La Malbaie by Albert Henry Robinson

Albert H. Robinson
La Malbaie
oil on canvas
signed lower left and titled lower right
22 x 26.25 ins ( 55.9 x 66.7 cms )
Auction Estimate: $70,000.00 - $90,000.00
Price Realized $168,000.00
Sale date: December 6th 2023
G.L. Robinson, Toronto, by 1955
Morris Gallery, Toronto
Acquired by the present Private Collection, May 1978
“Forty-eighth Annual Exhibition”, Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Art Gallery of Toronto, 18 November 1926‒2 January 1927, no. 125 Spring Exhibition, Art Association of Montreal, 19 March‒12 April 1936, no. 285
“Albert Henry Robinson Retrospective Exhibition”, Art Gallery of Hamilton; travelling to National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa,
1 April‒6 May 1955, no. 37
“Canadian Classics”, Morris Gallery, Toronto, 13 May‒3 June 1978, no. 47
“Collector's Canada: Selections from a Toronto Private Collection”, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; travelling to Musée du Québec, Québec City; Vancouver Art Gallery; Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, 14 May 1988‒7 May 1989, no. 83 as circa 1926
“Hommage à Albert H. Robinson”, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal, September 1994, no. 10
“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
“Highlights from ‘Embracing Canada’”, Galerie Eric Klinkhoff, Montreal, 22 October‒5 November 2016, no. 19
“Albert Henry Robinson Retrospective Exhibition”, Ottawa, 1955, no. 37
“Canadian Classics”, Morris Gallery, Spring 1978, Toronto, no. 47, reproduced
Dennis Reid, “Collector's Canada: Selections from a Toronto Private Collection,” Toronto, 1988, no. 83, reproduced page 76
“Hommage à Albert H. Robinson”, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, 1994, no. 10, reproduced page 4
Ian Thom, et al., “Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven,” Vancouver/London, 2015, reproduced page 163
Robinson’s scenes of the Quebec countryside and its inhabitants are characterized by their simplified forms and gentle hues, mixed with generous amounts of white paint and applied with the artist’s characteristic crisp, rectilinear brushstrokes. In “La Malbaie”, the artist used a palette of pastel tones repeated throughout the composition, accentuated by a bright orange-red building in the centre and a brown horse pulling a sleigh. Rather than capturing the country through depictions of barren terrain, Robinson narrows his focus on the dwellings of emerging towns and cities in the early twentieth century, lending life and narrative to the prevailing landscape painting tradition in Canada.
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Albert Henry Robinson
(1881 - 1956) Canadian Group of Painters, RCA
Albert Henry Robinson (RCA) was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1881. Robinson studied in Hamilton with John S. Gordon and left for Paris in 1903. He continued his training at the Julian Academy with Bouguereau and Bachet, and then with Ferrier at the L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts. During his time there he travelled to Normandy and Corsica. After returning to Hamilton, John S. Gordon hired him as an assistant and Robinson exhibited his work for the first time in 1906. In 1910 he met and befriended A.Y. Jackson. Between 1918 and 1933 Robinson travelled along the shores of the St. Lawrence and in the Laurentians painting many landscapes, which constitute the bulk of his work.