Provenance

Private collection, Ontario

Exhibited

Art Gallery of Toronto, April 1930, An Exhibition of the Group of Seven, Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour, #137.

Murray Bay, Quebec, Manoir Richelieu Art Exhibition, July 1930, The First Annual Exhibition of Canadian Arts, #80.

Canadian National Exhibition, Aug. 28 – Sept. 12, 1931, #598.

Art Gallery of Toronto, Oct. 2 – Nov.2, 1931, Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour, #151.

The period around 1930 was busy and productive for Carmichael. Although he continued to show the canvases of the late 1920s, he also often exhibited large, finished watercolours, a medium to which Carmichael turned more and more during these years. The watercolours from this period reflect subject matter that had fascinated the artist thought his career and demonstrate his exceptional technical master of the difficult medium.

For Carmichael, the northern landscape was simply a starting point. From it, he extrapolated the vast design of nature, the contrasts of sky, water and land, man and his environment, of nature both delicate and strong. There is faith in the infinite, complex order of the natural world. Carmichael’s belief in spirituality of the landscape is exemplified in The Church, Whitefish Falls. The geometric forms of the buildings hold their place, piercing the air with their rooftops and church steeple, while the undulating contours of the foreground create a sense of greater, more powerful force of the land.