Tadenac, November, circa 1924

Gift of the artist to Pickering College, Newmarket, Ontario, before 1951 Sotheby’s, auction, Fine Jewellery and Important Canadian Art, Toronto, 30 October 1985, lot 544 Acquired by the present Private Collection, 1985

“Group of Seven Exhibition of Paintings, Art Gallery of Toronto”, 5‒29 May 1922, no. 47 as “November, Georgian Bay” at $1,000 “Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, National Gallery of Canada”, Ottawa 20 November‒20 December 1924, no. 106, as “Georgian Bay, November” “Group of Seven”, Art Gallery of Toronto, January-February 1925, no. 36 “Paintings and Sculpture by British, Russian and Canadian Artists; Graphic Art and Photography”, Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, 29 August‒12 September 1925, no. 291 as Georgian Bay, November at $600 Group of Seven, Pickering College, Newmarket, Ontario, 13‒28 October 1951 “A.Y. Jackson Paintings 1902‒1953”, Art Gallery of Toronto; travelling to the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Winnipeg Art Gallery, 22 October 1953‒4 April 1954, no. 39, as “Tadenac, November” (circa 1924) “Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven”, Opening Exhibition, Tom Thomson Memorial Gallery and Museum of Fine Art, Owen Sound, 27 May‒11 June 1967, no. 28 “Collector’s Canada: Selections from a Toronto Private Collection”, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; travelling to Musée du Québec, Quebec City; Vancouver Art Gallery; Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, 14 May 1988‒7 May 1989, no. 68 “The Group of Seven Art for a Nation”, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; travelling to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Vancouver art Gallery and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 13 October 1995‒1 December 1996, no. 64 “Annual Group of Seven Dinner featuring works of art by Alexander Young Jackson”, The York Club, Toronto, 17 February 1999 “The Private Eye: Art Collectors and their Stories”, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario, 1 July‒14 November 2004 “Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven”, Vancouver Art Gallery; travelling to the Glenbow Museum, Calgary; Art Gallery of Hamilton, 30 October 2015‒25 September 2016 “Pop Up Museum”, Canadian Friends of the Israel Museum, 21 August 2018 “Collectors’ Treasures”, Galerie Eric Klinkhoff, Montreal, 19 October‒2 November 2019, no. 23

“A.Y. Jackson correspondence”, Naomi Jackson Groves fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (MG30, D351, Box 96, file 12) Augustus Bridle, “Pictures of the Group of Seven Show ‘Art Must Take the Road',” “Toronto Daily Star”, 20 May 1922 Eric Brown (signed E.), ‘An Art Movement in Canada‒The Group of Seven’, “Christian Science Monitor”, 31 July 1922 Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Ottawa, 1924, no. 106, reproduced as “Georgian Bay, November” Donald W. Buchanan, ‘Canadian Art in a Boy’s School’, “Canadian Art”, IX:2 (Christmas 1951), reproduced page 69 as “Georgian Bay” circa 1920 “A.Y. Jackson Paintings 1902‒1953”, Art Gallery of Toronto, 1953, no. 39, reproduced as “Tadenac, November” circa 1924 (plate 9) Jean Burness, Alan Suddon, Grace Pincoe, ‘A.Y. Jackson Section 2, Index to Reproductions’, “Who’s Who in Ontario Art”, Part 20, Ontario Library Review, May 1954, unpaginated, as circa 1924 Jean Burness, Alan Suddon, Grace Pincoe, ‘A.Y. Jackson Section 3, Collections’, “Who’s Who in Ontario Art”, Part 21, Ontario Library Review, August 1954, unpaginated, as circa 1924 A.Y. Jackson, “A Painter’s Country (The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson)”, Toronto, 1958, page 72, reproduced opposite page 80 A.Y. Jackson, “A Painter’s Country (The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson)”, Toronto, 1967, page 74, reproduced opposite page 35 as “November, Tadenac, Georgian Bay” 1925 “From the Art Collection of Pickering College”, Newmarket, Ontario, 1977, page 1, reproduced page 2 Sotheby’s, “Fine Jewellery and Important Canadian Art”, Toronto, 30 October 1985, lot 544, reproduced Dennis Reid, “Collector’s Canada: Selections from a Toronto Private Collection”, Toronto, 1988, no. 68, pages 5 and 64, reproduced page 65 Charles C. Hill, “The Group of Seven Art for a Nation”, Ottawa/Toronto, 1995, pages 109‒110, 318, 319, reproduced page 109 Ian Thom, et al., “Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven”, Vancouver/London, 2015, pages 86, 201, reproduced page 121 as “Tadenac, November” circa 1924

