Sold for: $11,250

PROVENANCE
The Collection of Fred Helson, Ontario
By descent to the present Private Collection, Ontario

This intimately sized depiction of Toronto’s High Park is wonderful example of the J.E.H. MacDonald’s pioneering approach. The light-filled clouds and fresh, pastoral atmosphere bear the influence of British landscape artist John Constable, whose work MacDonald was exposed to during his time in England just a few years prior. The expressive brushwork, however, speaks to the burgeoning style of Canadian Impressionism that he was in the process of exploring. From his home on nearby Quebec Avenue, MacDonald would explore the park in his free time and seek inspiration in its natural beatuy. It was his small, searching works such as this one that Lawren Harris viewed in 1911 at Toronto’s famed Arts & Letters Club which led him to seek an introduction. Their meeting was the dawn of the Group of Seven and their era-defining artistic expressions. Taken together with works from one of their first sketching trips such as MacDonald’s Laurentians at St. Jovite, Que, and Harris’ Laurentians, lots 218 and 215 in this sale, a wonderful story of a pivotal moment in Canadian art can be told.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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