Bertram Brooker is now best recognized for his achievements as an early Canadian abstractionist, having painted non-objective works since the early 1920s and exhibiting his works in 1927 in Canada’s first show of abstract art. A lukewarm response to that show, as well as a meeting with Lemoine FitzGerald in 1929, inspired him to shift his painting somewhat towards the more representational. However, it always retained an element of the conceptual and formally experimental: tree branches became grasping arms, rolling hills were faceted geometries, and flowered still lifes became Cubist fantasies.

The Sandbanks are something of an unusual phenomenon in the scheme of Canadian (certainly Ontario) geography. Found on the shores of Lake Ontario in Prince Edward County, the towering, desert-like drifts of sand stretch across a series of inlets to comprise the world’s largest barrier dune system. Brooker’s synthesis of the non-objective with the representational can be readily felt in his depiction of this liminal landscape. The dunes heave softly across the canvas with richly nuanced form and colour, peaks lit with stormy light and furrows rutted in shadow. The sky feels heavy and indeterminate, while beach grass and flares of trees scrabble to stay rooted in the shifting sands. The scene is naturalistic but nonetheless feels somewhat otherworldly, recognizable but unfamiliar—a reflection of Brooker’s interest, shared with Lawren Harris, in capturing the hidden spiritual dimensions of life in both landscape and non-representational painting. Subtle in its complexity and expansive in its affect, Sandbanks, Picton is a remarkable example of Brooker’s masterful approach to painting.

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