Works by A.Y. Jackson from the 1930s 9780773573666

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Foreword
Works by A.Y. Jackson from the 1930s
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
Appendix / XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
References
List of Illustrations

Citation preview

Works By A.Y. Jackson From The 1930s

Naomi Jackson Groves

Carleton University Press, Ottawa, Canada, 1990

@Carleton University Press Inc. 1990 Ottawa, Canada ISBN 0-88629

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Carleton University. Art Collection Works by A.Y. Jackson from the 1930s

ISBN 0-88629-135-6 1. Jackson, A. Y. (Alexander Young), 1882-1974. 2. Painters-Canada-Biography. 3. Jackson, A. Y. (Alexander Young), 1882-1974-Correspondence. 4. Savage, Anne, 1896-1971-Correspondence. 5. Painting-Ontario-Ottawa. 6. Carleton University. Art Collection. I. Groves, Naomi Jackson II. Title. ND249.J3C37

1990

759.11

C90-090358-9

Cover illustration is Mountain Ash, Grace Lake, 1940 by A.Y. Jackson Printed by M.O.M. Printing Ltd., Ottawa. Bound by Bryant Press, Toronto Carleton University Press gratefully acknowledges the support extended to its publishing programme by the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

Foreword

Carleton University's Art Collection is one of the more significant of Canada's university art collections and yet it is also one of the least known. A book edited by the curator of the collection was published recently by Carleton University Press to raise the profile of the collec;tion. 1 In that volume fifteen chapters written by leading art scholars from across Canada focus on individual works and groups of works owned by Carleton University. Seventy~six of the works of art are reproduced in the volume. A particularly significant grouping of works within the Carleton collection is by A.Y. Jackson. These works were addressed in Art Carleton by Naomi Jackson Groves. 2 It is with pleasure that Carleton University Press is able to provide that essay in this separate publication. Dr. Groves has made several structural changes to the original essay and some new material and illustrations have been added. By making this revision of the essay and reprints of some of the collection within the collection more readily available it is hoped an additional and perhaps wider audience can be reached. Anne Winship of Carleton University Press has worked on both Art Carleton and on this publication.

David B. Knight Carleton University Press

1. Roger J. Mesley, editor, Art Carleton (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989).

2. Naomi Jackson Groves. "Works by A. Y. Jackson in the Carleton University Art Collection:' Art Carleton. Roger J. Mesley, editor (Ottawa: Carleton University Press. 1989). pp. 23,58.

Plate 1

JACKSON, Alexander Young Grey Day, OctobL'T, c. 1933

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Works by A. Y. Jackson From The 1930s by Naomi Jackson Groves Dr. Groves has six degrees: B.A. (McGill, 1933), M.A. (McGill, 1935), A.M. (Radcliffe, 1938), Ph.D. (Harvard, 1950), D.Lit. (McMaster, 1972) and D.Lit. (Carleton, 1990). She has taught at Wheaton College, Norton, Mass. (German, 1940-1942), McGill (German, 1933'1936; Fine Arts, 195 1), Carleton (German, 1943' 1945) and McMaster (Fine Arts, 1951'1958). Her books on German art include Goethe's Drawings (1938)

Transformations of God (Barlach's Woodcuts, 1962), Ernst Barlach, Leben im Werk (1972: enlarged English version Ernst Barlach, Life in Work, 1981), Ernst Barlach's Autobiography: A Sel{told Life (translated {rom the German, 1988), will be followed in due course by his eight dramas in translation. In Canada, she is probably best known for her books on her uncle, A. Y. Jackson. These include A.Y.'s Canada (1968) and The Arctic 1927 (editor, 1982), Young A.Y. Jackson (editor, 1982) and One Summer in Quebec/Drawings by A. Y. Jackson .!2ll (1988). She is also preparing the works,inventory of Jackson. Her two autobiographical books are (cant.)

The Jackson paintings given to Carleton as part of The Jack and Frances Barwick Collection form a subject with which I feel very much at home, in many ways. The artist was my uncle, the Barwicks were my friends, and the paintings belong to a period, the 1930s, which is well documented and of interest to many people, not just erudite art historians. Finally, Carleton once gave me a part-time teaching job at a time when it was exactly what I needed, in the mid... 1940s, so I feel a personal bond of benevolence with this special university. To begin with, pour commencer par le commencement, as I believe Voltaire said, an odd situation exists with these oil paintings. There are four landscapes - one larger oil on canvas and three smaller sketches on wood panel. But two of them are on a single panel, one on each side-front and back, or obverse and reverse, or recto and verso, as one wishes. In this case it is not a question of one ttgood" side and one uless good," which my uncle A.Y. might refer to as a ttreject" or a ttdud." When I work at the cataloguing of such ttdoubles," I assign the term recto to the ttbetter" side and verso to the ttlesser" side and give them the same inventory number with ttr." or U v." added. But in this case, as I discovered when I first saw the three hanging in the Tory Building at Carleton on 3 April 1987, the side of the ttdouble" on view was marked in the catalogue as verso and I had to wait until later to see a photo of the recto. There is no doubt here that each is of top calibre. If Carleton wished to bear the cost, considerable, of having the wood panel professionally ttsplit," a practice I as official inventory keeper usually deplore, I believe I would in this case feel comfortable with it, so that everything could be visible at the same time. At least the work is double-framed, hence equally presentable on either side. Both are illustrated here (plates 6 and 7). Next, a brief introduction as to when and how I met Frances and Jack Barwick might be of interest. That took place here in Ottawa in the early 1940s, a relatively colourful time in the capital. In the fall of 1942 I returned to Canada from graduate studies at Harvard and a teaching job at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts (German literature, pay around $1,700 a year, not exactly soul-satisfying). I came to Ottawa to be Assistant to the Director of the National Gallery of Canada, a job I'd been sure would be much more soul-satisfying, but which turned out not to be. So after one year (exactly 365 days) I resigned from the civil service and was taken on by the newly-founded ttCarleton College" begun by Dr. Tory who, when he interviewed me and heard that I was ttMcGill," enquired if I'd been there in 1910 (the year I was born) when good friends of his were teaching at McGill. Dr . Tory was eightysomething by 1943, still going very very strong, so 1910 didn't seem that far back to him. From fall 1943 to spring 1945 I had two good years at Carleton, which at that stage functioned only as a night school, using the Glebe Collegiate

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Greenland Diary 1941 (1983) and Lapland Diary 1945~1946 (1989), Penumbra Press. She has also published The Sky Hangs Low (1986; translated from the Danish of the Greenlander lens Rosing) and edited Victor Tolgesy's Acrobatics (1985).

building as headquarters. Two evenings a week, two hours an evening, I Uinstructed" in reading and translating from German to English for a highly varied mix of adults, many of them in the armed forces (even one Colonel) preparing to go overseas to occupied Germany (which had, of course, first to be conquered and ufreed"). In the next room was the Russian instructor, with a great booming voice, so when my class was weary of strong and weak verbs and Russian laughter we used to sing lusty German folksongs (this in the midst of war!) - always of a non .. belligerent nature, needless to say. Some of my students were music teachers so we had two ..part harmonies and great fun, maybe even more than they have at Carleton nowadays ... I have always found my adult evening classes, be it German or Art History, (McMaster 1951 ..58) a deeply satisfying group. The upay" at Carleton scarely kept me going (under $100 a month, as I recall), but my daytimes were free; I rented a roomy, ramshackle office as studio on Bank Street just north of Albert, west side (all gone now), rent $20 a month (wasn't permitted to live there, though). I ran a couple of weekly painting classes for the Women's University Club and they flourished most satisfactorily, eventually being taken over in 1945 by Henri Masson. I also made good progress on writing my Ph.D. thesis on my German sculptor..writer, Ernst Barlach, and - most important of all- I felt I could call my soul my own. It was during this agreeable bohemian interval, before I went off to do post..war relief work in Finnish Lapland for two years, that I had the pleasure of meeting the Barwicks, a couple roughly my own age, I should imagine, maybe a bit older. Ottawa was well..stocked with interesting residents, most of them here temporarily on work connected with the war, scholarly refugees from Nazi Germany and occupied France, university people in ((Intelligence," and Canadian Uwar artists" for whom I had looked after the necessary art supplies while I was at the National Gallery. And needless to say, Uncle A.Y. was often there in the thick of all this. Very central in the artistic and musical activities were the Barwicks. Frances was a harpsichordist of professional calibre, though she did not give many concerts; she studied part..time with the great Wanda Landowska, I recall, a highly temperamental procedure. Frances, born in Toronto, was an unforgettably aristocratic..looking person, very tall and slender, dignified and reserved in public, utterly cosmopolitan in her upbringing and tastes. Jack, whom she had met and married in Paris, was a totally different type, and a great foil for his wife. A jovial Englishman who rather fancied himself as a U man about town," with a great sense of humour, Jack made a wonderful social host in their hospitable apartment on Cooper Street, just off Metcalfe near Somerset. In 1943 to 1945 I lived nearby in two rented rooms as a sort of independent little Uflat" in the large top..floor apartment of my friend, Dr. Rachel Haight, who

