Additional Images

Literature:

A.Y. Jackson, A Painter's Country, Clarke, Irwin & Company, Toronto, 1958, page 62.

Charles C. Hill, The Group of Seven, Art for a Nation, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1995, pages 178-179 and page 172, fig.133, cat. no. 99 for the closely related canvas by Lismer entitled Quebec Village, reproduced in colour.  

Note:

Marius Barbeau was an ethnographer who was interested in Canadian aboriginal and Quebec culture and tradition. Hill writes: "In August 1925, with passes from the C.P.R., Jackson and Lismer and his wife and daughter joined Barbeau and his family on the Île d'Orléans where he was studying... After a short stay on the island, the group... travelled to Baie-Saint-Paul, Île aux Coudres and Saint-Hilarion (the subject of this painting)." 

Hill continues: "Barbeau's invitation to Jackson and Lismer to join him that summer was always linked to the idea of a possible exhibition." Indeed, Lismer and Jackson canvases worked up from sketches made on this summer trip were included in the Group's exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario in May of 1926. 

Jackson likened Saint-Hilarion to the Italian hill towns he had seen while serving oversees. He recounts: "The country around is cleared of trees, and the town stands on the top of a hill." The ever-gregarious Jackson befriended the villagers of Saint-Hilarion and stayed with the Tremblay family in the Mayor’s house across from the church pictured in this lot.

While Jackson is most often considered a snow painter - and irrefutably he made regular treks to the lower St. Lawrence region of Quebec in late spring specially motivated by the fact that snow remained on the ground there longer than in other regions - he is also a painter who as ably captures both the striking colours of Fall and the soft, pastel colours of summer - particularly those of the small villages of Quebec - his favourite sketching grounds.