Village in Winter

Gift of the artist By descent to the current Private Collection, Ontario

J. Lynn Fraser, “The Determined Painter: Sir Frederick Banting”, CMAJ, October 5, 2010, Volume 182, Number 14, pages E702-E704 Stephen Eaton Hume, Frederick Banting: Hero, Healer, Artist, Montreal, 2001, pages 120-23 A.Y. Jackson, A Painter's Country, Vancouver/Toronto, 1959, pages 61 and 99

Often credited first with his groundbreaking medical advancements and achievement, Frederick Banting holds a niche place in the history of Canadian art. Upon joining the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto, Banting met with A.Y. Jackson and the two quickly became fast friends and sketching companions throughout the Arctic, Ontario and rural Quebec. By the 1930s, Banting became one of Canada's best known amateur artists with a keen sense of colour, light and shadow, heavily influenced by his time with Jackson. Under the Group member's tutelage, Banting refined his practice, often looking to Jackson for guidance and advice to better develop what was first a pastime, into a career. “Village in Winter” encapsulates the artist's affinity for tight compositions and luminous colour. With bold swaths of paint, Banting articulates light and shadow of the winter day with non-traditional tones of pink, butter yellow and soft mint greens. Akin to Jackson's renderings of villages, the importance of the daily lives of the inhabitants are equal to the natural landscape. Sleigh tracks, telephone towers and firewood piles all signal village life and labour integral to the development of rural villages and industry within Canada.