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shared with other doctors the fine old house on Metcalfe Street, later torn down in order to make a parking lot. I remember one vividly imaginative party Rachel gave (with some help from me) along surrealistic lines. She concocted an invitation to a dozen or so friends to (tcome and Dali with us," appropriately clad of course. As a medical doctor, our hostess had herself totally wrapped in one huge white gauze bandage, even her hands and feet (she could still ambulate, somehow). Only her face was free, anointed with something (yolk of egg?) to which crumbs, rolled oats, etc. adhered. (My memory may just have embroidered this, after forty years.) But the hits of the evening were the Barwicks, who truly stole the show: Frances, with her unusual slim height of nearly six feet, came as a standing lamp, dressed in a long finely pleated white silk dress, plain from top to toe, somehow Greek looking. Towering over her head was a tall white parchment lampshade that with its vertical (tpleats" seemed to add two feet to her height. The electric cord from the lamp was slung loosely downward around her as she moved with stately grace, miles above ordinary mortals - including husband Jack. The latter stressed all possible horizontal aspects he could. Looking like a jovial red..faced English country squire, he wore a wide.. shouldered tweed jacket. As a scarf or (tstock" he had a red wool sock jutting forth. His bulky jodhpurs stuck out at the sides, and his high leather riding boots gleamed with fresh polish. But it was his ears that caught the most attention. Jack had been to the Byward market that morning and had bought a huge pair of pig's ears, freshly killed ones, rosy, hairy and all. These he had sewed to earmuffs so that they projected grotesquely, making him look like a rollicking buffoon from a Shakespeare comedy, and of course he played the part to the full, laughing hilariously and chasing various people . . . but not Frances. As I recall, I was a sort of Snake Lady, in a long full ..skirted sheer black dress, with serpents (adhesive tape doubled and pinched to curve them, and painted gold) swinging around my skirt and up out of my front, and a large spider hanging above my built...up hair...do. One lady, beautifully statuesque, had been painted at the National Film Board to look like a marble sculpture, all dead white, with a huge crack running from neck down. (She wore a dress, of course, but very decolletee.) She came with Eugene Kash who had on a tuxedo but no shirt underneath. How can one remember such trivial things, scarcely worthy to recount to art lovers! But they show today's maybe duller world the sort of fun Carleton ((professors" could have at the start of their academic career. By the time I returned to Canada in 1950 or so, the Barwicks had moved to an attractive old heritage home on Range Road. After Jack's death, Frances changed over to a double apartment farther along the same street in Sandy Hill. Here one apartment was for living and social activities; the other she needed as an office, because she had taken on an immensely

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responsible artistic task - the distribution of the art estate of her brother, Douglas Duncan of Toronto. I had the good fortune to meet that memorable personage, immensely thin, even taller than Frances, in Toronto in the late 1930s, when an art student friend took me to his Picture Loan Society. This was begun in 1936 and soon became an important focal point for younger artists, whose works were shown, rented and sometimes sold (often to Duncan himself). Of affluent uestablishment" family lineage, yet anything but self.·promoting, casual, almost frugal in his ways, Douglas spent a good deal of time in Europe, with an apartment in Paris until 1939. He gradually turned from his uprofessional hobby" of book-binding in elegant leather and gold to the collecting of modern Canadian art works he really liked, showing excellent judgment and taste. At the time of his death he left a collection of well over a thousand works (1250 the actual count), as well as a glorious disarray of paintings and graphics in his Picture Loan Society, unfinished ubusiness" with artists, etc., with all of which his sister Frances had to cope. She did so thoroughly and thoughtfully. Assisted by astute legal advice, she had generous numbers of top-class works of art distributed all over Canada, to smaller public galleries as well as all the major ones. Nine came in 1970 from The Douglas Duncan Collection to Carleton University. The three pieces by A.Y. Jackson, however, were from Jack and Frances' own collection and were acquired after Frances' death in 1984. I can recall very clearly seeing the Jackson canvas of Grace Lake with the red mountain ash berries at Frances Barwick's place on Range Road, hanging among her personal treasures, and I murmured UO yes, I've seen that one before." It is marked on the stretcher as having been owned by US.F. Duncan, Toronto," (Frances' father) so was a family piece and especially dear to her. The Picture Loan Society records mark it as acquired in 1944. In all, from 1936-1947 about fifty-three Jackson canvases and thirty oil sketches are recorded. Seven have HGrace Lake" in their title. All the Jackson works at Carleton are autumn scenes, richly sombre, and they look particularly handsome together. Two, the canvas (plate 4) and the single sketch (plate 1), are from a region in Northern Ontario that became a favourite with A.Y. Jackson for fall sketching in the 1930s, while the double-sided oil (plates 6 and 7) was done up at Great Bear Lake on Jackson's first visit (the first visit by any artist) in 1938, when he flew in to Port Radium as guest of the Eldorado Mining Company. The canvas of Grace Lake, dated 1940, is slightly later than the Great Bear double sketch of 1938, while the single sketch, Grey Day, October, unplaced and undated but not exhibited until 1941, may therefore also be 1940. But the last-mentioned has several features in common with works belonging to a few years earlier; so for a simpler balance in the present essay, the works from Northern Ontario can be discussed together, followed by the Arctic double picture, all on the basis of available documents.

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A.Y. Jackson's life pattern as an artist shows a definite geographical and seasonal regularity, almost like a migratory bird, impelled by the forces of nature. Once he was able to settle down to paint full ..time, and had found a certain territory that suited him, he tended to return there at the same season year after year, for a stretch of a decade or more. Already by the beginning of January, in mid .. winter, he would begin to think of ((Lower Quebec," the St. Lawrence River area downstream from Quebec City, for his annual winter/spring major visit, taking forty or fifty sketching panels with him and staying until all (or almost all) of them were painted. Then it was back to his studio in Toronto, always via Montreal, his native hearth, where most of his relatives still lived, and where he had a faithful circle of artist friends with whom he kept in constant touch, as an artist and as a friend. In the summertime it was almost without fail his beloved Georgian Bay, where he likewise had many close friends and one or two relatives strategically located, so that he could move from one hospitable island and summer cottage to another, enjoying aquatic activities, camping and canoeing and fitting in the occasional oil sketch. (The latter hardly ever dated and often from the same area, which complicates life for the poor inventory keeper.) For a number of years he used to pay an annual early September visit to old friends in the Brockville region of the St. Lawrence, with nice ((southern Ontario" farms, historic churches, green glades, etc. fitted in after a cheery picnic lunch. But in the autumn, once he had been ((imprinted" through Tom Thomson and his other Toronto artist friends, it was the Hnorthern wilderness" of Ontario that claimed him - the woods, the lakes and streams and rocky hills; he liked not only the scarlet and rose.. red maples but ((the stretches of muskeg, outcrops of rock ... [with] little soil for agriculture. In the autumn the whole country glows with colour; the huckleberry and the pincherry turn crimson, the mountain ash is loaded with red berries, the poplar and the birch turn yellow and the tamarac greenish gold." 1 During the 1920s, the Group of Seven members favoured the western part of ((Algoma," up behind Sault Ste. Marie, the bolder ones led by Harris then working their way along Lake Superior as far as the Slate Islands. But by 1930 A.Y. seems to have discovered a closer, more ((private" area for his annual late fall visit in October, even November. This can be loosely called the La Cloche area in the provincial electoral district of Algoma..Manitoulin (the Hfeds" still name it simply Algoma, maybe Algoma East; A. Y. seems to prefer the sonorous Algoma by itself.) The La Cloche hills run in a crescent..shaped band along the shore of the North Channel, which is divided by far ..stretching Manitoulin Island from the main part of Lake Huron, then along the Georgian Bay and around

