painting reveals Cahén’s love of luminous colour combinations and forms ultimately abstracted from elements in the natural world.

We thank Monique Westra for contributing the above essay.

93

FINE CANADIAN ART

Joane Cardinal-Schubert (1942-2009) RCA

Porcelain Jump, Edge of History, 2000 mixed media on canvas 72x48 in. (182.8x121.9 cm.)

Joane Cardinal-Schubert was one of Alberta’s finest contemporary artists. She worked in many media, especially printmaking and painting. This mixed-media work explores themes of Cardinal-Schubert’s Kainaiwa ancestry, wherein she weaves her own personal history into that of her people, as well as larger societal dialogues. Part of the Blackfoot Confederacy, Cardinal-Schubert’s work pushed her to the forefront of the western Canadian art scene in the late 1960s, and she became a curator, writer, and activist in addition to maintaining a serious art practice. She pioneered the use exhibition spaces in such a way that long-held stereotypes around Indigenous work were broken, re-shaping and re-directing the dialogues around Indigenous art through her frank and insightful contemporary approach.

94

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Horace Champagne (b. 1937) Getting Ready to Collect Fresh Sap pastel 18x24 in. (45.7x60.9 cm.)

Horace Champagne (b. 1937) The Red Fox pastel 16x25.5 in. (40.6x64.7 cm.)

Working in meticulous detail, Champagne depicts scenes of Canada from coast to coast, pushing the capacity of this media to its absolute limit. A Premier Member of Pastel Society of Canada and a Master Pastelist, Champagne’s work most often depicts winter, as we see in these two works. Brilliant colour against blue-white snow, or snow falling on a wilderness scene, his mastery of this unique medium is apparent. With their buttery consistency, pastel sticks, both chalk and oil pastels, can be difficult to control, as they spread easily and move at the smallest touch. Champagne has thoroughly mastered them, using all the tricks of the pastel trade to create his works. The cloud of smoke puffing from the chimney in the shack in Getting Ready to Collect Fresh Sap is deftly handled, as are the gently falling flakes of snow in The Red Fox. Both works show us the versatility of mark-making possible with this media.

95

FINE CANADIAN ART

Ken Danby (1940-2007) A Grateful Gretzky, 2000 watercolour 22.125x28.125 in. (56.2x71.4 cm.)

Ken Danby is widely known as a high realist painter. Mixed in with his austere, Andrew Wyeth-esque scenes, we find a large body of work devoted entirely to Canada’s favorite sport of hockey. This image of Wayne Gretzky in a New York Rangers jersey marks a particular moment in time, when a controversial trade of the game’s best player to an American team sent Canadian hockey fans into a frenzy.

96

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Kim Dorland (b. 1974)

Burnt, 2018 oil on aluminum 48x60 in. (121.9x152.4 cm)

Kim Dorland’s interest in the “the edges of things” the altered forest, the graffitied or otherwise changed forest, has become a dominant theme in his work. While obvious connections to The Group of Seven (Fireswept, Algoma by Franz Johnston for instance) can be made, the connections to Dorland’s own life are more compelling. With alterations to and situations in which he places Canadiana – from the iconic Hudson’s Bay blanket to the Tom Thomsonesque forest – Dorland comments on our fascination with defining things and defining periods in Canadian history.

97

FINE CANADIAN ART

Joe Fafard (1942-2019) Jimmy le Veau (Study) clay, ed. 1 of 1 10x21x20 in.

Joe Fafard

(1942-2019) Jimmy le Veau, 2018 bronze, ed. 5 of 5 9.5x20x20 in.

The Fafard Aesthetic, the look and feel that has been ascribed to the work of this Order of Canada artist, is instantly recognizable in the clay study for Jimmy the Calf, as well as the small edition of bronzes that have come from it. Fafard was interested in the form over the idea of the subject, and his rurally-lived life gave him ample first-hand experience with the subject of his forms. Gentle, somewhat funky, often sweet, and always amusing, Fafard’s animals elicit a unique response in us. We can interact with them in way not possible in real life, and he confers on all of them a mantle of respect by rendering them as art in bronze, respect that we share as we gaze at them and admire their remarkable patinas.

