Exhibited
“Forty-fourth Annual Exhibition, Ontario Society of Artists”, Art Museum of Toronto, 11 March‒15 April 1916, no. 24 as “Winter”
“The Thornhill Circle: J.E.H. MacDonald and His Associates”, Varley Art Gallery of Markham, 16 November 2006‒14 January 2007, no. 5 as “Down in the Valley”, 1916
“Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven”, Vancouver Art Gallery; travelling to the Glenbow Museum, Calgary; Art Gallery of Hamilton, 29 October 2015‒25 September 2016
Literature
Christopher Jackson, “The Thornhill Circle: J.E.H. MacDonald and His Associates”, Markham, 2006, unpaginated, no. 5 as “Down in the Valley”, 1916
Charles C. Hill, ‘No Timid Play of Subtleties, but Bold and Massive Design: The Group of Seven and Canadian Landscape’, in Ian M. Thom, et al., “Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Kreighoff to the Group of Seven”, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2015, listed page 200, reproduced page 110
In the winter of 1914‒15, Franklin Carmichael had just returned from study in Antwerp, Belgium at the Académie Royale des beaux‒arts. His time there was truncated by the outbreak of the First World War to only one curriculum year, and the program of focus was drawing, not painting. That winter, though, Carmichael had the good fortune of living a frugal life with Tom Thomson in the “Shack” once located on Severn Street, Toronto, a building now part of the grounds of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. Learning from practice, trial and error, and Thomson, Carmichael began anew to create small pochades in oil, and to work the stronger of such images into larger easel paintings. His skills developed rapidly and mastering the subject of winter in oil paint remained his focus for over a year.
In the “plein air” sketch for “Winter,” 1916, in the collection of Museum London, Ontario, Carmichael stood further back from the distant forest than for the easel painting. When it came to enlarging this scene, he moved in closer to the fast‒moving water and ice floes coursing the river, thereby bringing the distant trees into closer view. The deep blue colours of the river are more greatly amplified to evoke the chill of this winter‒spring day. “Winter” is also much sharper in focus and the overall scene is more snowbound than the sketch, particularly the snow‒weighted trees in the far distance.
At this time, Carmichael was only beginning to develop easel paintings produced in studio, the first of these being Winter Evening, known today as “A Muskoka Road”, 1915 (McMichael Canadian Art Collection) which he exhibited in the annual spring exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists in 1915. Carmichael’s finite production at this time is partly explained by economics since he struggled to find work during wartime and had scrimped to save for his wedding to Ada Went on 15 September 1915. When he was re‒hired at Rous and Mann in January 1916, a change in finances meant that Carmichael could now better afford essential painting supplies.
By January 1916, the Carmichaels had moved from Bolton to Thornhill, Ontario where a small artists colony had begun to develop around the family of J.E.H. MacDonald. Arthur Lismer and his family also lived there between 1915‒16. It was in Thornhill that Carmichael painted “Winter” in the early weeks of 1916, time enough so he could include it in the spring annual exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists, one of three canvases he showed then. In Thornhill, Carmichael once again had the benefit of artist friends to share ideas and techniques on painting in oil. MacDonald’s famous “Tangled Garden”, 1916 (National Gallery of Canada) was completed that same year.
“Winter”, 1916 is one of Carmichael’s earliest essays in Impressionist painting and evidence of his swift capacity to handle the oil medium. He learned expediently from his friend and mentor in Tom Thomson, whose Sketch for “In Algonquin Park”, 1914, had been Carmichael’s choice for a wedding gift offered by the artist, a work Carmichael no doubt studied carefully over the fall of 1915. “Winter”, though, is a light‒filled scene, much enriched from the sketch. It shows Carmichael’s use of broken brushwork throughout, most especially in the foreground areas of river and snow. A decorative fan‒like approach was used to articulate the middle‒ground trees and flatten their three‒ dimensionality to emphasize the impasto surface. When Carmichael ventured further north in the late summer of 1916 to the cottage of patron‒ophthalmologist, Dr. James Metcalfe MacCallum (1860‒1943) in Monument Channel, Georgian Bay, he knew he now had command over painting snow in oil. Among the next subjects leading to Carmichael’s role in co‒founding the Group of Seven in 1920 would be the rugged rocks of the Pre‒Cambrian Shield and the splendour of colours offered by the fall season in southern Ontario.
Although the provenance for “Winter”, 1916 is not fully documented, gallerist Blair Laing represented Carmichael’s work posthumously. Labels on the verso from his own gallery, and that of his father’s (Mellors Fine Arts, est. 1932), make it virtually certain that Winter originally came directly from either the artist’s studio or the artist’s widow, Ada Carmichael. The painting is a sterling example of the early years of Carmichael’s landscape work in oil.
We extend our thanks to Catharine Mastin, PhD, art historian, curator, and Adjunct Member of the Faculty of Graduate Studies in Art History at York University for contributing the preceding essay. Mastin also curated the exhibition “Franklin Carmichael: Portrait of a Spiritualist”, an exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, which toured Canada between 1999 and 2001.
