Provenance:

Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal.
Private Collection, Ontario.

Literature:

Marjorie Lismer Bridges, “A Border of Beauty”, Toronto, 1977, page 28.

Lois Darroch, “Bright Land, A Warm Look at Arthur Lismer”, Toronto, 1981, page 15.

Note:

Although Lismer had moved to Montreal in 1940 to teach at the Art Association of Montreal, he continued to paint Georgian Bay. Lismer had an ongoing affair with the rock-laden body of water and once described his fascination:

“Georgian Bay! Thousands of islands, little and big some of them mere rocks just breaking the surface of the waters of the Bay-other with great high rocks tumbled in confused masses and cowed with leaning pines, turned away in ragged disarray from the west wind presenting a strange pattern against the sky and water. Some of the trees are like miniatures in an oriental garden, their roots seeking tenacious hold in the cracks in the rocks. The undergrowth is tangled and in the spring the wild iris a cherry blossoms cluster round little pools in the hollows...Georgian Bay-the happy isles, all different, but bound together in a common unity of form, colour and design. It is a paradise for painters”.

A paradise it must have been; Lismer had painted Georgian Bay for many years before he composed “Little Pools”. His first visit was in 1913, when he received an invitation from friend and art patron, Dr. James MacCallum. It is on MacCallum’s island cottage near Beausoleil Island that Lismer was first inspired. Lois Darroch addresses this deep inspiration: “Only one who has been freshly introduced to Georgian Bay, not raised beside it, can appreciate the impact of that glorious landscape on a newcomer…It was a Canada Lismer never dreamed could exist. He was shaken by the revelation of the new and wonderful landscape.”