Collection of the Artist, Montreal
Peter Dobush, Montreal
Collection of The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1965
Exhibited
The Peter Dobush Donation", Winnipeg Art Gallery, 16 November 1965, no.61
""Group of Seven: Works on Paper", Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1-15 October 1976
"Trees of a Thousand Kind and Tall", Winnipeg Art Gallery, 10 December 1983-1 April 1984
"Arthur Lismer Watercolours", MacDonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph; travelling to the Rodman Hall Arts Centre, St. Catharines, 8 July-27 September 1987
Literature
Ferdinand Eckhardt, "The Peter Dobush Donation", Winnipeg, 1965, reproduced
Nancy Dillow, "The Collection Donations, The WAG", Winnipeg, March 1981, reproduced page 16
Norah McCullough, "Arthur Lismer Watercolours", Guelph, 1987, reproduced page 16
Dennis Reid, 'The Later Work of Arthur Lismer', and Marjorie Lismer Bridges, 'Chronology' in "Canadian Jungle: The Later Work of Arthur Lismer", Toronto, 1985, pages 28-30, 37, 106
The varying landscapes of Georgian Bay were favourite subjects of the painter Arthur Lismer throughout much of his career. He first painted there in 1913, staying at the cottage of Dr. James MacCallum at Go Home Bay. It was there he painted the sketches for his famous canvas, "September Gale, Georgian Bay" in 1920, but from 1922 he painted further west on McGregor Bay near Manitoulin Island, making almost annual trips with his wife and daughter.
Teaching, first at the Ontario College of Art and, from 1927, at the Art Gallery of Toronto, occupied much of Lismer’s time and in 1936- 1937 he lectured in South Africa, travelling extensively and had no permanent studio. As Dennis Reid has observed, it was at this time that Lismer began painting in watercolour, a medium he continued to use following his return to Toronto. In July 1938 he resigned as Educational Supervisor at the art gallery but it does not appear he was able to make the family’s annual trip to McGregor Bay before leaving to teach at Columbia University in New York on 20 September.
A single tree on a rise in the foreground set against an expansive landscape was a repeated motif in the work of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven. From Thomson’s "Jack Pine" (1917) to Lawren Harris’ "North Shore Lake Superior" (circa 1926) to Lismer’s "September Gale" (1921) and "Pine Wrack" (1933), all in the National Gallery of Canada, the artists reinterpreted this subject with amazing creativity and imagination. In this superb watercolour, dated 1938 and possibly painted from memory rather than on the spot, Lismer excels in animating the trees, water and clouds. The grey trunks of dead trees left and right and the yellow tree in the foreground frame the dense growth of stunted, wind-blown trees hugging the rocky shore. The central tree, painted in dense greens and browns and drawn with a nervous black line, twists and turns in a writhing dance. The yellow and mauve washes of the clouds echo the movement of the branches that take on an almost anthropomorphic personality. With remarkable expressiveness Lismer has captured the force of nature on the Bay.
The Montreal architect Peter Dobush (1908-1980) most likely acquired this remarkable watercolour directly from Arthur Lismer who, from 1940, taught at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. A native of Winnipeg, Dobush worked in Montreal from 1951 and had branch offices in St. John’s and Ottawa. An active collector of Canadian art, he made major donations to the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1965 and to Newfoundland and Labrador in 1972.
We extend our thanks to Charles Hill, Canadian art historian, former Curator of Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada and author of "The Group of Seven‒Art for a Nation", for his assistance in researching this artwork and for contributing the preceding essay.
This artwork is being sold to benefit the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG)-Qaumajuq in establishing an endowment fund to support more diverse representation in the permanent collection, beginning with contemporary Canadian art. Cowley Abbott is pleased to donate our selling commission to the fund as part of the sale.
