Carmichael estate inventory #OS-G-27

Provenance

Estate of the artist

By descent, private collection, Ontario

It was in 1920, around the time that this sketch was painted, that Franklin Carmichael became one of the founding members of Group of Seven. This oil sketch is a classic example of his painting during the late teens and early twenties. Informed by the loose brushwork of Impressionism, and a palette strong in hue, Carmichael observes the onset of fall in a pageantry of autumn colours. The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson were each engaged by the fall season and for them it was essential to use colour. They explained the matter succinctly in their 1921 and 1922 catalogue statements: “It is as impossible to depict the autumn pageantry of our northern woods with a lead pencil.” Pictures they explained “must speak for themselves…the painter must rely on paint not on adjectives.” From sketches like this one, Carmichael developed his important canvases of autumn, such as the Art Gallery of Ontario’s “Autumn Hillside”, 1920 and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery’s “Autumn, Orillia”, 1924. This sketch is painted at the same location as Bolton Hills c.1922 in McMichael Canadian Art Collection.