Provenance:

Lorne Pierce, Editor-in-Chief, Ryerson Press (1922-1960).
By Descent through the family to the present owner.
Private Collection, Toronto.

Note:

Describing the process from the initial planning through the binding of Canadian Landscape Painters in an unsigned, undated typed letter, Lorne Pierce, Editor-in-Chief of the Ryerson Press from 1922-1960, wrote:

“My friend Albert Robson, Vice-President of Rous & Mann, had spent years building the Canadian Art Series of full-colour reproductions of Canadian paintings of distinction. These were used chiefly for the R & M greeting card series. Albert knew all the artists He was on the Board of the Art Gallery, The Toronto Symphony, and every other organization that promoted the arts and letters of Canada. For years he had been Art Director for Rapid Grip and had had attracted to his company so many top men that his studio at Rapid Grip became almost an academy in its own right. He attracted and held the loyalty and affection of J.E.H.MacDonald, Tom Thomson, Varley, Lismer, Carmichael and a host of others. Later, when Albert moved over to R & M many of his headliners came with him, including Tom Thomson.

About 1930 I proposed to Albert that he make a book on Canadian landscape painters. He knew the field, was a painter himself, had the vast treasury of plates and the art department of R & M to help us design a book that would be a landmark. As he worked ahead he sent in a chapter at a time and we worked over it In time we had text and pictures and we set to work to design the book itself … typography, paper and binding. The quadri-colour reproductions were printed on the presses of R & M. The text was set and printed by Ryerson and the Ryerson bindery tipped in each illustration by hand, a long, exacting and tedious job. The cloth was imported English buckram. As we worked at the book we devised the Canadian Artists Series, the small hand-books since so popular and of which the first editor was Albert Robson. These books at once placed Ryerson on the top in the field of Canadian art among the publishers of the country.

When the Golden Gate Exposition was being planned, the Directors asked about a dozen of leading nations to submit outstanding examples of the book-binding craft for their special exhibit of fine printings and bindings. I was asked to head the Canadian section and was allowed a year. The reason for my being chosen was likely due to the fact that I had been Honorary Curator of the Herbert Hoover War Library for Canada and Newfoundland, and known to Stanford University Director of Libraries, and not for my knowledge of fine bindings. At any rate we had a hard time digging out twelve outstanding books, books that in typography and binding would be in the same class with the best in the world. We got together some quite good things, but chiefly by Canadians trained in the ateliers of France and often exotic. So we experimented with a book so Canadian that none could miss it.

We took four sets of sewn sheets of Albert’s book. One set was bound in full calf and was very uninteresting. One was bound in bird’s eye maple with iron hinges and clasps and ultimately looked like a hangman’s diary. The third was bound in quarter sheep with art cloth covers and native birchbark endpapers. The fourth was bound in beaver, permission being secured from the Ontario Government to kill a beaver out of season. This copy was sent to the Exposition.

The present copy has been fore-edged in gold leaf and kept in a glass case until now. It has never been opened and, with the exception of the full calf rejected copy, is the only de luxe copy to survive.”

A scanned copy of this letter is available to the purchaser of this lot.