Reflections, La Cloche Hills , circa 1936

Galerie d’art Michel Bigue, Montreal A. K. Prakash & Associates, Inc., Toronto Private Collection, Toronto

"Retrospective Exhibition of Painting by Members of the Group of Seven 1919-1933", National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1936, no. 9

Eric Brown, "Retrospective Exhibition of Painting by Members of the Group of Seven 1919-1933", Ottawa, 1936, no. 9, listed page 9 Megan Bice, "Light & Shadow: The Work of Franklin Carmichael", Kleinburg, 1990, page 43

Throughout the Group of Seven period, Franklin Carmichael worked as a commercial artist, producing illustrations and designs first at Grip Limited and subsequently at Rous and Mann. Following this, he accepted a teaching position at the Ontario College of Art, which allowed him to devote greater focus to painting. Carmichael's favoured regions for painting included Georgian Bay, the north shore of Lake Superior and the Mattawa area. Edward and Winifred Went, Carmichael’s brother and sister-in-law, first encouraged the artist to visit the La Cloche region north of Georgian Bay in 1924. Though only one small watercolour survives from his first trip to the area, Carmichael continued to return to La Cloche each year for the rest of his life. The La Cloche Hills are in fact ancient mountains, which have eroded over time into flowing, rolling hills compressed between the Pre-Cambrian Shield to the north and the Great Lakes to the south. La Cloche gave Carmichael the chance to paint from high vantage points, affording him grand views of the distinctive contoured hills, with their lakes and forests. With "Reflections, La Cloche Hills", Carmichael instead opted for a low, lakeside perspective, with much of the view taken up by the reflection of the great hills in water. Carmichael’s sketches of the period regularly featured dramatic skies and a clever emphasis on the interplay of light and shadow on the land. Curator and author Megan Bice noted, “The quality of light in the La Cloche particularly intrigued him. He later said of its special qualities that it seemed that “the laws of light didn’t always apply,” and that “the light bounced around so very dramatically”.