Additional Images

Provenance:

Collection of Walter R. G. Stewart, Toronto, ON
Acquired by the father of the current owner, 1970
By descent to the Collection of Dr. William and Fran Barnett, London, ON

Note:

Barns from a former era were of particular interest for A.Y. Jackson, who never tired of their sloped lines, greying wood and sagging beams. Naomi Groves writes: ”A.Y.’s lifelong attachment to barns is so self-evident as seemingly to require little comment... Yet he did not like all barns, not by any means. Not even any old barn. There has to be something special about each barn he honours with permanency in his work.”[1]

The ongoing decay of the nation’s barns was of great concern for Jackson. Wayne Larsen writes that “ramshackle wooden barns and ancient snake fences – the cornerstone of Jackson’s rustic style – were disappearing at an alarming rate, to be replaced by modern farm buildings, straight fences, and paved roads.”[2] Jackson began to avoid villages and towns which were modernising too quickly. In 1941 he wrote: “I wish they would give the old barns a rest and concentrate on toilets and baths.”[3]

The cluster of outbuildings depicted in this lot display all the hallmarks of a prime Jackson rustic scene with the contoured land cushioning the wilting barn, the curvilinear rootline, and the patinated wood.

[1] Naomi Groves, A.Y.’s Canada (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited, 1968), 76.
[2] Wayne Larsen, A.Y. Jackson: The Life of the Landscape Painter (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2009), 433.
[3] Groves, 78.