98

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Marcelle Ferron (1924-2001) AANFM AUTO CAS QMG RCA SAAVQ SAPQ

Sans Titre, c. 1960 oil on canvas signed lower left: F 8.75x10.5 in. (22.23x26.7 cm.)

Provenance Galerie Libre, Montreal; Private collection, Toronto; Canadian Art Group, Toronto; Private collection, Calgary

An original signatory to the 1948 Refus Global Manifesto, Marcelle Ferron’s work is unique in its interest in, and concern for light. “Ferron’s singularity is glaring... Her unique vehicle was light, and ... it was ever present.”1 Dissatisfied with Quebec and the difficulties created by her outspokenness, she sailed to France in 1953, where she set up a studio and began to paint. She found the French art community interested in her work immediately, which lead to exhibition is Paris in throughout Europe. Notably, she also worked in in stained glass and had access to brilliant examples of this medium in the architecture of France. Her love of brilliant colour and the light effects she observed would heavily influence her work. Sans Titre comes from this rich and productive Paris period, which lasted until 1966, and during which she explored the luminosity of paint, the possibilities of white, and the sensuality of these two elements in her work. Ferron used not only the knife, but a large squeegee as well, which allowed her to move paint about on the surface of her works in large patches. This work, although small and intimate, links with her large format Paris works, wherein the squeegee was used. Passages of paint wherein trapped air bubbles are smoothed out and thus popped, leaving evidence of their having been expunged, give the work an organic quality, bringing gemstones and rock faces to mind.

Her use of poppy seed oil in her paints, which she prepared herself, is a critical factor in their luminosity.

1. Humeniuk, Gregory. Marcelle Ferron: The Paris Years, 1953 – 1966. Mayberry Fine Art, Toronto, 2019, unpaginated

99

FINE CANADIAN ART

100

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Jean Paul Lemieux (1904-1990) CC QMG RCA

Garcon en Rouge, c. 1970 oil on canvas signed lower left 17.5x12.5 in. (44.5x31.75 cm.)

Provenance Gerard Gorce, Montreal; Private collection, Edmonton

Literature Guy Robert, Lemieux, 1975, pp. 184-188;

Jean Paul Lemieux’s Garcon en Rouge is a compelling example of his work from the 1970s in which emotion begins to enter into his paintings. With elements of the spare, still, emotionally neutral images from the 1960s, and without the heavier brushwork that would come in the 1980s, this intimate work takes us directly into the eyes of the subject. A young boy in red, his collar tightly closed against the cold, gazes past us and over our shoulder. His eyes are drawn to the side and do not acknowledge us, diverted away in his own sphere, under a red cap that matches his coat. He is trapped in thoughts we can only guess at.

Lemieux’s ability to convey complex emotional states – or the complete absence of them – in his extremely spare brushwork, is universally noted. Here, he depicts so much with so little paint, leaving us to understand the rest on our own. With limited colour, limited volume, limited line, and an absence of detail, Lemieux gives us an ambiguous figure in an ambiguous landscape thinking ambiguous thoughts. The connection lies in the shared human experience – without regard to its particularity – that becomes the foremost concern of the work, with all elements that are extraneous to that removed. We cannot help but relate to this boy and to his experience, which, though the hand of Jean Paul Lemieux, somehow mirrors some aspect of our own.

101

FINE CANADIAN ART

102

A.

B.

C.

D.

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

A. Maud Lewis (1903-1970) Covered Bridge, c. 1965-66 oil on beaverboard signed lower right 11.5x13.75 in. (29.2x34.3 cm.)

Provenance Terra Nova Fine Arts, Halifax; Private collection, Calgary B.

Maud Lewis (1903-1970)

Covered Bridge, c. 1963-64 oil on beaverboard signed lower right 12x14 in. (30.4x35.5 cm.)

Provenance Zwicker’s Gallery, Halifax; Oeno Gallery, Bloomfield Private collection, Calgary

C. Maud Lewis (1903-1970) Covered Bridge with Skaters, c. 1965-66 oil on beaverboard signed lower right, titled and dated c. 1964 on Mayberry label to verso 12x14 in. (30.5x35.6 cm.)

