Roberts Gallery, Toronto
Loch Gallery, Calgary
Private Collection, Calgary
Literature
Paul Duval, “A.J. Casson”, Toronto, 1951, unpaginated
Algonquin Park was a frequent destination during Casson’s working career, due to the park’s proximity to Toronto. The picturesque Lake of Two Rivers is often thought of as the heart of Algonquin Park, boasting a scenic landscape with lush forests surrounding the shoreline. Casson has captured the heavy atmosphere of a still summer day in the Lake of Two Rivers in this oil. Teeming with mood from dramatic shadows, grey sky and mirror-like reflection in the water, the painting is an exemplary representation of Casson’s famed landscape paintings. Paul Duval praises Casson’s skill of depicting an ephemeral moment or scene as if frozen in time. The author remarks, “Like the contemporary American realist, Edward Hopper, he has the ability to crystallize a moment, to make concrete and eternal the passing vision. It is as though the time-machine has suddenly ceased to function, in a world where the wind had stopped breathing and the shadows no longer moved and every blade of glass and cloud were fixed forever.”
