Coldwell, Lake Superior

Dominion Gallery, Montreal Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal Heffel Fine Art, auction, Toronto, 29 November 2012, lot 209 Private Collection

A.Y. Jackson, “A Painter’s Country (The Autobiography of A.Y Jackson)”, Toronto, 1967, page 48

A.Y Jackson’s first major trip to Lake Superior was in 1925 with Lawren Harris. They wished to experience and paint the rugged remote landscape of the northern shore, expanding the terrain to be represented by the Group of Seven artists. As A.Y. Jackson notes about the region of Lake Superior: “I know of no more impressive scenery in Canada for the landscape painter. There is a sublime order to it, the long curves of the beaches, the sweeping ranges of hills, and headlands that push out into the lake. Inland there are intimate little lakes, stretches of muskeg, outcrops of rock: there is little soil for agriculture. In the autumn the whole country glows with colour; the huckleberry and the pink cherry turn crimson, the mountain ash is loaded with red berries, the poplar and the birch turn yellow and the tamarac greenish gold.” A.Y. Jackson successfully conveys his impression of a light snowfall in the remote northern landscape of Lake Superior in winter. A peaceful and picturesque lakeside town is thinly veiled in snow, with the earth and shrubbery peeking out from underneath. Jackson uses a fairly monochrome palette of greys and light browns which are repeated throughout the land, lake and sky. Jackson signed the reverse of this charming oil sketch with the inscription “Studio Building, Severn St, Toronto”. The painter shared this famous artist’s studio with Tom Thomson at the time of its opening in 1914, and later with other members of the Group of Seven. Jackson eventually left the Studio Building in 1955, with Lawren Harris mourning, as he wrote in a letter to his friend: “Your moving from the Studio Building marks the end of an era, the one era of creative art that has the greatest significance for Canada... You were the real force and inspiration that led all of us into a modern conception that suited this country, and the last to leave the home base of operations.”