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the bend down toward Parry Sound. La Cloche River and Lake are in the westerly part, south of the town of Massey; Whitefish Falls and nearby Willisville (not even on the road map any more) are south of Espanola, while further to the east, bordering on Georgian Bay, is Killarney and its provincial park. In this area, which A.Y. found especially paintable, it is rather difficult to locate all of uhis" lakes by name: Nellie Lake is large enough to be on the map; but Gem Lake and Howrey Lake and Creek cannot be far off. Grace Lake, tteast of Nellie," is said to lie along the western edge of Killarney Park, and to be a mile and a half long and a quarter mile wide. The La Cloche (Uthe bell") hills have an unusual and distinctive shape. They do look like big metal bells with a generously rounded top. They are formed of white quartzite that shows as shining white patches and strips, deceptively like snow. The vegetation seems to curl and curve around the rock outcrops in a restless, almost writhing way. The hills can rise abruptly to a considerable height, great for mountain climbs and distant vistas, even as far as Lake Huron, they say. 2 It was another property of the La Cloche area that attracted A.Y.'s good friend Keith MacIver from the Hebrides. 3 The La Cloche range is rich in minerals, especially with enough rumours of gold to lure many a prospector, including good canny Keith, ((always staking claims for other people" said A.Y., but always hoping to strike it rich and own his own gold mine some fine day. A lean, sinewy, silent man with a twinkle in his eye and always a helping hand, Keith took over Tom Thomson's half.. derelict shack behind the Studio Building in Toronto and rebuilt it solid and firm. A. Y. used to have breakfast there with Keith, and often other meals when he was not invited out. He greatly enjoyed travelling to the Algoma area with his prospector friend, who used Willisville as his address but lived several miles away by canoe or scow. Keith would guide A. Y. to where he wanted to set up camp, then leave him to paint, only dropping in occasionally. I myself have watched Keith up there carry a hundred..pound pack on his back, or a whole canoe balanced on his head along rough steep trails. The two or three times I was taken camping with them in the 1930s, I learned to admire Keith and like him very much. The earliest record that I have been able to find in my growing but still far from complete Jackson Inventory for a sketching visit to the La Cloche area is 1931. As A.Y.'s works were seldom dated at the time, and his titles are mostly along the general line of Carleton's Grey Day, October, (plate 1) any securely dated work is a help. An oil sketch, Evening, Trout Lake, dated September 1931, auctioned in 1982, has rounded hills with whitish stripes, and the canvas bequeathed by Vincent Massey to the National Gallery as Northern Lake, November4 was, according to Charlie Hill of the National Gallery, originally The Lake (Howrey Creek), November 1931, and this is in the ((La Cloche."s

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Between this 1931 start and 1940, there were numerous autumn trips to the Grace Lake region as well as two in spring (1938 and 1939). The National Film Board used this background for filming A. Y. at work in autumn, in Canadian Landscape, filmed in 1940/1941, the time around which the Carleton canvas of the Mountain Ash was done. But there is one period for which an unusual amount of precise documentation has become available, and that is October 1933. Supported by exact dating of one sketch, unfortunately not seen, but named Grace Lake, Algoma, dated October 1933 (auctioned October 1973), and encouraged by a sort of twin sister to Grey Day, October, with the same bell-shaped hill and same rich sombre tones, titled La Cloche Hills, Ontario, we can comfortably place the Carleton sketch at Grace Lake, Algoma in October 1933. 6 There is also detailed verbal documentation for the 1933 autumn which consists of a whole series of letters written by A. Y. from the camp at Grace Lake to a dear and special friend in Montreal, Miss Anne Savage. Her niece, Anne MacDermot McDougall, published in 1977 the biography of her maternal aunt, Anne Savage: The Story of a Canadian Painter (Harvest House, Montreal, 1977). In a strange sort of parallel harmony, we two nieces, each charged with the artistic estate of a noted relative, combined our ((findings," Anne McDougall of, among other things, a whole basketful of A. Y. 's letters over the years to HDear Anne," while I sorted out packets of Anne Savage's letters to HDear Alex," found as I cleared out my uncle's studio apartment on MacLaren Street in Ottawa, which he had to give up after his illness in 1968. Needless to say, we two nieces felt diffident about breaking into the privacy of two such very private persons. But the multitude of letters contains such significant passages that give insight into both as artists, and to their lives and surroundings and Hphilosophy of life" over many years - to some extent right up to the 1970s - that carefully selected quotations make a unique contribution to our own world. 7 Those who find such a long-lasting relationship of special interest will greatly enjoy Anne McDougall's book, written of course from the perspective of her aunt's life and career. For the present treatment of only two works from the La Cloche area, and to throw light upon the manner of life and state of mind at that one special stage, the letters that A.Y. Jackson wrote to Anne Savage have had minor deletions made here and there, without disturbing the lively flow of the Hstory." The year 1933 marks the stage of their closest contact-she in her midthirties and in mid-career as an art teacher at Baron Byng High School in Montreal, in charge of the family's large home in upper Westmount, with an elderly, frail mother to look after and largely to support, and with a keen interest in making progress in her painting work, preparing canvases for exhibition with the newly founded Canadian Group of Painters. Anne Savage's close Montreal friends were the artists Prudence Heward, Sarah

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Robertson, Lilias Newton, Kathleen Morris, Nora Collyer, all of whom are often mentioned in the letters back and forth. While A.Y. most certainly kept many of Anne's letters, as he assured her he would, there is a woeful gap in them at exactly this late 1933 period. She, however, seems to have treasured his carefully - except once or twice, when, whether by chance or by decision not to keep certain exchanges, ones are missing which we nieces would have given much to ushare." Still, the letters tell the story of what camping in the Killarney Ontario wilderness was like and how painting progressed from day to day, thus illuminating this one month of an artist's life. They also create a personal dimension for appreciating the Carleton University works. Jackson's state of mind when he set out on his autumn 1933 sketching expedition to the La Cloche Hills was positive and enterprising. He had just written to Anne Savage saying, among many other things, that if she would be his wife he would try to do everything in his power to make her happy - a modest but definite proposal that took the fifty .. year ..old ttfree soul" considerable courage to make. Anne's reply, alas now lost, must have indicated that she was needed at home, due to her mother's poor health, and that they would have to wait, but that her feelings for him were not the least in doubt. Their letters, never anything but UDear Anne" and UDear Alex," seem to have been exchanged almost by return mail, his to busy Montreal, hers to the tiny village post office of Willisville, which was ten miles by canoe and portage from where Keith MacIver lived and another four miles up to A.Y.'s camp site in the high hills. jackson's Grace Lake letters reflect his joyful attachment and stress his grand plans for their future together as artists. This particular group of frequent letters likewise provides more immediate and personal insight into his daily life and work and the world around him than any other of the multitude of records at present available can show. After these many years, and without offensive prying, we receive a vivid picture of this Artist in Action, the most rugged and most productive of all Canada's landscape painters. These aspects are quoted in extenso in the following, accompanied by a sampling of visual products from the La Cloche area principally, of course, the two fine oil paintings now in the Carleton University Art Collection. Once A. Y. was up at Grace Lake, the constant postal heading u c/ o Keith McIver, Willisville, Ont." need not be repeated.

