This oil painting was completed during A.J. Casson’s only trip to Lake Superior. He accompanied Harris, Jackson and Carmichael to Port Coldwell in October 1928. This trip turned out to be the last Group sketching trip to this part of the country. Casson used oils exclusively on this occasion, as the rough weather conditions were not conducive to sketching in the usual medium of watercolour. The artist’s subsequent Lake Superior canvases and watercolours were worked up from the small oil sketches executed during the trip.
Paul Duval points out that Casson “found it difficult to adjust to the scale and sheer grandeur of the Lake Superior panoramas, and to the starkness of its form and colours. During October, that country is black, grey and gold-black spruce, gold poplars and birch and, everywhere, grey rock. Above, the sky is a clear silvery blue or filled with dark storm clouds.” In Duval’s opinion, the “oil sketches the artist took back to Toronto with him were some of the best he had yet achieved.” Casson describes his impressions from this trip, writing: “The north shore of Lake Superior was a revelation to me and my sketches of the area were a major departure from anything I had done before.”
