Winter, Cacouna by Albert Henry Robinson

Provenance:
Kastel Gallery, Montreal
Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal
Private Collection, Toronto

Literature:
Jennifer Watson, “Albert H. Robinson, The Mature Years”, The Kitchener- Waterloo Art Gallery, 1982, no.5, pages 15-16, 25, a similar work reproduced page 30 as “Cacouna”

In 1910 Albert Henry Robinson met A.Y. Jackson, who would greatly influence his painting style. Between 1918 and 1933 the painters would take many painting trips along the St. Lawrence and in the Laurentians. The municipality of Cacouna is located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River. As Jennifer Watson writes, “With various friends, Jackson and sometimes Hewton or Edwin H. Holgate, often meeting Clarence A. Gagnon, Robinson would return in March to the lower Saint Lawrence, his object being largely the villages of the north shore as a letter explained: ‘The south shore is more sophisticated than the north. Less intimate. Less colour. it depends more on its contours and big spaces it needs canvases. It’s too intricate for sketching’.”

In 1921, the year in which Robinson painted this work, Jackson and Robinson made their first trek to Cacouna. Jackson recalls the trip: “In 1921 I made my first sketching trip to lower Quebec. This was at Cacouna. This village on the gulf was buried in snow. After spending some weeks there I persuaded Robinson to join me. It was here he made the studies for his fine canvas, “Returning from Easter Mass”.” In “Winter, Cacouna” Robinson has situated himself along the shoreline and has depicted the aftermath of a heavy snow fall. We can see not only the influence of the Impressionists but also Jackson’s influence, with the broad, heavy brushstrokes and how the composition has been brought forward to be parallel with the picture plane.