I On Sunday, 25 September 1933, A.Y. had written to Anne from the Studio Building in Toronto: HI am going up to the Killarney country on

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Wednesday to join Keith McIver for a month. The Peppers have taken my studio for October. Florence [Wyle] is going up with me, to stay about ten days, she wants to paint."8 c/o Keith McIver, Willisville, Onto /Oct. 3 Dear Anne Florence shouted out this morning at 7.30 u many happy returns A. Y.," as this is my birthday. She and Keith made a cranberry pie with a big A. Y. on it. So even up here miles from nowhere we preserve some of the gentle amenities of civilization. We - Keith, Florence, myself and the cat - are living in a cabin by a lake. Keith's claims are all around us, they don't look very impressive, just a vein of whitish quartz that they have unearthed through the bush here and there and blasted out for assays. You can see nothing but white rock, but Keith says there is gold in it, and is perfectly confident. We live very snugly. My only job is to cut down a poplar tree every morning to keep the big stove going. We burn green wood, it lasts longer, so I am gradually pushing the poplar forest back from the cabin. Rabbits and partridge browse around us, as though it was a farm yard. The painting is going slowly, the autumn color is not very bright, and is not likely to be now, though we have had sharp frosts. Later I hope to go up to Nellie Lake and camp. It is too far to get to and work in a day. It is full of wolves but I guess they will just go on howling. Florence is painting away, and having a good rest too, which she needs. No mail since we arrived. It comes through a settler named Bousquet who gets into Willisville now and then, and we get to Bousquet three miles away by trail and canoe .... Well Keith has washed all the breakfast dishes since I started this, and my poplar tree is waiting. Florence is having breakfast in bed. Here I don't even know when your birthday is, Anne! Well may the bon dieu bless you dear. Ever sincerely Alex Keith says he doesn't know you as well as he would like to, and sends his best wishes. Florence sends her love. She says she washed her face this morning specially to kiss me many happy returns. Cheerio!

'4

Figure 1 WYLE, Florence K ei,h's Cabin, Leach Lake, 1933 Reprod uctio n courtesy of the Art Ga llery o f O ntario.

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Author's note: By an unusual stroke of luck, a dated oil sketch by the sculptor Florence Wyle turned up at a Sotheby's auction held in Toronto on May 17th, 1989 and went for only $412.00, unbeknownst to this author, alas. I am grateful to Sotheby's for sending me a black and white photo of the work (Figure 1). Of major interest is the fact that Florence Wyle put on the verso the exact title and date Keith's Cabin, Leoch Lake, October 6, 1933: this coincides with a time when A. Y. was there too. It came to auction via the relative who inherited the art collection of Keith and Edith MacIver, on the death of the latter. But it was given to them only in 1964 so it can be assumed that Florence Wyle treasured it herself for many years. This factual straight-on rendering of Keith's Cabin, Leoch Lake (first record for this inventory-keeper of that place name) conveys the impression of a loyal record of a homely plain wooden shack which a spartan miner-prospector put up for himself and his occasional friends en route to more picturesque sites high in the hills of La Cloche. There was likely a second storey ttsleeping gallery" at the far end inside, like that in Tom Thomson's shack, and in A.Y.'s first studio in the Studio Building on Severn Street in Toronto. Keith's cabin had a handy iron stove for which A. Y. chopped a poplar tree a day when he was there. Keith used the stove to bake fresh bread, pies and cakes to take up to the solitary artist when he was in his stoveless tent on Grace Lake. ttHe's a prince" wrote the grateful A. Y. So many persons, since famous in the annals of Canadian art, went in and out of that humble door in Florence Wyle's sketch that it is a pleasure, actually a privilege, to see after these many years, what Keith's cabin ttreally looked like".

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II Sunday Oct. 8 (Grace Lake) Dear Anne, Your two letters and the cheerful flash lamp were waiting for me when I went into Bousquet on my way down from Grace Lake the other evening. I could just give you a big hug, Anne, it's a great old world even if it is raining on my little tent, and trying to put out the fire in my swell marble fireplace. Weare camping on Grace Lake, four miles from Keith's cabin. It took most of Thursday to get up here by canoe and trail, and get the two tents up. They are in the woods about a hundred feet back from the lake. Trailing arbutus is growing all around us with the buds all ready to burst forth when the snow goes next spring. There are red maples all over the hills which rise all around the lake. It is going to be difficult to avoid being obvious, and doing scenic stuff. It needs wild weather to go with it, boisterous and unruly, and a spirit to rise to it. Florence is going home Tuesday, and Keith has to do more work on his claims, so I will be up here by my lonesome. I won't mind that if I can keep working. Thanks for your lovely letter, and you are a very satisfactory girl, to say the very least that one could, and don't you wear well, ... no cobwebs on your soul .... A burst of rain on the tent and a shower of leaves spinning down. The flash lamp is very welcome, we had only one, and this one paralyzes the rabbits, and puts the stars to shame .... Well I have to make thirty sketches before my conscience will let me leave here. The school of 1914 have to hold their end up. I am going to walk home with you from Baron Byng every day while I am clambering over these miles of hills. And so the best of good wishes dear, and may the bon dieu keep on blessing you. As ever Alex

'7

Figure 2 JACKSON, Alexander Young Hour little ten t," 1933

Enclosed with this October 8th letter to Anne Savage fro m Grace Lake was a pencil drawing, "our little tent" (figure 2).9 It is always a matte r o f rejoicing for th e beleaguered inve nto ry- keeper wh en a key d rawing can be dated exactl y. The unusually lo ng p roportio n of this little drawing, and the fai nt ind icatio n of a vertical fo ld for the right-hand third , show that A.Y . divided a sheet of drawing paper (one ho le shows at the lower left) and folded it to fit into the e nvelope of his le tter , likely do ing the pencil sketch after the paper was ready. (It was no do ubt An ne Savage who wrapped it carefull y in p ink tissue paper and kept it with "Alex's letters.") The "our" in the pencilled title o n the reverse ind icates tha t both A .Y. a nd Keith shared the tent as living q uarters whenever Keith stayed overnight. But the p lural "tents" in the letter shows that a second te nt was taken along and p ut up immediately for use as a storage space.' o When o ne thinks of the accumulatio n of wet oil sketches over the days and weeks that had to stand o r lie somewhe re safe to dry, not to mentio n other equipment, food, a nd so fo rth , it is good it was no t all in with two active energetic men and their sleeping bags, etc. The storage tent can be seen in a dou ble-sided sheet of d rawings (plates 2 and 3) which turned up as I worked th ro ugh A.Y.'s d rawings with him,

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back in the 1960s. cCLooks like Grace Lake!" said A.Y. when I showed him the cheerfully casual recto of the drawing with the lake off to the right, and the small tent held upright by an outside ridge pole attached to some handy trees. (The bigger Utwo. .man tent" of figure 1 has four guy... ropes on either side, and its pole is under the roof line, projecting at either top end, supported after a fashion by poles lashed to it.) The verso tent drawing has A.Y.'s number system written in here and there: u9" being very dark for the closer hills, u6" fairly dark for distance and reflection in the us bl[ue]" lake, while the tent (as U3" and U2") is so light that it may have been an evening scene with a light inside. On the first trip no lamps, either coal...oil or acetylene, were taken along, no stove for inside the tent, not even a Primus - only the uwhite marble fireplace" outside the bigger tent, with its primitive cooking arrangement and a spare tin or two for water. There is no sign of a fireplace outside the smaller tent. I I

