Lot 528
Cornelius Krieghoff (1815-1872), Canadian
Additional Images
Provenance:
Sir Henry M. Pellatt, Toronto, ON (the owner of Casa Loma);
By descent to his granddaughter, Mrs. Hyslop;
Sotheby's, Toronto, ON, 31 May 1988, lot 113, as, Moonlight on the Rapids;
Private Collection, Ontario
Note:
Cornelius Krieghoff’s moonlit scenes occupy a special space in the history of Canadian art. Moonlight on the Rapids also occupies a special space in Krieghoff’s oeuvre as an early work by a painter in a new land. It is also important in the development of a motif that became central to some of his most dramatic compositions, including White Horse Inn by Moonlight (1851, National Gallery of Canada, no.16702) and Moonlight (sold Waddington’s, Toronto, 3 June 2021, lot 16).
Krieghoff’s paintings of the middle 1840s are key to the development of his iconography that defined what images of Canada looked like for generations. Around 1845, his Marine (NGC, no. 28426), a moonlight view done after Curtius Grolig, features a similarly stark horizontal division of the composition where the water meets the sky, an extended reflection of the moon fractured through the water, and figures in a small craft set against a dark expanse. Krieghoff transposed this European model, and its Romantic evocations to the Canadian scene Moonlight on the Rapids with an Indigenous paddler quietly gliding across the river. Krieghoff evokes multiple sensations: the sound of the perpetual rapids at night, the smell of the cool night air, the touch of a wind rearranging the clouds, and the tender moonlight shifting in the sky and reflecting across the river below the falls.
Moonlight on the Rapids is a striking and important example of the immigrant artist coming to terms with his new country and beginning to fashion a new imagery informed by models from elsewhere. The Plains of Babylon (after Dr. Andrew Staunton, 1846, The Collection of Power Corporation of Canada, Montreal) is another landscape with figures, bisected by water, a strong horizon and a sky activated by clouds. The use of reflections in water to further activate a composition was picked up by Krieghoff in his copy after Staunton and integrated into Moonlight on the Rapids. Compositions like Marine and The Plains of Babylon informed Krieghoff’s vision as he was developing as an artist in a new land. His studies after others influenced this painting, yet only his unique way of seeing allowed an original interpretation like Moonlight on the Rapids to be made.
Related Works
White Horse Inn by Moonlight (1851, National Gallery of Canada, no.16702)
Moonlight (sold Waddington’s, Toronto, 3 June 2021, lot 16)