Literature:

Lois Darroch, Bright Land, A Warm Look at Arthur Lismer, Toronto/Vancouver, 1981, pages 24, 33 and page 28, plate 4, reproduced in colour.

Note:

In the summer of 1914 the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated at Sarajevo and German troops marched through Belgium, scorning the treaty of Belgium’s neutrality. On August, 1914, Canada followed Britain in a declaration of war.

The disruption caused by the war was already beginning to make itself felt in the economy and work was scarce. It was at this time that Lismer painted Belgian Refugees. He had lived in Belgium and, according to Darroch, could see in his mind’s eye the friends he had left behind: “He could envision the roads jammed with fleeing, stricken women and children. What emerged from his brush was a moving depiction of refugees crowding in along a road with their bundles. A soldier assisted some people into a cart like a tumbril carrying them into an unknown fate. A priest administered last rites to one who had already succumbed. Through the trees and over a wayside cross streamed the rays of the sun - was it in sadness, benediction, or in mockery of man’s inhumanity to man?”