Additional Images

Provenance:

Private Collection, Toronto, ON

Note:

In the 1960s, in his early 60s, Casson propelled his interest in the Ontario landscape and its small settlements to a new level of artistic maturity. Casson’s work ethic and standards even accompanied him on a 1968 family vacation to Kincardine, Ontario – a little less than 200 kilometres west-northwest of Toronto on the shore of Lake Huron. Not content to be idle, and finding relaxation in his vocation, Casson sought subjects for painting in the vicinity and took up one of his best known and loved motifs in the small settlement of Kintail, thirty kilometres south of Kincardine.

The palette of Kintail #2 is akin to Sun After Rain, lot 28, but distinct for practical reasons. A smaller repertoire of greens, blues, browns and white are all Casson needed to capture this storefront in a disappearing part of regional economies. The ground Casson prepared for Kintail #2 is more than a painted support for his design. His broadly brushed off-white ground has two important functions: one is technical and the other is aesthetic. The technical purpose was to provide a texture that gripped his brush and the thin layers of paint he applied to create the gentlest impediment to slick painting. The aesthetic purpose is to provide a texture that grips the eye. As Claude Monet knew before him, texture under brushstrokes adds visual interest and keeps eyes lingering. Coupled with his refined palette, the refined geometric of Casson’s composition gently holds our attention as sequences of rectangles open, nestle and envelop each other, constantly engaging our eyes.