Additional Images

Provenance:

Private Collection, Ontario;
By descent to the present Private Collection, Ontario

Note:

Two of the artist’s preferred subjects – trees and farm scenes – come together here in this Impressionistic painting. The work is colour-drenched, a study of spring. Loveroff rarely dated his work, which makes this work, positively dated to 1920, unique. When this painting was made, Loveroff was only three years past his time spent studying with George Reid, William Cruikshank, J.E.H. MacDonald, and J. W. Beatty at the Central Ontario School of Art in Toronto. Success came early for the young painter, who had been exhibiting at the Royal Canadian Academy and Ontario Society of Artists exhibitions since 1915 and 1916, respectively.

Trees and their various textures preoccupied Loveroff throughout his career, from wintery studies of forest interiors to the riotous blossoms depicted here. The artist’s son Lloyd recalled that his father often travelled to sketch and paint a favourite beech tree in York Mills.

Both lot 17, Untitled (Blossoming Trees), and lot 29, Untitled (Escarpment), position trees as their central subject. They might also be viewed as studies of the effects of wind, as the artist’s energetic brushwork handily captures blowing branches and flying petals in the former, and the bitterly twisting force of winter gales in the latter.

References:
Kevin Forrest, The Paintings of Frederick Nicholas Loveroff, (Regina: Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, 1981).

Further information about the artist.