Provenance Acquired from the artist by Private Collection, Halifax; By descent to Private Collection, Winnipeg; Mayberry Fine Art, Winnipeg; Private collection, Vancouver; Sale of Heffel Fine Art, June 2021, lot 204; Private collection D. Everett Lewis (1893-1979) Two Oxen oil on panel 12x14 in. (30.5x35.6 cm.)

Provenance Mayberry Fine Art, Winnipeg

Covered Bridge in Winter by Maud Lewis is a serial image found only in the 1960s. A serial image is a similar painting, but no two works are exactly alike. The term “serial image” was first used by Harold Pearse (1942-1920) in an article for Arts Atlantic, 1997, titled “The Serial Imagery of Maud Lewis.”

The three Maud Lewis works shown are on beaverboard, a pulpboard, Maud’s most common painting surface. Each painting depicts an early 20th century scene when covered bridges and sleighs were part of the Nova Scotia landscape. The bright, vivid paintings show a high horizon with little sky. To quote Pearse, “Lewis is like a medieval painter she wants to fill the board.” The earliest painting (circa 1963-64) is signed “Lewis” a signature she had used for over 25 years. The other two works signed “Maud.Lewis” are later, 1965-66.

The Covered Bridge in Winter series is an outstanding example of Maud Lewis’s sense of perspective and composition. Maud has positioned the houses and a church in the background, and the sweep of the track with the sleighs and galloping horses draws the viewer into the paintings. Two of the paintings include a towering leafless tree, striking in its blackness. The series illustrates progression in Maud’s work. Her early work shows large conifers with smudged blue shadowing; by 1965 she created blue loops, making the image more decorative. The painting Covered Bridge with Skaters is a rare variation on the theme. With a few simple brush strokes she has created a sense of speed and joy generated by the skaters. In 2020 Canada Post issued commemorative Maud Lewis Christmas stamps. The Covered Bridge in Winter image was selected as the permanent stamp.

Everett Lewis was the husband of Maud Lewis. He was a fish pedlar in the Digby area. Towards the end of Maud’s life Everett also started to paint. His early works tend to be very primitive. This particular work is based on Maud’s subject matter, portrait of oxen. Everett follows the same format as Maud Lewis a high horizon with little sky, oxen standing in a field of stubble framed by two fruit trees. The works is unsigned, but it is without doubt an authentic work by Everett Lewis. It is also an exceptional work by Everett Lewis. The work is almost certainly done in the mid to late 1970’s.

We thank Alan Deacon for contributing the above essay.

103

FINE CANADIAN ART

104

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002) AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA Composition bleue, 1954 oil on canvas signed and dated to verso 38x51 in. (96.5x130.5 cm.)

Riopelle catalogue no. 1954.002H.1954 Provenance Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris; Arthur Tooth & Sons Galleries, London; Private collection, Ontario Exhibited Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover, Germany, cat. no. 25, 1958; Paintings 1949-1959, Arthur Tooth and Sons Gallery, London, cat. no. 10; 1959; Gérard Gorce, Montreal, 1989 Literature Yseult Riopelle, Catalogue raisonné de Jean Paul Riopelle, vol II, 1954-59

This stunning, large format work by Jean Paul Riopelle comes from his Paris period, perhaps one of the most sought-after oeuvres in his vast body of work. In Paris, he was a leader of the city’s Lyrical Abstraction movement, living and working in the attic of the Hotel Monsieur-le-Prince, on the Ile-de-France, as that was the most beautiful part of the city to his thinking. He was exhibiting with Galerie Luxembourg and later the Galerie Nina Dausset, the latter of which also showed the work of the Surrealists, many of whom he met. With these breakout painters, he was able to share ideas and discuss their works. Through them he was placed at the centre of the headiness of the 1950s French avant-garde.

His own work, by this time, had lost all reference to figurativism, and was focused almost entirely on the act of painting – the spontaneity of gestures, the application of paint, and the way the paint acted upon application, and the control, or his artistic orchestration of the results.

