Additional Images

Provenance:

Sotheby's, Toronto, ON, 8 Nov 1988, lot 202, as Laurentian Landscape;
Private Collection, London, ON

Note:

The Laurentians and the Eastern Townships in Quebec, Georgian Bay in Ontario and the shores of the St. John River near Fredericton in New Brunswick were the favourite painting locations for Roberts. In contrast to the autumnal hues typically favoured by the Group of Seven, Roberts preferred to paint the landscape’s intense greens and blues during the summer, when they were at their most vivid. When painting, Roberts would settle himself into a spot and work until his painting was complete, never reworking or completing a painting once he had returned to the studio.

On his method, Roberts explained: “I would go forth without, if possible, having any preconceived idea of what I was going to do. I would just start off and when I would go out to paint I would be extremely keyed up, tense, almost conscious of the feeling of uneasiness and the fear that I might fail to get something, but at the same time, not wanting to go out with the intention of finding some particular thing, just hoping that I would be struck by something that had possibilities for me. That might be nothing but a fairly rocky bit of hillside. I do feel that it has been through not feeling complacent, not feeling that I can take all this very easily and lightly, that any good picture that I've done has been accomplished.” [1]

[1] Excerpted from transcripts of an audiotaped interview with Alfred Pinsky, 1966 cited in Goodridge Roberts: Paintings from the 1950s and 60s. Exhibition catalogue. (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1980), 12.