Arthur Lismer 1885 - 1969

Private Collection, Toronto

Royal Canadian Academy, 1923, no. 103

This painting is in excellent condition. It has been relined. There are no apparent issues under UV, although varnish deposits fluoresce green throughout. The painting would benefit from a cleaning. We would like to thank In Restauro for their assistance with this condition report. To see their original notes, please contact Sotheby's directly.
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Nearly ninety years ago, Meadowvale was a hamlet near the present-day site of the Metropolitan Toronto Zoo, and it was on one fine summer day in 1923 that Lismer chanced upon it and painted its portrait in shining detail.

While the composition he chose was conventional enough, consisting of a foreground, middle-ground and sky, Lismer had both the skill and the determination to render the packed complexity of the scene in full. This approach may have stemmed in part from his initial training in the English watercolour tradition at the Sheffield School of Art, and in part from exposure to some of the modernist currents of thought and expression he encountered when he studied  at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. However, by 1923, Lismer had moved through several major transformations; his paintings were now powerful and his expression was his own.

At the time, small towns and villages were of interest to other members of the Group of Seven and their friends – Harris in Grimsby and Halifax, MacDonald in Thornhill and York Mills, Jackson and Robinson along the St. Lawrence River. The idea of recording or documenting the community life of the new world was especially poignant, perhaps, after the trauma and devastation of the 1914-18 war.

Lismer's move to Canada in 1912 was momentous for him and his work advanced by leaps and bounds into a forceful form of expression almost immediately. First came The Guide's Home, Algonquin Park and the great camouflaged warships moving in and out of Halifax harbour during the First World War; they were followed by September Gale, Georgian Bay, Isles of Spruce from Algoma, the rich and exuberant Bon Echo paintings, and Bright Land. These were all large and ambitious canvases then and they are all Canadian classics now.

Following hard upon this sterling record of achievement, and a superb addition to it, is the glorious Ontario Village. Basking in the sun is an unpretentious little place that Lismer has conceived with eyes, mind, and heart that raises the subject above its real self to a symbolic plateau. Lismer has transformed Meadowvale into a sort of 'everyplace'.

The picket fences knit the houses, gardens, and paths into one significant whole; the deployment of the houses and sheds creates emphasis and balance; the verdant colours of trees, shrubs, vegetable gardens and grasses, are punctuated by the sunlit walls and roofs of the houses; and even the sky is a masterful drama of clouds of differing hues and shapes.

Ontario Village is a luminous painting and it deserves to be considered among the masterpieces of Lismer's great works; doubtless it will be, once it is better known. We tend to remember Lismer as the great educator, which undoubtedly he was; but we should remember that first of all he was a superb artist.