Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal
Private Collection, Ontario
Exhibited
Views of Canada - Victorian Age Landscape Artists, Dundas Museum and Archives, Dundas, Ontario, June 19 - September 2, 2014
Literature
Joan Murray, The Last Buffalo: The Story of Frederick Arthur Verner, Painter of the Canadian West, Toronto, 1984, pages 103 and 142
In 1909, Frederick A. Verner came back to Canada from England to visit friends in Oakville. It was during this period that the artist began to copy his earlier works, copying those that sold well, which included depictions of the buffalo. As Joan Murray remarks, “that these later buffalo paintings still have a freshness is due to the fact that for each new painting, he used his drawings in the bank.” Verner would work from his portfolio of drawings and watercolours, expanding and drawing upon earlier compositions.
The bison depicted in this period, such as “Buffalo”, stand alone as noble representations of their breed. Verner’s wife passed away in 1906 and these watercolours perhaps reflect the artist’s emotional state of mind, as “the bison gazes away from the viewer into the distance, as though seeking a companion.”
