Additional Images

Provenance:

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

Note:

The pinnacle of Loveroff’s professional career came when his painting Snow on the Hillside, circa 1919, was exhibited and subsequently acquired by the Leicester City Art Gallery, England in 1924. The purchase brought Loveroff much attention back in Canada. It was Loveroff’s interpretation of snow which was most remarked on, with a contemporary Scottish reviewer writing: “Nicholas Loveroff, a Russian Canadian, is a realist: his solid tree trunks are actualities, and so is the snow in his wood interior, which is as true as the sunlight and shade on the snow in his Hillside, which in startling effect is equalled by A.Y. Jackson's sunshine in patches in his snow scene in Georgian Bay.”

Untitled (Escarpment) shows the same feeling for atmosphere. Despite a short career which only lasted around 16 years, Loveroff gained a reputation for his perceptive powers, gifted sense of colour, and ability to capture light. Writing for The Canadian Collector, Peter Millard noted that Loveroff’s paintings “are crisp, strong landscapes whose chief delight is in their Impressionist colouring. Shadows, which at first sight seem merely darker in tone, on closer examination yield up rich and extraordinary colour.”

Loveroff was a close observer of the effects of light and shadow, particularly notable in his winter subjects. The artist’s son Lloyd recalled asking his father about a similarly wintery painting, specifically why he was using a deep bluish-purple for the shadows of the snow.

Loveroff asked his son if he had ever really studied snow.

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

Further information about the artist.