[Editor's note: Since writing the above, Dr. Groves has donated the uLooks Like Grace Lake" double...drawing (Inventory NJG 2095R and 2095V) to The Carleton University Art Collection.] A. Y.'s October 8th letter to Anne Savage mentions red maples all over the hills, so it is a suitable juncture at which to fit in Carleton's Grey Day, October (plate 1), oil on panel, 26.6 x 34.2 cm, and signed lower right in the diminutive capitals typical of the 1920s, that yielded later to larger capitals. The fact that the artist marked NOT FOR SALE on the verso would show either that he had held it for possible use in a canvas or to use as a personal gift. Also on the verso is the inscription UR.C.A .... Exhibition/Feb. 1941;" but Jackson may have submitted a sketch from a date much earlier than 1940... 1941. Grey Day, October fits better into the early thirties, preferably the bad weather month of October 1933. The Picture Loan Society records show a canvas, Grey Day, October, as in stock in 1944, 1946 and 1947, not sold. The characteristic ubell...shaped" dome of the La Cloche mountain, with its curving quartzite rock formation, dominates the centre, flanked by lower hills of the same range, and supported diagonally by the dark tree trunks blackened from some earlier forest fire, the whole forming a balanced, almost tapestry...like, design. A broad band of rich autumnal colour rolls across the middleground - yellow poplar, red maple, orange... gold tamarack. The sombre tones of the upper section and the sweeping foreground make an effective foil, without danger of being mere Uscenic stuff." The uburst of rain and the shower of leaves" help provide the uwild boisterous and unruly" weather, and the artist's spirit has obviously Urisen to it," as he says in the letter.

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Plate 2 JACKSON, Alexander Young ((Look~ Like Grace Lake" c. 1933

Plate 3 JACKSON, Alexander Young Tent at Grace La"e, c. 1933

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III Sunday Oct. 15th Dear Anne Sunday night, Keith blew in just before supper so we had our bacon and eggs together, and he is staying for the night. We escorted Florence to Little Current on Friday, it was a glorious day, brilliant sunlight all day. We got back too late to take the trail to Grace Lake, so stayed at Bousquets. They are a kind outfit, farmers, miners, guides, anything. Mrs. Bousquet has never been to Grace Lake in the eleven years they have lived here, and only as far as Toronto once in her life. If they get their mine going they will enjoy life for a while. At Willisville your letter and parcel awaited me, and on the way home the other letter had arrived. I am glad you didn't tear them up .... I ate one of your chocolates today on top of a big hill overlooking Nellie Lake. It was not much of a sketching day; this country needs strong lighting, or hard distances. When it is soft it looks too much like scenery .... 12 I enclose a typical Lawren Harris letter, which you can return to Toronto later. The bigger your canvases are the better there are never enough big things in our shows. The wolves are behaving very well and have not been making any noise at night lately. The only dangerous animals up here are bears, and they generally keep out of the way. The yellow leaves are still hanging on despite a hard frost the other night. The little blue hare bell is the last flower to hold out. Well it's time to crawl into the sleeping bag. Keith is cutting down a couple of panels for me that were too big. He is always busy. No you must not send any more presents dear, just your letters, they are worth all the wealth in the world. Good night and the best of good wishes. As ever, Alex

IV Oct 18 Dear Anne All snug in the little tent. It has been a cold day, but bright mostly and I made two good sketches.

2I

Last night I had just finished cooking a vegetable dinner, when I heard Keith calling in the dark, and soon he appeared, bringing some pork chops and some apples. So it was a real bang up meal, with the apples fried to go with the chops. Monday night was a brute, wild wind squalls and rain all night. But the tent is in a little grove of poplars, and so it just blew and it blew, and couldn't blow us down. Tonight I am trying one of our old Lake Superior stunts. 13 I found an old tin pail, and have filled it with hot embers from the fire outside, and the tent is as warm as toast. I went down to Bousquets yesterday and found your parcel waiting for me. I had some of the dates for lunch today. So things are going very nicely, just a few more days like today and 1 will not be ashamed to go home .... About six more sketches here and I will move down to Howrey Lake. 14 I saw some things there of a different character, the day we took Florence out. Then I may end up by three or four days at Blind River and take the train home from there .... Keith's sleeping bag and other stuff is piled up in a corner of the tent and by candle light they make a marvellous range of mighty hills, the biggest one being a shadow thrown on the wall of the tent. Thursday night. An awful day, rain and wild winds since before dawn. A drab colourless discouraging day. I got a fire going and made porridge, and kept the fire going all day, by running out every two or three hours and chopping logs, and piling them on. Made a sketch from an earlier note, managed to tear a big hole in my pants on a stick, and had to make a patch on it. During a lull I fried some bacon and eggs for supper, and now at ten o'clock the rain seems to have let up, and here's hoping tomorrow will be fine .... I hope your canvases are finished. This has been a punk year for me in painting, but next year the show will open in Montreal no doubt, and we will both make them sit up. Well cheerio and good night dear. As ever Alex

v On 22 October 1933, A.Y. wrote one Grace Lake letter to me in Montreal, of a general nature, but with a nice description of the lake itself, and fine tribute to Keith MacIver, as well as bravado banter about

22

the rain, to show everything in a positive way to the young niece who yearned to be there sketching with him. (The following year I was, in the summer.) The letter, written in pencil, is postmarked HWillisville, Onto Oct. 25": Grace Lake, no post office, no nothing. Oct. 22nd [1933 added in ink] ... Unky Punk is in his tent, with a tin pail full of cinders to keep him warm, and a little candle to give him light, and some balsam boughs to sit on. Outside his tent the fire is crackling, it's a nice sound, you never feel quite alone with it. It's a large marble fireplace; these hills are all made of it and it burns in any kind of weather - particularly when it is pouring rain; it eats up rain like coal oil. You just put some red pine on, and it roars. If it roars too fast you feed it green poplar and it goes slower. If you want nice red embers to put in the tin pail you give it maple. I'm all alone, but a friend named McIver is four miles away, working on some mining claims, and every few days just around dusk he blows in, and spends the night. He generally brings some of his home...made bread or a pie. He's a prince. He hacks down the forest and blows up the rocks with dynamite and rushes canoes over portages. He's some boy. I merely make sketches. I have a box full of them. It's hard work getting them with so much rain and cold wind. Grace Lake is surrounded with big rocky hills; there are several little rocky islands in it. Your Dad would love to spend a summer here. There is one little lake right up on top of the hills, with muskeg all around it, just full of pitcher plants. I believe there are wolves and bears around, but they mind their own business, just like me. The mice are much more dangerous. I have to keep my grub hung up on the ridge pole of the tent. I feel them running over my sleeping bag at night, and I turn my flashlight on them and they go like hell. Well, such is life at Grace Lake, my dear .... I have to be in Toronto Nov. 1st as our big show opens the 3rd. Give my love to all the family and I hope everything is going happily with you. Cheerio and best wishes. Ever affectionately Unky Punk

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There was no change in Grace Lake with its "big rocky hills ... and little rocky islands" between the time A. Y. wrote in 1933 and the time in 1940 when he painted Carleton's Mountain Ash, Grace Lake (plate 4). He had been up there in May 1938 and briefly in August 1939. This is obv io usly a fall scene. The leaves are still on the delicate mountain ash tree whose fragi le, feather y prominence seems rather unusual in Jackson's work, with its strongly stroked diagonal foreground, gleaming lake surface broken by the wind-blown pines, and severel y simplified background. This canvas was selected by Jackson for the National Gallery of Canada's exhibition , 300 Years of Canadian Art, in 1967 .

