Lot 116
ARTHUR LISMER, O.S.A., R.C.A.
Additional Images
Provenance:
Private Collection, Toronto
Literature:
Marjorie Lismer Bridges, A Border of Beauty: Arthur Lismer’s Pen and Pencil, Red Rock, Toronto, 1977, page 151.
Note:
In 1950, the year of Arthur Lismer’s major retrospective at the Art Gallery of Toronto and the National Gallery of Canada, Lismer and his wife, Esther, first holidayed on Vancouver Island. It was a place to which he would return for sixteen summers.
The forest captivated him in much the way he had been struck by Georgian Bay over thirty-five years earlier. However, he painted the great shafts of the mighty Pacific coast trees in an altogether different way than he had the spindlier trees of Ontario.
Marjorie Bridges, the artist’s daughter, writes that her father “liked to experiment with different styles... He was also much intrigued with the art of China and Japan and used oriental brushes and black ink to follow the rhythm and flowing lines of Hokusai. These were not done with exhibitions of sales in mind, but for his own satisfaction - just to show himself that he could master other styles.”