Sold for: $61,250

PROVENANCE
A gift from the Artist to Allan and Sylvia Wargon, Ontario
By descent to the present Private Collection, Ontario

LITERATURE
Allan Wargon, director, Lismer, National Film Board of Canada, 1951, featuring this painting, https://www.nfb.ca/film/lismer

Blue Pool with Rocks belongs to a group of paintings that Arthur Lismer produced depicting small pools gathered in the rock formations of Georgian Bay. Intimate and still, they are like wild gardens, blooming with water lilies, their surfaces pierced by pointed rocks that resemble natural sculptures. Lismer’s rich palette, textural brushwork and inventive incising of lines with his brush handle make this work sparkle, and viewers can imagine themselves sitting on a smoothly rounded rock shelf at the edge of the pool, lost in contemplation of the shifting reflections and soft rippling of the water. Georgian Bay was a great inspiration to Lismer, from its windswept bays and storm-shaped pines to meditative scenes such as this; it was there that Lismer claimed to have found himself as an artist. This shining example of Lismer’s Georgian Bay works is featured in the National Film Board film Lismer, in which we see the artist working on this painting from his first brush-strokes on a blank canvas through to near completion. Gifted by the artist in the early 1950s to Allan Wargon, who wrote and directed the NFB film, Blue Pool with Rocks is now being offered for sale for the first time.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars