A.Y. Jackson, A Painter’s Country, Vancouver/Toronto, 1958, page 61
Naomi Jackson Groves, A.Y.’s Canada, Toronto/Vancouver, 1968, pages 40 and 44
The South Shore, located on the southern shore of the Saint Lawrence River opposite the Island of Montreal, was a favourite sketching locale in the heart of French Canada for Jackson. Now more suburban areas outside of Montreal, the areas of Tobin, Bic and Longueuil, among other hamlets, offered the artist opportunities to explore and paint
the inhabited landscapes of rural Canada. The artist frequented Tobin with Frederick Banting and recounted in his autobiography: “we went to Bic and Tobin, a little dead sawmill town; here the spring found us and we painting the melting snows. The Berubés put us up. He was an insurance agent with three charming daughters; he drove a Dodge, so did Banting, and this formed a bond between them.” An inviting place for the artist with fond memories shared with Banting, Tobin had the quaint charm of many rural villages, hamlets and settlements along the Saint Lawrence and had the familiarity and comfort in the ‘anywhereness’ essence Jackson favoured.
“Grey Day, Tobin”, has been executed with Jackson’s hallmarks of the inhabited landscape; a winding receding country road populated by a horse-drawn sleigh, tightly clustered homes with pops of colour to give each a unique identity, a high horizon and wide sweeps of blanketed snow. The grey blue sky hangs heavy over the village as a sign of changing weather. Bare rooftops and the clear road indicate that perhaps spring is on its way as Jackson’s anecdote suggests, revealing ribbons of layered colours and forms for the artist to explore through this sketch.
