Additional Images

Provenance:

Estate of James Samuel McCleary;
Private collection, Ontario

The McCleary's were neighbours with A.J Casson's mother. This painting was gifted to or purchased by the McCleary's and has been in the family for about 70 years.

Note:

Rapids on the Severn River is an elegantly balanced composition that shows the heart of A.J. Casson’s contribution to Canadian art. He began his career as a designer apprenticing to Franklin Carmichael in 1919, studying and sketching diligently, then beginning to exhibit with the Graphic Arts Club in 1921. He became a member of the Group of Seven by 1926–when he was only 28 years old–and then a founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters in 1933.

It is important to note that Casson's work ethic was prodigious, and that he remained a designer in addition to his artistic output. One of the key attributes of his art by the time he joined the Group is his facility with composition. This is crucial to understanding his work in general, and in particular for appreciating a work like Rapids on the Severn River. Casson does not evoke a Romantic vision of rapids roiling with foam and danger. Rather, in his calm and considered way, it is his ability to see the design in nature and make it anew on the sheet. The rapids flow into the composition in a diagonal line from the middle left, down across boulders that make a wedge in the top right. As the water flows down and is calmed by the boulder in the foreground, the tranquil foliage at the top of the composition complements the stable rock in the front. In his grace and precision, Casson’s rapids move like a fine machine.