Andrew Wilson, Montreal, by 1902, until at least 1938
Laing Galleries, Toronto
Acquired by the present Private Collection, January 1966
Exhibited
“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. 50
“Homer Watson: Works from Private and Public Collections”, Homer Watson House & Gallery, Kitchener, 19 March‒3 May 1998
“The Landscapes of Homer Watson: A Particular Time and Place”, Homer Watson House & Gallery, Kitchener, 11 June‒20 August 2000
“Expanding Horizons: Painting and Photography. American and Canadian Landscapes 1860‒1918”, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; travelling to Vancouver Art Gallery, 18 June 2009‒17 January 2010
“24th Annual Homer Watson Exhibition: Streaming Skies”, Homer Watson House & Gallery, Kitchener, 14 June-17 August 2014
“Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven”, Vancouver Art Gallery; travelling to Glenbow Museum, Calgary; Art Gallery of Hamilton, 29 October 2015‒25 September 2016
Literature
Katherine Hale, ‘The Art of Homer Watson’, “The Canadian Magazine 20”, December 1902, reproduced page 139
Muriel Miller, “Homer Watson: The Man of Doon”, Toronto, 1938, page 142 (misdated as 1903)
‘Two Canadian Painters’, “The Auctioneer 9:3”, March 1967, reproduced page 3
Dennis Reid, “Collector’s Canada: Selections from a Toronto Private Collection”, Toronto, 1988, no. 50, reproduced page 54
Gerald Noonan, “Refining the Real Canada: Homer Watson’s Spiritual Landscape”, Waterloo, 1997, page 262
Hilliard T. Goldfarb, “Expanding Horizons: Painting and Photography. American and Canadian Landscapes 1860‒1918”, Montreal, 2009, reproduced page 195
Ian Thom, et. al, “Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven”, Vancouver/ London, 2015, page 46, reproduced page 50
Brian Foss, “Homer Watson: Life and Work” [online publication], Art Canada Institute, Toronto, 2018, reproduced page 65
Homer Watson had a lifelong fascination with nature’s drama and power. By the time he was in his twenties he was exploiting massed cloud formations and turbulent skies in major paintings such as “A Coming Storm in the Adirondacks” (1879; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts). That same theme is on full display in “Country Road, Stormy Day”. Throughout the canvas the blustery winds make themselves felt in the forceful leftward movement of the tumultuous, scudding clouds and the storm‒tossed trees. That directional thrust that is even echoed by the curving path along which a lone figure drives a horse‒drawn wagon. This sweeping movement, a regular aspect of Watson’s work from the mid‒1880s onward, was in line with his conviction that mature artists should not (as he phrased it in a 1900 lecture) “insult the intelligence” of viewers by getting caught up in distracting detail at the expense of strong, unifying movement that conveyed nature’s raw majesty.
“Country Road, Stormy Day” also exemplifies two other qualities that enhance Watson’s evocation of nature’s vitality and volatility. One‒first seen in the second half of the 1880s‒is the use of impasto that stresses the sheer physicality of the depicted scene. The second is Watson’s frequent limiting of his palette to a narrow range of earthy colours such as those that dominate “Country Road, Stormy Day” and that, he felt, conveyed nature’s underlying power far better than Impressionism’s highly saturated tones. In June 1888 the Toronto art dealer John Payne, having recently received a shipment of such paintings from Watson, wrote to express his admiration of the artist’s richly sombre colours, vigorous paint application, and compellingly expressed breadth of mood (Homer Watson fonds, National Gallery of Canada Library & Archives).
We extend our thanks to Brian Foss, Carleton University Professor of Art & Architectural History, and co‒curator of “1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group” for his assistance in researching this artwork and for contributing the preceding essay.
