Continental Galleries of Fine Art, Montreal.
Private Collection, Toronto.
Highlighting the important history of Toronto's Hart House, Christine Boyanoski, curator of the current travelling exhibition “A Story of Canadian Art: As told by the Hart House Collection” notes:
“Hart House was commissioned by the Massey family, and gifted to the University of Toronto in 1919 as a cultural centre where students, faculty, and the broader public could mingle and converse. The Hart House Art Committee, comprised of students, artists, faculty, and staff at the University of Toronto, began collecting art with the purchase of A.Y. Jackson's ‘Georgian Bay’ in 1922, and continued to focus on the work of the Group of Seven and their contemporaries, as well as the Beaver Hall Group and Canadian Group of Painters, through the first half of the twentieth century.”
Given the importance of Hart House within the Canadian art (and Toronto's) identity, it is not surprising that Robert Pilot chose the landmark for a rare Toronto landscape. Reminiscent of Pilot's signature winter scenes depicting Quebec City and Montreal, “Hart House” is a celebration of mood and light, the spires of Soldier's Tower overlooking the clouded winter day. The bundled figures move briskly through the foreground, anticipating the warmth which pours from the glowing windows of their destination.