Pictures of Riopelle in his Paris studio from this time are fascinating. There is paint everywhere; on the walls, the floor and ceiling, the furniture, and all over the artist himself. The sheer force of energy expended in the creation of works such as Composition bleue is remarkable. These are performances, records of the force of will employed when Riopelle was immersed in the act of painting. Interestingly, the title Composition bleue weights the role that the colour blue plays in this work heavily, yet blue is not the colour that dominates.

Among white, black and green, yellow, orange and red, blue weaves, runs and hides, darts here and there, and while a steady bead in the mosaic of the work, it is not the only theme. The orderly lines of colour on many of the palette knife-strokes in this work make us wonder if Riopelle was using his bouquet-of-paint-tubes method of painting, wherein he held a handful of tubes in one hand, sliced their caps off all at once with a knife, and then, squeezing all the tubes at once, troweled his palette knife across the paint tube bouquet to scrap off a bunch of paint, lifting up the loaded knife and then applying the resulting slurry of paint in deft, swiftly whisked, angular strokes.

105

FINE CANADIAN ART

106

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002)

AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA

Repaire, 1957 oil on canvas signed lower right 26x33 in. (66x83.8 cm.)

Riopelle Catalogue No. 1956.002H.1957 Provenance Sale of Digard Auction, Paris, France, Sunday, March 25, 2018, lot #031; Private collection, Calgary Exhibited Post Picasso Paris, Hanover Gallery, London, catalogue no. 381, 1957 Literature Yseult Riopelle, Catalogue raisonné de Jean Paul Riopelle, vol II, 1954-59, p. 246

Jean Paul Riopelle’s exploration of oil paint was at its zenith in the 1950s. With this supple, responsive, and malleable material, he was able to achieve rich texture, layered colour, and sensual blends. His Mosaïques from this time period are considered his most famous works, wherein “the sharply juxtaposed strokes of the palette knife created shattered, virtually kaleidoscopic color motifs.” He was extremely prolific during this time, executing over one hundred paintings yearly, in a wide range of sizes.

Repaire is a delicious work. Within the framework colours of black, red, blue, and green, Riopelle gives us proof of the remarkable possibilities of luxurious paint applied by an exuberant palette knife. Blocky, solid red contrasts with angular black and a peek of sweeping blue. Held in is the riot of colour in the areas dominated by white, applied with licking strokes that create sensuous blends. Blacks break through thrice more, solidly on the right, and in blended hues immediately above the area of red, with a delightful passage of orange over their shoulders. To discuss this work in terms of its colour theory seems too pedantic an approach.

Instead, a visual revel its beauty feels more appropriate, leading us to recognize the joy of colour, contemplate the vigour and wildness with which this work was created, and to allow it to work its magic on our visual senses.

107

FINE CANADIAN ART

108

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002)

AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA

La Lourde, 1960 oil on canvas signed lower middle 18x22 in. (46x55 cm.)

Riopelle Catalogue No. 1960.081H.1960 Provenance Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary; Private collection Literature Yseult Riopelle, Catalogue Raisonné de Jean Paul Riopelle, vol. III, 1960-1965, p. 108;

La Lourde, The Heavy, is evocative and bold. “I get there via a free gesture, an autonomous brushstroke” the artist wrote, “not to start from deconstructing nature but to go in the direction of constructing the world.”1 Riopelle was above all, an independent creative mind. While he remained true to the tenets of Automatism for the entirety of his career, he was always innovating, always pushing the possibilities of paint on canvas.

His selected colours, which here are richly dark and augmented by a brilliant turquoise green, are further shaped by his method of application – which is often very thick. Thus, volume is expressed in the materials of his work by the sheer amount of paint that a canvas could hold, rather than the subject. He then played with light by using varying ranges of gloss in his paints on each work. “...his oil painting technique was always based on these three elements – on colour, volume, and range of gloss.” It is in this final element – the range of gloss – from flat matte to shiny high-gloss, that Riopelle’s works excel. The variations of gloss from one knife stroke to the next, and blends of gloss as the paints were mixed in the creation of the work, are critical to what we now see. Never to be varnished, these subtle variations of gloss cause light reflection to vary in its intensity over the surface of his works, creating a sense of movement and undulating sparkle as we view them. Spending extended time with works by this very distinct Canadian master is a remarkable experience. As ambient natural light around them changes over the course of a day, and is further changed by the seasonal light variations of a year, so too, the reflected light from the works varies, depending on the circumstances in which they are viewed.

