titled on a gallery label on the reverse and an unfinished study on the reverse
10.75 × 12.75 in (27.3 × 32.4 cm) (sheet)
(including Buyer's Premium)
Estate of the Artist
By descent to a Private Collection, Ontario
Roberts Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto
Ian M. Thom, "Introduction" in Franklin Carmichael Watercolours, Victoria, 1981, unpaginated
Megan Bice, Light and Shadow: The Work of Franklin Carmichael, Kleinburg, 1990, pages 48, 85
Franklin Carmichael asked high prices for his watercolours in order to reflect their status, which he believed to be equal to oil painting. The artist strongly believed in the independent validity of the medium, and he founded the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour in 1925, along with A.J. Casson and F.H. Brigden, in an effort to give the medium the importance and recognition it deserved. As the Group of Seven member who painted most frequently in watercolour, Ian M. Thom declares: “It is in his watercolours that Carmichael made his greatest contribution to the Group and to Canadian painting in general.”
During the late 1920s and 1930s, Carmichael’s style had matured and his interpretation of the landscape strengthened. Megan Bice writes, “Carmichael responded to the sensory and emotional aspects of the physical scene before him rather than transforming the landscape into an expression of a spiritual state.” Moreover, she writes, “the relationship of man to his natural environment was a recurring theme for Carmichael throughout his career... the human presence was never far from his contemplation.” The artist did not simply seek to depict the picturesque, but rather imbue his works with a more complex and contemplative narrative of one’s relation to landscape.
Untitled - La Cloche Stormy Sky bears all the hallmarks of the artist’s iconic rendering of the landscape in watercolour. A dramatic, cloudy sky hovers over the lake below; the jewel-tone blues repeated in the sky, mountains and water, interrupted by the emerald green forest along the shoreline. Carmichael’s confident handling of the watercolour medium gives a clear interpretation of the landscape and instills a feeling of the sublime as the viewer gazes into the uninhabited terrain.
