Artist Doris Jean McCarthy
Title Cloudy Ridge Ranch - Alberta
Media watercolour on paper
Dated
2003
Size 13.75 x 21.25 in. / 34.9 x 54 cm.
Frame Size 21.5 x 29 x 1.25 in.
Sold $2,750
Estimate $3,000 - $5,000
Notes
signed lower right; bears title and date on gallery label verso; framed with archival mat
Reference
recollections from the owners of Cloudy Ridge Ranch attached verso stating 'One of our followers shared this painting from an art auction. Doris McCarthy stayed with us for awhile in 2003. All of her works are amazing, but this one is particularly applicable right now. The whole mountain side burned in September and won't look like this again in our lifetime.
Doris was quite the character even at 92. After her afternoon painting session [during which she often fell asleep in her chair] she would come back inside and set up a game of scrabble. She played against herself, and had a different glass of scotch at each seat [scotch neat, scotch on the rocks, scotch and water, etc.]. She would get up and move to the next seat as the turns went and even though we offered her our spinning Scrabble board, she shunned it for the traditional upside-down play.
We are so fortunate to have had such a talented artist immortalize our home in art. As I'm sitting here writing this at the top of the same hill she would have been sitting on painting, I can't help appreciate that she took very little artistic license [except to remove some, okay a lot, of compulsory farmyard junk] and has represented the yard exactly as is.'
Provenance
Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto, label verso; private collection, British Columbia
Biographical Information
Doris Jean McCarthy ~ [1910-2010] Canadian CSPWC, OSA, RCA
see Doris McCarthy Feast of Incarnation Paintings 1929-1989, by W.Moore, the Gallery/Stratford, 1991; Celebrating Life, the Art of Doris McCarthy, by W.Moore, McMichael Collection, 1999; biography and other examples in A.G.O., by the A.G.O., pg.264; MacDonald,Vol.4, pg. 952; Westbridge,Vol.3, pg.21; exhibition list in R.C.A.A., pg.249 and M.M.F.A., pg.234 by E.McMann; A Fool in Paradise, 1990 and The Good Wine, by D.McCarthy, MacFarlane Walter and Ross, 1991 for autobiography; McCarthy was the first woman President of the Ontario Society of Artists and has received many awards and honours; see the website at www.dorismccarthy.com; listed on Artists in Canada, a Union List of Artists' Files, by National Gallery of Canada Library et al, Canadian Heritage Information Network [CHIN] website