signed lower left; titled on an exhibition label on the reverse
18.5 × 18.25 in (47.0 × 46.4 cm)
Auction Estimate:$10,000 - $12,000
Sale date:November 22, 2021
Price Realized
$20,400
(including Buyer's Premium)
Provenance
Private Collection, Toronto
Exhibited
“44th Annual Exhibition”, Ontario Society of Artists, Art Museum of Toronto, Toronto, 1916, no. 56
Literature
Ross King, “Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven”, Kleinburg/Vancouver/Toronto/Berkeley, 2010, pages 284-285
The period leading up to the Group of Seven’s inaugural exhibition in 1920 was a particularly fruitful time for Frank Johnston. The artist made numerous sketching expeditions to Algoma, eagerly embracing the opportunity to draw inspiration directly from the area’s natural splendour. In 1916, at the encouragement of influential art patron Dr. James MacCallum, Johnson completed a painting trip to Hearst in Northern Ontario. Ross King observed, “this trip gave him certain bragging rights: none of the painters in the Studio Building, not even Thomson, had ventured to such a remote and northerly location in Ontario.” Rather than working in oils on-site as his colleagues generally did, Johnston often used fast-drying tempera to create his plein air studies. A large number of the sketches from this period were sadly destroyed by the artist years later, in a bout of intense frustration at the Canadian art scene, an event contributing to their rarity today.
