Alexander Young Jackson 1882 - 1974

Kaspar Gallery, Toronto

Private Collection, Vancouver

Jackson liked to travel into remote northern mining sites for a variety of reasons. First, he liked to document as much of Canada's varied landscapes as he could. In this respect he was much more thorough than his other colleagues in the Group of Seven, only one or two of whom actually got to every region of the country.

Second, Jackson was virtually guaranteed to find subjects for him to paint, and especially at mining sites, which were concrete examples of Canadians hard at work. The great economic drivers of the time were mining, lumber, agriculture, and fishing. These were the activities that Jackson and his colleagues were drawn to as valid subjects in their quest to portray the character of Canada.

Finally (and practically), Jackson liked to set up a visit ahead of time so that he could hitch a ride on a plane, and have a place to sleep and eat, usually free or at least in exchange for a sketch or two. As well, the possibility existed that he might sell a large canvas of the mine site to one of the executives of the company back in Toronto or Montreal.

This particular painting of the famous Cochenour-Willans Mine in the Red Lake district in northern Ontario is a vivid one that shows the miners' cottages there. The mine was a great gold producer for a very long time, and Jackson's record of it is a fine memorial to its now-faded reputation.