Plate 4 JACKSON, Alexander Young Mountain Ash, Grace Lake, 1940

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VI Sunday, Oct. 22nd Dear Anne ... I am writing this by the light of a little candle. The fire is burning merrily out in front. I have been out all day, and made one good sketch, the second one was a dud, it turned cold and windy. Keith came up Friday night and as Saturday was a brute of a day he did not go back until this morning. He chopped up nearly a square mile of forest, and left me supplied with enough wood until I go. We thought we were going to be flooded out with the rain, but our little spot seems to drain well. I found some pitcher plants which I will try to send for your Baron Byng kids to draw. I found a little lake away up in the hills, it was just surrounded by pitcher plants. I almost ran into a deer today. There are wolves, a great many around, Keith tells me. By the time you get this, your canvases will be off to the big show, here's luck. I would like to have seen Paul Robeson, he must be a great individual. The trees are nearly leafless, just little patches here and there in sheltered spots. In some ways it's finer, more severe, but it needs fine weather, it's no good in mushy [sic] light. Is there any chance of you coming up to see the show, you could come on a weekend ticket, and the Browns would be delighted to look after you. I expect to get down Nov 1st, so the wrath of Mr. Harris will not descend on me. My kindest to your mother and best wishes, good night dear. As ever AlexiS

VII Oct 24th Dear Anne The north wind doth blow and today we had snow all day long. There is a crescent moon shining none too brightly, and I am rather suspicious of it. It is going to be a cold night, but I have my pail full of embers, and it's warm for the present. I tried to make a sketch, but the paint got full of snow and I had to quit.

This art business is a game isn't it. You try and try, and then wonder if you are on the right track anyway, and if it wouldn't be better to follow in the footsteps of Picasso and Matisse and those boys and sit around cafes talking theory or the philosophy of art. With us the proportion of talk is too great for the amount of work. Well you and I will change all that and go around painting like a couple of kids. No mail for over a week now, but I think there will be some tomorrow, Keith is coming up. I think the Bousquets will have taken in the pitcher plants [to the post office]. Put them in a shallow bowl full of water and charcoal in the bottom of it. I put in some trailing arbutus but I am afraid the flowers will not come out this year. I am going to get into my little sleeping bag and read, it's the only place to keep warm, and they are a blessing. Well good night dear, and a million blessings on your head. Cheerio. As ever Alex

VIII Oct 25 [likely put into same envelope as the previous] The moon and stars are shining and the wild geese honking overhead. We are in our sleeping bags. Keith arrived at supper time with your two letters. It has been a lovely day, and I got a good sketch and a so so one. Sorry your canvases had to be rushed, but I expect they will be all right. Everything frozen up. This morning I made coffee a new way. The coffee tin was about frozen solid, so I just put the coffee on the ice and boiled it. Life isn't too bad, and when you get two letters from the sweetest girl in the world, what do a little snow and wind matter. Will be moving back to the cabin in a couple of days. Cheerio and good night, dear. As ever Alex

Somewhere along at this late stage, after snow had fallen and departure loomed imminent, would be a suitable place for the dark, autumnal, incredibly haunting oil sketch (plate 5) which recently, with the help of good active friends, came into the possession of the present writer, who happens to have a Uthing" about tents-an avuncular inheritance, no doubt. 16 uCamp at Grace Lake, about 1935" is written by A.Y. in pencil on the verso. The casual late handwriting and the indefinite uabout," as well as the inked A Y JACKSON on the obverse, are far later than the signature on the c. 1933 Grey Day, October, for instance. Obviously the oil sketch of the tent was not signed at the time of its execution, and left the artist's possession long after it was painted. Moreover, the tonality of Grey Day, October and Camp at Grace Lake is very similar and both fit well into October 1933.

Camp at Grace lAke's board (26.2 x 34.6 cm - solid wood, not plywood) has darkened on the front to a deep tan, which shows through warmly in many places. The work must have been tossed off in half an hour or so, with masterly looseness in its delicate verticals and horizontals. All the tones are muted earth colours, which A. Y. favoured in any case, used here almost exclusively: umber, ochre, Indian red, sienna, no blue detectable except maybe minimally a gentle cobalt to cool down the greys of the tent and snow. None of the vivid light~dark contrast indicated in the double~drawing of the same tent~shape as u2~3" against u9"s and u6"s; here everything can be put in the range us ~ 6 ~ 7." The only real colour is in the big leaves that still hang to the thin young tree in the foreground; they are Indian red and yellow ochre, greyed down, maybe those oak leaves he writes about to Anne Savage. Man~the~artist's presence in nature, indicated by the dynamic geometric diamond shape of the tent, is passing and of short duration. The logs piled across the foreground, never used for the fireplace, are being covered by the silent snow. Here today and gone tomorrow, says the tent. But the handiwork of the artist connected with that tent is of longer duration: the works - and the words - from up there are still here. So let it snow ....

[Editor's note: Since writing the above, Dr. Groves has donated Camp at Grace Lake to The Carleton University Art Collection.]

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Plate 5 JACKSON, Alexander Young Camp at Grace Lake, c. 1933

IX c/o Bousquets, Sunday, Oct. 29th Dear Anne The little camp at Grace Lake is deserted. The trailing arbutus is covered with snow, and the marble fireplace is black and cold, and even the oak trees are bare of leaves . . . except the little secret ones that grow the big leaves I sent you. It has been a hard week for campers, snow, wind and cold, the coldest October weather for years. The lakes froze up and as this is all canoe country, no one can move. Mr. Bousquet came in from a mine they are working on about four miles from here, and said they were living on bread and tea, as they could not get their supplies in. Grace Lake did not freeze, but there was a large sheet of ice in the centre of it when I got up yesterday morning. Keith came up in the afternoon, and we horsed all the dunnage down here, and hope to get out tomorrow morning. It rained last night, and the boys think the ice will be melted. As we were sitting around the stove last night, after a good meal eaten off a table, some mail came in, a prospector had got in. Your letter and one from Frank Brown and a lot of papers, Punch, C.S. Monitor, Northern Miner, all sorts of stuff. I am sorry about your mother, and hope it will not prove to be serious, and that she will be stronger after it. But you will be anxious until it is all over and she is home again. I will phone you some evening and tell you all about the exhibition. I have twenty-seven sketches, about fifteen others were scraped out. It was as bad an October as I ever knew, and yet it was fun. Keith wants me to buy a place on Grace Lake and put up a shack, will you come up? It might become a northern headquarters for the members of the Canadian Group. If Keith's mine goes ahead we can do a lot of things. Would you like a little car to go to school in? This country has been prospected and holes dug into [it] for thirty years, until it got a bad name, mostly through the crookedness of various mining promoters. Bousquet has been working here for eighteen years, doing enough farming to live on, and plugging away with his claim. That is a lesson to artists: eighteen years with no notice taken of him or his work, and cheerfully going on working. Mrs. Bousquet is a fine type, and the four boys brought up to

29

be farmers, miners or hunters. Next week you have to wear a red shirt or hat or you will be shot for a deer. Well with luck I will get two days in Blind River. Keith is going to motor me over there tomorrow, it is seventy-five miles west, towards the Soo. And then Toronto to see what the boys are up to. I am glad you got the pitcher plants so quickly. Your letters up here have just made me so happy that any virtue to be found in the work is due to you. Le Bon Dieu bless you, dear. Ever sincerely Alex No shack was ever built on Grace Lake for Alex and Anne, or even for umembers of the Canadian Group," or later for anybody else. The milelong, narrow lake with its Ulittle islands" still stands absolutely solitary, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources in Espanola, recently consulted by my cousins in nearby Massey. Apart from passing hikers, Grace Lake remains alone and empty. All to the good, some of us say. Empty of the present, full of the Past.

