Additional Images

Provenance:

Acquired as a gift from the artist.
By descent to the present owner.

Literature:

A.Y. Jackson, A Painter’s Country, The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson, Toronto, 1958, pages 182-183.

Naomi Jackson Groves, A.Y.’s Canada, Toronto/Vancouver, 1968, pages 208-222

Note:

The current owner’s father worked for Eldorado Mines at Great Bear Lake and the Barren Lands and was a friend of the artist. Jackson spent many years in the north and, as Naomi Jackson Groves points out, every chance he got to fly into the Barren Lands he was “...happy to be put down with my pack among these rivers and lakes, perhaps two or three hundred miles from the nearest human being.” Jackson recounts how the mighty Smelters Corporation did “...a lot of work with diamond drills for samples...without finding anything important. So they sold their rights to a group of young engineers who formed a private company and opened a new mine near the old Eldorado site. They found all sorts of stuff - by now its the richest silver mine in Canada!”

A pair of colour photographs, shown here, taken by the consignor’s father depicts the same view as this painting. In particular, note the chimneys, none of which are shown in this canvas.