Though a native of Montreal, A.Y. Jackson had a long connection with Georgian Bay. He first visited relatives at Penetanguishene in 1910, but his first impressions of the landscape were disappointing. As he wrote to his mother on 9 July “It is great country to have a holiday in, boating, fishing, swimming, etc., the water is very warm, but it’s nothing but little islands covered with scrub and pine trees and not quite paintable.” The landscape did pose problems for the artists and in the first Georgian Bay canvases by Jackson (”Evening, Georgian Bay”, circa 1910, National Gallery of Canada, acc. no. 40365), J.E.H. MacDonald (”Fine Weather, Georgian Bay”, 1913, Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario) and Arthur Lismer (”Georgian Bay,” 1913, National Gallery of Canada, acc. no. 6403) the massive expanse of sky over a low, horizon of rocky shoals is the dominant motif. Soon the artists focused on the forms of rocks and windblown pines set against a high horizon as seen in Jackson’s appropriately titled “The Land of the Leaning Pine” of 1913 (now titled “Night, Georgian Bay”, National Gallery of Canada, acc. no. 1697) and Arthur Lismer’s “A Westerly Gale, Georgian Bay” of 1916 (National Gallery of Canada, 1369). Following his release from the army Jackson returned to the Bay in 1919 and again in February and March 1920. Four canvases resultant from this trip were included in the first Group of Seven exhibition in May 1920. In “Cognaschene Lake” (Art Gallery of Windsor, 76.11) the brown rocks, outlined with blue‒black lines, and the water and sky are arranged vertically across the horizontal composition. In “The Freddy Channel” (private collection), originally titled “March Snow”, the rocks, ice, water and wind‒blown pines are painted in a flat, almost Japanese, vertical arrangement. In November 1921, and not 1922 as he wrote in “A Painter’s Country”, Jackson was at Georgian Bay once again. “In November of 1922 [1921] I went to the Bay with Dr. MacCallum. ... I put up my tent between the shore and a small lake. During the night it got very cold and I hadonly a single blanket, I was nearly frozen. I got up at daybreak to make a fire and found an inch of ice on the lake. It was here that I made the studies for a canvas, ‘November, Georgian Bay,’ now in Hart House.” This was the only time Jackson painted on the Bay in November and “Georgian Bay, November” (Hart House, HH.19221) was reproduced in the catalogue of the Ontario Society of Artists exhibition in March 1922 and purchased by Hart House at the University of Toronto that year. Jackson exhibited five additional Georgian Bay canvases in the May 1922 exhibition of the Group of Seven. “November, Georgian Bay”, was priced at $1000, three times that of “Grey Day, Tadenac” which was priced at $350. Eric Brown, director of the National Gallery, described “November, Georgian Bay”, as “a large canvas with a foreground of deep quiet reflections in still‒pooled water, and beyond, in the distant open stretches, the sweeping wrack of winds, two moods are carried and blended into a harmony of sustained power.” Augustus Bridle, confusing two of the paintings, felt that “November, Georgian Bay” “lacks only more lustre in the water to match the delicately beautiful tracery of the foreground trees” and criticized Grey Day, Tadenac as “considerably too large for his palette.” It was possible that Jackson shared Bridle’s opinion about the scale of the large painting. A photograph of the canvas in the Edward P. Taylor Library & Archives of the Art Gallery of Ontario is inscribed on the back: “Jackson cut right portion of this off.” When exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy in 1924 the painting was illustrated in the catalogue in its current composition. It was given the title “Tadenac, November” when it was included in the 1953 Jackson retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto. Tadenac is on Georgian Bay just north of Go‒Home Bay where Dr. MacCallum had his cottage. Jackson's transformation of the canvas resulted in an almost square format that is exceptional in the artist’s oeuvre and enhances the superbly decorative aspect of the composition, a tendency previously seen in “Cognaschene Lake” and “Georgian Bay, November”. The composition rises from the foreground rocks to the pool of water, to the snow‒ crested rocks and vertical trees, to the dappled waves of the open water, to the shore beyond and the sky. Bridle’s description of “the sombre, almost sullen study in solitude” is a perfect characterization of this moody, richly coloured, russet canvas. Bridle continued, “Once he grew tired of greys in conventional landscapes; now he goes back to colours almost as sober but with the element of power and ruggedness.” We extend our thanks to Charles Hill, Canadian art historian, former Curator of Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada and author of “The Group of Seven – Art for a Nation”, for his assistance in researching this artwork and for contributing the preceding essay.