* * * * * * * * * * *

To the same decade as the two Barwick Jacksons of La Cloche Hills owned by Carleton - in fact, in between Grey Day, October (c. 1933) and Mountain Ash, Grace Lake (1940) in date - belongs the double panel painted up at Great Bear Lake in the fall of 1938 (plates 6 and 7). This was a large-scale expedition, which A. Y. considered of major importance, a ufirst" for him-and for any major modern artist - into that arctic area. A.Y.'s A Painter's Country of twenty years later goes into considerable detail about it. After discussing the wealth of motifs for composition offered an artist by the western prairies, the autobiography continues: Another kind of wealth was discovered farther north when Gilbert La Bine made his dramatic find of pitchblende on the shores of Great Bear Lake. In 1938 he asked me if I would like to visit his Eldorado Mine. Ten years earlier I had been as far as Yellowknife and I always had a yearning to see what kind of

30

country lay beyond. I accepted his invitation to travel on the Company's plane from Edmonton to the mine. When I got on the plane at Cooking Lake, it was loaded with groceries, steel pipe and other kinds of supplies for the mine, and several Finnish miners. We flew low enough to study all the country below which, at first, was mostly wheat fields and mixed farms. At one place I saw a farmer looking for his cattle and as, from my elevation, I could see them clearly I wanted to tell him where they were. Lakes and bush followed the wheat fields; the farms got fewer; here and there could be seen a little shack at the end of a long trail; then there was nothing but bush and lakes for hundreds of miles. We stopped for the night at Fort Smith, then followed the Slave River to Great Slave Lake. From Great Slave Lake to Great Bear Lake the land seemed to be half water . . . .17 It is pleasant at this point to change over to the words Jackson wrote the very minute he arrived at the eastern end of Great Bear, on 26 August 1938. His one~page note (figure 3) which I was pleased and proud to receive in Montreal was the first of two I received from him up there that time:

x Port Radium Great Bear Lake N.W.T. August 26th DearNaomiJust arrived and the plane is leaving right away. It was a great trip. I was held up for five days in Edmonton but much entertained. Saw five hundred thousand lakes this morning, you just couldn't keep looking at them, hour after hour. Great Bear is surrounded by big rocky hills, open patches of spruce in places, but no farm lands. Expect to be around about three weeks, but have to get out before the freeze up, or stay another six weeks. A mail plane comes in once a week. Well be good, and show those Harvard people a few things. Cheerio, and all the best Unky Punk 18

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Figure 3 JACKSON. Alexander Yo ung Hour ship," 1938 Collection of N.J. Groves

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XI A second letter, dated September 19th, about the time the Uthree weeks" were up: Dear Na yum e Our plane was supposed to be in today but had to go to the repair shops in Edmonton, so as it was a perfect sunny day, I did not give a hoot, but went off over the hills and away. Have only four panels left but I'll put a different little lake on each one. I can put on quite a show for the boys here now. It seems this is the most wonderful autumn they have ever had here, so I was in luck. I was supposed to come in with two millionaires but there was not room on the plane, so I spent four delightful days in Edmonton, and they returned on the plane I came up on, after spending four cold rainy days here. Being rich does not get you everything. The country seemed monotonous at first, but gets better all the time. You don't get effects as you do down south. I suppose nature feels it isn't worth while putting them on for one artist. The skies are far away, and anything that takes place does it over a thousand square miles. None of this business of one side of the street getting soaked while dust blows on the other side. The robins are going south, and the last blueberry was blown off two days ago. It's hard to believe that Great Bear freezes over next month. It's nice to be away from the newspapers, haven't seen one for almost a month. We get news of Hitler's antics on the radio. I guess old Chamberlain will have to go, and Eden take his place. No time this for timid old women. Expect you are back at Harvard, and on the new job;19 it's going to be well managed. Your letter arrived O.K. You seem to have made it a good summer. Thanks for the photos. We have a lot of camera experts up here; they know all about lenses and exposures, but they don't see what a grand country it is-they are not artists .... The world needs more artists, music, poetry, love and such things. They don't need any boundaries, nor hate to feed on. Hope your essay is printed. Next address is 1412 6th Avenue South, Lethbridge. Cheerio old thing. All the best from the Arctic. as ever, Unkypunk

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Plate 6 JACKSON, Alexander Young Radium Mine at Great Bear Lake, 1938

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A.Y. did not get away from Great Bear until October, as dated drawings and one or two dated oil sketches show. He then went south in Alberta to his brother Ernest's home in Lethbridge for a few days, before returning to Toronto with his grand crop of oil sketches (ff over twenty to paint into canvases" he reported later) and a treasure trove of pencil drawings ranging from vast panoramas like Southward /rom Great Bear, to many ustudies," both careful and casual, of the striking harbour on which the Eldorado mine was located. 20 On this first visit to Port Radium in 1938, A.Y. was taken on at least two trips away from the mine area, one to the west and one inland to the silver mine at Contact Lake. This was early in the visit, as his packing list mentions Upaint for ten panels" and by September 19th, as we have seen, he had only four left. The packing list is found in tiny delicate pencil writing on a rough and rugged drawing of a mountain. 21 The spartan list reads: Pack to be left [here] in the morning: boots, shirts, underwear, breeks, books, etc. Wear blue shirt, windbreaker, waterproof. Take bedroll, parka, suitcase with sketchbox, paint for ten panels, pyjamas, toilet set, haversack for sketches. (He would arrange the wet oil sketches with bits of wooden match-stick in each corner, one in centre, to keep them from touching, and tie the rectangular pile firmly with cord.) The double oil sketch given to Carleton University as part of The Jack and Frances Barwick Collection presents two different aspects of the landscape at Great Bear Lake: Radium Mine at Great Bear Lake (recto: plate 6) and Pool at Great Bear Lake (verso: plate 7). Which side was painted first? We know that Jackson stayed so long at the Eldorado mine that he must have run out of wood panels. There may be other udoubles" where he used both sides. At the very end of his stay, it looks as if he made carefully detailed drawings from which he could later paint up the oil sketch and/or canvas. The earliest drawing dated as August 1938 is titled Great Bear - Muskeg Lake. 22 This might have some connection with Pool at Great Bear Lake. But he did Ulittle lakes" and muskeg pools many times, in many variations. He also frequently drew the celebrated view of Echo Bay with its rugged shore line, showing the various early mining installations, log boom, all topped by the flimsy-looking mill-head that one can scarcely credit with being a major source of the world's most lethal product - from pitchblende came radium, then came uranium, then came the atom bomb, all within seven years from the time A. Y. climbed up and down the steep road and utook" the toylike contraption from varying heights. My present theory is that Carleton's oil sketch was one of the first versions, from quite far up and behind.

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Plate 7 JACKSON, Alexander Young Pool at Great Bear Lake, 1938

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Figure 4

JACKSON, Alexander Young Eldorado Mine on Echo Bay, 1938 The McMichael Canadian Collectio n

Radium Mine a t Great Bear Lake shows the mine-head in dramatic dark shadowy contrast to the golden light on the curving rocky hillside of the opposite sho re and the bold flourishes of the steep foreground . A related drawing, Eldorado Mine on Echo Bay (figure 4 ), is a detailed "study" fro m slightl y closer , with light and shade modelling.13 The d istant headland (actually a separate island) rises handsomely in the light in the pencil study, while the o il sketch uses it as a strong da rk counterpo int to emphasize the curve of the famous bay.

Figure 5

JACKSON, Alexander Young Radium Min e, Great Bear Lake, 1938

Nationa l Gallery of Canada

A striking, dramatic variatio n of the same view is found in The National Gallery o f Canada's Radi um Mine, Great Bear Lake (figure 5), likely from later o n the 1938 visit, si nce snow has meanwhile fallen. " It was sketched

37

from much closer to the mine...head - which someone has dubbed a URube Goldberg contraption" - and shows it with an effective S. .shaped curve of snow and earth (rock ?!) leading in from the foreground. 25 It is possible to suppose not unreasonably that as Jackson ran out of sketching boards because the Eldorado company plane due September 19th was still being repaired in Edmonton, he would select one of his earlier uless wet" sketches to work on the back of, in his ttJackson" sketch...box which had no top but used instead the inserted wood panels as covering, two at a time. Then he would be ttoff over the hills and away" to do justice to another of the truly enchanting pools that lay on top of the bedrock, with a minimum of vegetation around, especially the ttlittle stick" trees - black spruce, I think, characteristic of this northern area - that straggle upward and hang on for dear life. Carleton's Pool at Great Bear Lake uses a group of them to great effect in silhouette against the gleaming lake surface, while a ttfish...rib" cloud curves above in response to the lake's curve, centralizing the light in masterly fashion. During the last days of Jackon's six. . week...long visit, with glorious weather, insufficient painting material (nearest art store Edmonton!) and ttdeparture time" unknown, he seems to have used every scrap of his drawing paper as well as the backs of some panels. There are truly impressive studies of rock formations: glaciated, striated ancient granite which he models carefully in soft 5 ...B graphite, in some cases merely suggesting the mountain shape behind, as he could ttcope" later in paint with the great hill. Often he puts exact notes such as ttstippled greenish" [lichen]. There are also several masterly studies of old dead spruce and cedar trees, lovingly followed in every gnarled detail, slowly and delicately drawn, usually on a vertical page. One of these udouble drawings" would make a nice graphic partner for Carleton's double oil, so I am going to present it to add to the collection. (I'm sure the Barwicks would approve.)

