Sold for: $85,250

PROVENANCE
Roberts Gallery, Toronto
The Art Emporium, Vancouver, 1976
Private Collection, Vancouver

The Group of Seven were already well established when they invited A.J. Casson to join them in 1926. They had been aware of the younger artist for a time, having met him at the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto, and approved of his approach to landscape painting. They invited him to participate in their 1926 exhibition, and soon Franklin Carmichael, who was often Casson’s companion on sketching trips, asked him to join the Group. In the same year, he was elected an associate of the Royal Canadian Academy and co-founded the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour, with Carmichael and F.H. Brigden. His many accomplishments firmly established his place in the history of Canadian art.

Casson’s unique contribution was his great appreciation for Ontario, from the towns and rural landscapes of the south to more wild, northern landscapes such as the one depicted here in Madawaska, an area south of Algonquin Park. Casson explored the Madawaska River and Valley, camping and sketching there in 1946 and 1947. Oil sketches done on these trips would form the basis for works such as this large, impressive oil. Casson’s fine eye for design elements is fully manifest here, as he depicts a sky with towering cloud forms as sculpted and layered as the land mass below it. A repetition of similar shapes in both land and sky sets up a pleasing rhythm, while autumn colours flashing through hills and foreground further animate the scene. The fall time period, atmospheric effects and the sense of grandeur in the wilderness make this a classic Group subject by Casson.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars