Birches, French River, 1930

William Banting, Toronto Roberts Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, California

“Exhibition of Paintings by the Late Sir Frederick Banting”, Hart House, University of Toronto, February 13 - March 1, 1943

A.Y. Jackson, “Banting as an Artist”, The Ryerson Press, Toronto 1943, page 32, listed as “Birches”

The Ontario landscape offers countless vantage points, motifs and colour palettes year round for artists to both experience and capture. Often favouring rich oil pigments early in his development as an artist, Banting painted the ideal subject ‒ the crisp autumn colours and mood of the changing seasons. Like his sketching companion and teacher, A.Y. Jackson, Banting favoured these atmospheric time periods in the Canadian landscape, illustrating the transience of nature in the orange foliage and nearly-bare birch trees along the French River.