1. Roald Nasgaard and Ray Ellenwood. The Automatiste Revolution: Montreal, 1941 0 – 1960, Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver, page 61

109

FINE CANADIAN ART

110

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002) AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA Sans Titre, 1957 oil on canvas 7x5.5 in. (17.8x13.9 cm.)

Catalogue Raisonné no. 1957.156H Provenance The Estate of Joan Mitchell Chiem and Reid Gallery, New York Literature Catalogue Raisonné de Jean Paul Riopelle, vol. II, 1959-1959, updated 2012

Jeffery Spalding wrote, “In Riopelle... the quality of the material substance of paint carries more weight than the image that it is contorted to represent.”1 It is the material quality of the paint itself, he tells us, that attracts us to Riopelle’s varied and considerable body of work. And in this material quality of paint, two considerations are paramount. Colour and gloss. We know that Riopelle used varying levels of gloss (or sheen) in single works, to cause the reflected light to play and dance across them, giving them a vibrancy and sparkling life as the light plays on impasto and moves from shiny blue to flat white. From 1952 until 1978, it is thought that Riopelle used Lefebvre-Foinet oil paints almost exclusively. Close to 80 spent tubes from the Lefebvre-Foinet shop were retrieved from Riopelle’s Paris studio after his death. Riopelle was also reported to have bought the entire stock of the store on one occasion, and further, to have been unable to work when a particular pigment was out of stock. “Foinet,” said Riopelle, sold colours that were “unique.”2 While it unlikely that one supplier could make enough paint to keep Riopelle supplied during his Paris years, the Foinet story, of unique colour and the artist’s desire to use it, resonates with the myth of the driven, obsessed artist. What is fact is that this venerated paint manufacturer also supplied Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Fernand Léger, and Joan Mitchell.

1. Corbeil, Helwig and Poulin. Jean Paul Riopelle, The Artist’s Materials. Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, page 35 2. Ibid, page 38

111

FINE CANADIAN ART

112

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002)

AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA

Vespérales, 1962 oil on canvas signed lower right 18.25x21.75 in. (46x54.5 in.)

Riopelle Catalogue No. 1962.015H.1962 Provenance Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York; Masters Gallery Ltd., Calgary; Private collection, Calgary Exhibited Riopelle, Galerie Camille Hébert, Montreal, 1963, cat. no. 9; Riopelle: An Exhibition of Works from Private Calgary Collections, Masters Gallery Ltd, Calgary, 2009; Riopelle: The Glory of Abstraction, Glenbow Museum, Calgary, 2010 Literature Yseult Riopelle, Catalogue Raisonné de Jean Paul Riopelle, vol. III, 1960-1965, p. 147

Ascribing literal meaning to abstract paintings is a step we should hesitate to take, but with Jean Paul Riopelle’s evocative titles, the temptation is often quite strong. Vespérales, or Evening, when understood as a title, brings a variety of considerations to this work. We can see it as an interpretation of the edge of night; light fading, sky reddened, shadows deepening, an interpretation reinforced by the horizon-like bottom edge of the work – which we can also see as a foreground. Or we can remember the break with the Catholic Church that spurred The Automatists into their painterly revolt. In the canonical hours that mark prayers, evening prayers – vespers – are sung in late afternoon or early evening. An additional layer of interest can be found while considering the work in that context.

By 1962, when this work was painted. Riopelle was immersed in Fluid Abstraction, in a period that bridges the Mosaïques of the 1950s and the Icebergs of the 1960s. Elements of both are seen here, impasto has been toned down in favour of movement, which is furious and intense, and large passages become self-contained – not yet divided as we will begin to see in his work in a few years’ time – but hinting that reconfiguration of space was on its way.

113

FINE CANADIAN ART

114

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002) AUTO CAS OC QMG RCA SCA Sans Titre, 1974 oil on canvas signed Riopelle lower right 23.75x31.5 in. (60x80 cm.)

