PROVENANCE
Laing Galleries, Toronto
Private Collection
Fine Art, Levis Fine Art Auctions, November 4, 1996, lot 212
Corporate Collection, Calgary

LITERATURE
Stanley Munn and Patricia Cucman, To See What He Saw: J.E.H. MacDonald and the O'Hara Years, 1924 – 1932, Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, 2024, reproduced pages 97 and 322

September Snow is a bright and dynamic painting, capturing an early season snowfall above Lake O’Hara, in Yoho National Park, BC. J.E.H. MacDonald’s passion for this region radiates in his sketches—testaments to moments he spent in the back country full of wonder and appreciation. First visiting in 1924, MacDonald returned to this region of the Canadian Rockies annually in the late summer for six more trips before his health took a turn for the worse in 1931. Through sketches like this, we are granted a window into how MacDonald viewed this enchanting place, and its awesome and dramatic beauty.

MacDonald was an exemplary plein air artist, who thrived when seated in front of his subject. His uncanny ability to translate the complexity of the world around him into a captivating and compelling oil sketch places him in the highest echelon of Canadian landscape painters, and he was a natural leader in the Group of Seven, helping to define new approaches to art in this country and push the boundaries forward. He described sketching as the “first outdoor sport” and as a teacher, he shared his passion with younger artists, including the following advice:

Don’t photograph the subject. Give only the characteristic details essential to the composition. Speed helps in sketching just as in sprinting. Try to grasp the idea of your subject quickly, and then put it down before you can form any doubts about it.… Design from nature rather than copy her.[1]

Using this approach, MacDonald was able to create paintings that translate boldly and romantically the spirit of the mountains, and connect us both to the artist and to the landscape itself, which MacDonald faithfully portrayed.

In the recent book To See What He Saw, authors Stanley Munn and Patricia Cucman impressively have applied years of diligent research to situate MacDonald’s O’Hara works in space and time. They identify September Snow as having been painted on MacDonald’s third trip to the region, in 1926, when he stayed at the newly constructed Lake O’Hara lodge on the lakeshore. There were several days of early snow that year, but this would not deter MacDonald from sketching; he typically painted two sketches per day.

For this painting, MacDonald would have been perched on Opabin Prospect, looking north, with Lake O’Hara visible between the snow-covered rocks and the slopes of Wiwaxy Peaks on the right and Cathedral Mountain on the left, its summit hidden in cloud. With some rapid and confident brushwork that September day, almost a century ago, MacDonald immortalized his experience in this particular paradise, and as viewers, we are able now to share that moment with him.

1. J.E.H. MacDonald lecture notes, undated, quoted in Lisa Christensen, The Lake O’Hara Art of J.E.H. MacDonald and Hiker’s Guide (Calgary: Fifth House, 2003), 16.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars