signed lower left; titled and dated “August 1959” on the reverse
10.5 × 13.5 in (26.7 × 34.3 cm)
Auction Estimate:$18,000 - $22,000
Sale date:June 9, 2021
Price Realized
$21,600
(including Buyer's Premium)
Provenance
Private Collection, Winnipeg
Literature
Wayne Larson, A.Y. Jackson, The Life of a Landscape Painter, Toronto, 2009, page 198
In 1959 A.Y. Jackson was living just outside of Ottawa in Manotick, Ontario. His house had been built to his specifications, with eleven- foot-high windows in his studio. However, Georgian Bay was still very much on his mind. It was a part of his regular itinerary for sketching trips, which also included Lake Superior and the Gatineau Region. The Group of Seven had disbanded a number of years earlier and Jackson had published his autobiography in 1958, “A Painter’s Country”, which he dedicated to fellow group member J.E.H. MacDonald.
In “Shoals, Georgian Bay”, Jackson has taken a very modern approach to the composition with a simple, limited palette, quick brushstrokes to build up the background and a more refined application of paint in the foreground. Jackson has also cropped the scene to place the focus on the series of shoals, the mounds of sand just below the surface of the water, coming from the left of the composition and the piece of driftwood caught in them to the right.
