Rapids on the Rouge River, Quebec

Roberts Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Montreal Heffel Fine Art, auction, Toronto, May 23, 2007, Lot 114 Private Collection, Vancouver

A.J. Casson held his first one-man show at Roberts Gallery in March of 1959, followed by five more solo exhibitions between 1959 and 1972. This new association with Roberts Gallery allowed the artist freedom from his commercial art career and led to a great period of artistic production for Casson from the 1960s onward. In 1967, the year in which “Rapids on the Rouge River, Quebec” was painted, Casson was awarded the Silver Centennial Medal and his work was included in “Three Hundred Years of Canadian Art”, an exhibition held at the National Gallery of Canada. The simplified forms and pronounced flatness present in this painting are characteristic of Casson’s mature work. The artist creates three distinct zones within the artwork - a rocky ledge foreground, a middle ground of rushing water, and a forest background - yet the scene is depicted in a planar manner with a flattened perspective. The simplified trees and decorative patterns in the rocks of “Rapids on the Rouge River, Quebec” also demonstrate Casson’s mature landscapes with reductive, abstract designs, foregoing literal atmospheric portrayal. The warm palette of the reddish brown and grey rocks is true to the setting, for the Rouge River is named after its reddish shorelines.