Lot 35
ALEXANDER YOUNG JACKSON, O.S.A., R.C.A.
Additional Images
Provenance:
Private Collection, Montreal
Note:
Painted in February of 1914, A.Y. Jackson’s Winter Woods is at once quiet in sentiment and sparkling in its colour treatment. It was later on in that same year that Jackson accompanied Tom Thomson on an expedition to Algonquin Park. Their admiration for one another had grown strong – with Jackson having moved to Toronto in 1913 and Thomson residing just outside of the Studio Building on 25 Severn Street in his small ‘shack.’
Following their trip, Jackson returned to Montreal, and shortly thereafter enlisted to fight with the Canadian Forces as a Private in the 60th Battalion. In 1917, he was wounded in the hip and shoulder during combat at Maple Copse near Ypres and was transferred to England. It was while he was there that tragedy struck back home; Jackson received word that Tom Thomson had drowned in Canoe Lake, just a few days shy of his 40th birthday. This was a severe blow for Jackson.
Created during the last year that the two painters spent time together, Winter Woods captures with bittersweet clarity a true devotion to the wilderness. The verticality of the trees, the rich strokes of lilacs and blues and greens channel Thomson’s instinctive energy and abilities. Here, on the shores of Canoe Lake, there is no desolation of bush and rock. We find rather that Jackson, without yet knowing it, created a fitting homage to his friend.