Provenance

Masters Gallery, Calgary

Private collection, Calgary

Literature

Laurier Lacroix, “Suzor-Coté Retour à Arthabaska”, Arthabaska, Quebec, 1987, no. 21, reproduced page 22.

Laurier Lacroix, “Suzor–Coté: Light and Matter”, Musée du Québec, 2002, no. 62, page 163, reproduced page 189 as fig. 87.

Following a long stay in France, Suzor–Coté returned to Canada in 1907, at the age of thirty–eight, before settling in his native Arthabaska. There he would transition from an Impressionistic style to a more unique aesthetic, with thick application of paint and clear tonal contrasts. Here the artist presents a landscape where voluminous clouds dominate the scenery, contrasting with the thin, elongated trees and a plough in the foreground. As Charles Lintern Sibley wrote in Laurier Lacroix’s “Suzor-Coté: Light and Matter”, “Our own artists have begun to discover their own country and their own people. They have begun to paint Canadian scenes without Dutch atmosphere, or Spanish colour, or English skies. They have, in fact, founded a Canadian school of art—a school that interprets the beauty of their own land, and the greatness, the memories, the dreams, and the sentiments of their own people.”

In 1913 Suzor–Coté was invited to join the informal Canadian Art Club in Toronto and participated in the Canadian National Exhibition before being elected to the Royal Canadian Academy.