Riopelle Catalogue no. 1974.104H.1974 Provenance Galerie Simon Blais, Montreal Literature Riopelle, Yseult, Catalogue raisonée de Jean Paul Riopelle, vol. V, 1972-79, p. 136

In considering the work of Jean Paul Riopelle, we know that he used varying degrees of gloss, and a wide range of colours of paint supplied by particular manufacturers. As for the canvas, the support itself, which we can see in this case comes from his preferred paint-maker, Lefebvre-Foinet, the painting tool, (he rarely – if ever – used brushes) is a final consideration. In Riopelle’s works from the 1970s, we see that has used wide, somewhat even strokes, wider and more blocky that those of prior years, and less varied in their angle of application. All this implies that a wider tool was used to lay on the paint. Further, if we look at his environment, we can see that in France, Riopelle’s daily visual stimuli would have been mostly architectural.

By the time this work was executed, he had returned to Canada, and from 1969 to 1977, was venturing north, visiting the Canadian arctic, including Pangnirtung. If we consider the visual stimuli of that environment in contrast the that of the city of Paris, we have two very different things. A beautiful city and a beautiful remote landscape. With the danger of becoming too literal, but with acknowledgement that art is not created in a vacuum, or entirely with the confines of a studio, we should acknowledge the fact that icebergs are very big things. Their visual impact is profound, even small ones have the ability to dwarf us as viewers. Their presence – filled with odd sounds, unique smells, and the implication of their great age – is overwhelming.

When Riopelle saw them, they gave rise to a significant body of work, and were an equally significant experience in his visual repertoire. They appear, in bold and direct as well as more subtle statements, in his work from 1969 on, and his use of a larger tool to apply his paint seems a logical response to the weightiness of the images he saw.

Riopelle stated that nature didn’t affect him, that instead, he dove into it. This idea seems upheld by his arctic works, wherein we have imagery that reflects ideas of arctic ice. There are berg-like forms that speak of the icebergs themselves, in black, white, and blends of grey. Looking out to sea in the Canadian north, we have that limited colour scheme. But in arctic works like this, those with a colour scheme that includes all sorts of bright touches, it seems we are looking inland. Sans titre evokes the brilliant colour of the villages, equipment, and the people that Riopelle would have encountered there. He did not travel alone, unaided by others, in the uninhabited arctic of Franklin’s day, and despite our preconceived notions to the contrary, the settlements in the Canadian arctic, where Riopelle would have spent much of his time, are a vivid and lively jumble of colour.

115

FINE CANADIAN ART

116

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

William Ronald (1926-1998) P11 RCA Madrigal, 1957 oil on canvas signed R. lower right 16x17 in. (40.6x43.2 cm.)

Provenance Private collection, Toronto Related Work: Saintpaulia, oil on canvas, in the collection of the Metropolitan Musem of Modern Art, New York

William Ronald was the founder of a group of artists known as The Painters Eleven. They had a rather unique reason for coming together, being founded when Ronald, a display designer with the Robert Simpson Company department store, convinced the store’s management that abstract paintings paired with modern furniture in the store windows would change attitudes towards abstract painting. He called this Abstracts at Home, drawing eleven very individual, yet all abstract painters together. By comparison to gallery acceptance of abstract work in Canada at that time, the show was a success. Despite this, and as was the case with most of Canada’s pioneers of abstraction, Ronald could not find a market for his work and was compelled to move to New York, where he was quickly accepted by critics as well as the galleries. Madrigal comes from 1957, the year Ronald moved to New York, and the year he started to work with Samuel M. Kootz at The Kootz Gallery in Manhattan. Kootz was one of the first New York dealers to champion abstract art, it was Kootz that brought the first show of Picasso’s wartime works to a North American audience. Kootz not only agreed to show Ronald’s work, but he put him on retainer, bringing him into his stable of artists where he met with and exhibited alongside his peers. Ronald would show successfully with Kootz for many years, it was only when Canada had finally warmed (somewhat) to abstraction, that Ronald would return to Toronto, where worked as a CBC journalist while maintaining an active studio practice. Saintpaulia, in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, relates directly to Madrigal and was painted in 1956, the year before our work.

Madrigal is a luscious painting, fluid and vigorous, it has a feeling of freshness to it that permeates the generously applied paint. In its richness of pigment, belied by the very limited palette, Madrigal is as interesting in the scraped off areas as it is in those that are heavily laden with paint.

