Artist Alfred Joseph Casson
Title White Pine
Media gouache on paper board
Dated
1947 --53 ca.
Size 29 x 39.25 in. / 73.7 x 99.7 cm.
Frame Size 38.5 x 48.5 x 1.5 in.
Estimate $60,000 - $80,000
Notes
signed lower right; small number notations throughout; framed with special glass
Reference
This gouache on paper board was created by Casson as a working study for the Sampson Matthews silkscreen White Pine.
According to the book, Art for War and Peace: How a Great Art Project Helped Canada Discover Itself by Ian Sigvaldason and Scott Steedman [page 140], Casson completed a small watercolour sketch of White Pine in July of 1948 near Whitefish Falls, Ontario. The watercolour was in the collection of Casson's wife Margaret and turned into the silkscreen print that same year [1948]. After the popularity of the print, Robert McMichael hinted to Casson that he'd be happy to buy a large oil version if Casson ever decided to make a copy. Less than three weeks later, Casson drove up to McMichael's rural home with a large painting jammed into his car. 'His best-known reproduction, White Pine, was now a breathtaking major canvas'. Casson told McMichael that he had reworked the mass of flat clouds in the top left of the print. 'It seemed right for the silkscreen and certainly simplified its production' Casson explained, but in the painting 'I felt free to add fleeting white cirrus clouds which give a breezier, more windblown effect.' In 1965, the McMichaels donated their house and collection to the government of Ontario, with the understanding that the ten-acre property outside of Kleinburg would be turned into a museum of Canadian art. The McMichael Collection now contains more than five thousand works and one of the star exhibits is still A.J. Casson's oil on canvas of White Pine.
See cover and pages 140-141, 210 in Art for War and Peace: How a Great Art Project Helped Canada Discover Itself by Ian Sigvaldason and Scott Steedman, published by Read Leaf, 2016; see the oil canvas at the McMichael Museum website
Provenance
according to the estate, this work was purchased from the McCready Galleries, Toronto in the late 1960s or early 1970s; from a Calgary estate
Biographical Information
Alfred Joseph Casson ~ [1898-1992] Canadian CSPWC, CGP, OSA, RCA
see
A.J. Casson, by P.Duval, Roberts Gallery, 1975;
A.J. Casson, by J.Murray, Art Gallery of Windsor, 1978;
A.J. Casson: His Life and Works / A Tribute, by P.Duval, Cerebrus, 1980;
A.J. Casson, My Favourite Watercolours 1919 to 1957, by P.Duval, Cerebrus, 1982;
A.J. Casson: Early Works, by I.Thom, McMichael Collection, 1984;
A.J. Casson: An Artist's Life by Christopher E. Jackson, published by McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1998;
A.J. Casson: Behind the Scenes, C. Jackson, Varley Art Gallery, 2006
biography and other example in
N.G.C. Vol.1, A-F, ed.C.Hill, pg.180;
A.G.O., by the A.G.O., pg.63;
Dict. Of Canadian Artists, by C.MacDonald, Vol.1, pg.122;
Westbridge, Vol.1, pg. 60
exhibition list in R.C.A.A., by E.McMann, pg. 65
listed on Artists in Canada, a Union List of Artists' Files, by National Gallery of Canada Library et al, see website at Canadian Heritage Information Network [CHIN]