117

FINE CANADIAN ART

118

P ost - W ar & C ontemporary

Philip Surrey (1910-1990) CAS CSGA EGP OC RCA Sans titre (Rue St. Ambroise), 1976 oil on canvas signed lower right 22x16 in. (50.8x40.6 cm.)

Provenance Kastel Gallery, Inc., Westmount; Galerie Valentin, Montreal; Galerie d’Art Cosner, Montreal; Private collection, Toronto

Philip Surrey paints moments in time, figures running, groups of people walking against the wind, the action of life in Montreal. Born in Calgary, he settled there in 1937 after a childhood spent travelling the world, living in luxurious hotels at exotic locations. This childhood would not have allowed for significant time in the company of other children, and he was instead surrounded by adults, which no doubt contributes to his keen interest in, and ability to observe the figure. “Like icebergs” he said, “four-fifths of our personalities lie below the surface; of the fifth that shows, only part can be expressed in conversation. The effective outlet for all deeper feelings and thoughts is art.”1 This is perhaps as autobiographical a comment as it is an observation of others. His figures, even when in groups, are always set apart from one another, alone and singular, with fourfifths of their individuality hidden from us.

Surrey’s depictions of Montreal are described as “poetic humanitarianism,” they are expressive of the modern city, with buses and cafés and busy street corners. They teem with life, but this is not the focus of Surrey’s works, instead the individual solitudes of each figure are at the core of his art. Sometimes obscured (when he shows us only partial figures – running legs, hats and hair caught in the wind) sometimes fully depicted – yet the individuality is still conveyed, trapped in its particular and unique reality.

Philip Surrey, https://www.gallery.ca/collection/artist/philip-surrey. Accessed October 10, 2021

119

FINE CANADIAN ART

David Thauberger (b. 1948) Perfectly Natural, 2021 acrylic on canvas 30x40 in. (46.2x101.6 cm.)

David Thauberger is known for his paintings of architectural icons of the prairies. Hyper-real, arrestingly bright, his images take on new meaning and defy easy categorization. They are folk-art, pop-art, and kitsch, as well as decidedly serious depictions of places that often no longer exist. Rainbow Danceland, from 1979, in the collection of Calgary’s Glenbow Museum, is well-known to Calgarians and a defining work in Thauberger’s vast oeuvre. Perfectly Natural is a recent work, coming from a series begun in 2015, which deal with the icon of the red canoe set alone in a flat blue lake beneath a landmark mountain in the Canadian Rockies. Not adrift, but still unmanned, these canoes are suspended, untethered, the sitter in a portrait of a familiar Canadian place. As places that are rarely quiet, rarely still, rarely un-peopled, Thauberger comments on the place he paints in a continuation of the dialogue he began with Rainbow Danceland, asking us to consider how we use, reuse, and dispose of iconic Canadian places.

120

F ine A rt B ooks

Roger Boulet

Walter J. Phillips: The Complete Graphic Works limited edition book, ed. 50 of 150 18.5x15 in. (46.9x38 cm.)

Considered the bible for lovers and scholars of Walter J. Phillips’s prints, this M.B. Loates, 1981 published volume is a unique, cloth-bound first edition, signed by Mrs. Gladys K.O. Phillips, and the author. Many of these books have been broken up, and as only 177 copies were printed they are quite rare. Roger Boulet’s scholarship of Walter J. Phillips is comprehensive and authoritative. Phillips is one of Canada’s finest printmakers, and a master of the colour woodcut.

Doris Shadbolt (1918-2003)

The Art of Emily Carr limited edition book, wooden box with argillite carving 17x15.25 in. (43.2x38.7 cm.)

Published in 1980, this fine collector’s edition book was produced in just 250 copies. Rare outside of libraries and archives, this volume was lovingly published in a tribute to one of Canada’s finest painters.

121

FINE CANADIAN ART

CONTACT

info@mastersgaller yltd.com 403-245-2064

www.mastersgaller yltd.com @mastersyyc

We thank Lisa Christensen for providing the accompanying essays for the works in this catalogue.

122