[Editor's Note: Dr. Groves gave two such ttdouble drawings" to Carleton: Dead Spruce, Eldorado (recto, plate 8) / Port Radium (verso, plate 10) and Dead Spruce, Great Bear (recto, plate 9) / High Mountain and Detail, Great Bear (verso, plate 11).] The tttree side" of NJG 715 recto (plate 8) is signed by the artist (the only signed one ?) with a title in unusually gentle writing: Dead Spruce/ Eldorado, almost like a whispered tribute to the place. This is a true master drawing, complete in its own right, never needing to be painted up. The ttscenery side" (plate 10), of the same Port Radium harbour as Carleton's Radium Mine, Great Bear Lake oil, has a special meaning here as well. It is the famous ttEcho Bay" landing place drawn from very close to the shore, showing the long pier where likely the pontoon...plane could

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Plate 8 JACKSON, Alexander Young Dead Slm,ee, Eldorado, 1938

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Plate 9 JACKSON, Alexander Young Dead Spruce, Great Bear, 1938

J

L _

----.'

Plate to

JACKSON, Alexander Young Port Radium, 1938

'j

, ..... "

... '"

. .I..-..-......

taxi in close to land , with a small " jo lly boat" at the end o f the p ier, fo r going o ut to meet bigger craft. Quite possibly A. Y. felt the urge to "record everything," starting right at the bo tto m , soon after landing, just tossing off this simple li ne layout in abo ut fi ve minutes or less, to get the first feel of the place . O ne can sense his pleasure at being here. It is great good luck that these two reall y first-class wo rks d id not get rubbed o r smudged, as unfo rtunately some did, fo r A.Y . never bothered to put pro tective sheeting between them. ° Jusr no tes and studies, " he used to say.

As the present record- and invento ry- keeper winds down this little essay and returns to larger-scope projects alo ng the "Jac kson line, " I canno t resist telling o ne memo ry connected with Great Bear Lake. In my uncl e's last mo nths here in O ttawa, in 1967- 1968, before he had hi s stro ke and subseq uen tl y went to live at the McMi chaels, he was still working o n a can vas fo r the To ron to Board of Trade, doing it fro m an earlier sketch titled Echo Bay, Great Bear Lake. It was a sketch he had no t seen fo r years: " Good to see it after thirty years," I heard him say. I remember my husband hel ped h im when he was laying it in , by projecting the sketch 's colo ur slide (taken 30.X. 1967) on the new empty can vas, just to get him started . (A .Y. was 86, alread y no t that well , with his Meniere's Syndrome, vertigo .) Well , after A.Y.'s stroke, while recovering in the Civic Hospital fro m partial paral ysis o f the left side, he kept tell ing people, incl ud ing me, that after his "blacko ut" he had " co me to" in hospital up at G reat Bear Lake. " I think yo u 're in the C ivic Hospita l in Ottawa," I told him gently. "Well then ," he retorted , "this is a branch o f the C ivic at G reat Bear Lake!" R ight up to the end, that p lace meant something special to A.Y. Jackson .

4'

1/

---~I/ V

.,:,// /

\

~

Plate 11

d You ng N Alexan JA , . and erDetat'zJ Great Bear, High MOllntaln 1938

CKSO

42

References

1. A.Y. Jackson, A Painter's Country: The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson, Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and Company Limited, 1963, p. 48 (first published 1958). 2. See the drawing Lake in the La Cloche Hills, Ontario, c. 1930s, in Naomi Jackson Groves, A. Y.'s Canada, Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and Company Limited, 1968, p. 117, pI. 54.

3. A.Y. nearly always wrote UMcIver" and unfortunately I followed him and got in wrong with the family of Scots "Mac"; for the present, when I quote mon oncle, I'll use his way. 4. Catalogued under this title and with a Uca. 1928" (sic) date in The Art Gallery of Toronto, A.Y. Jackson: Paintings I902~I953, Toronto, 1953, p. 27, no. 45.

5. The Lake (Howrey Creek) was painted from the careful drawing reproduced in Groves, p. 119, pI. 55 as Lake in Algoma East, November, c. 1933; this drawing now can be dated (November 1931) and located (Howrey Creek) accurately. 6. Grace Lake, Algoma, not yet catalogued: La Cloche Hills, Ontario is NJG 1148 7. I have photocopies of these letters at my disposal to use here, thanks to the generous cooperation of the present owner of the original letters, Anne MacDermot McDougall. 8. Florence Wyle (1881-1968), sculptor, for many years a close friend in Toronto. There had been mention earlier of both Florence and Frances Loring (the uGirls") driving up to Keith's place; now it was just Florence whom he would accompany in her car. The route lay northward up the Bruce Peninsula and across Manitoulin Island to Whitefish Falls and nearby Willisville, south of Espanola. The La Cloche Hills continue on eastward from there. 9. Pencil on paper, Oct. 1933, 13.6 x 25.0 cm, Inventory NJG 1711: private collection. Anne Savage's niece and god-daughter, Anne McDougall, used it in her Anne Savage: The Story of a Canadian Painter, Montreal: Harvest House, 1977, p. 118. Now A.Y.'s niece is glad to use it to accompany the letters written from that Ulittle tent." 10. The second tent was very certainly the one that A.Y. had used and drawn several times (e.g., Groves, p. 109, plate 50) during the happy camping fortnight with Anne Savage, who had been invited by A.Y.'s cousins, Frank and Isa Erichsen Brown, that August on the Western Islands in Georgian Bay. 11. The kind of paper used for drawing the smaller tent, as well as the difference in style from the careful tidy detail on the tent drawing enclosed in the 8 Oct. 1933 letter to Anne Savage, may well indicate that the two drawings were done in different years.

12. The McMichael Canadian Collection has the canvas Nellie Lake, 1933; see A Heritage of Canadian Art: The McMichael Collection, Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and Company Limited, 1976, p. 43. 13. This refers to the times A. Y. sketched near Port Coldwell with Lawren Harris in the mid-twenties; they also sometimes dug a trench between their sleeping bags and filled it with hot stones, which held the heat well. 14. The plans for Howrey Lake (where he had worked in 1931), as well as for going west as far as Blind River, fell through, partly due to the wet weather. He did get as far as Spragge for a day and made drawings there. 15. uGood night dear" would seem to indicate that this is the last letter written on Oct. 22nd, so it is placed after the one to me. The "wrath of Mr. [Lawren] Harris" would be likely if Jackson were not there to help hang and open The Canadian Group of Painters show in November. 16. The oil sketch has been newly certified as Inventory NJG 1712. 17. Jackson, pp. 125-26.

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18. Across the foot of this letter is a pencil sketch inscribed Hour ship" (Inventory NJG 1361). It has been identified as a Bellanca Air Cruiser, capable of landing on both water and land.

19. My new job at Harvard was as resident house#fellow in a freshman girls' house, for which I got free living and tuition while I finished my graduate courses for the Ph.D. My essay on Goethe's drawings was published by Harvard that fall. 20. A number of the Great Bear drawings are reproduced in Groves, plates 97# 103, along with many details in the text about the country up there and its discovery over the centuries: from Samuel Hearne and Sir John Franklin onward to the Canadian scientists who came later, all on foot or by boat, up to the time that Gilbert La Bine was able to fly in, just eight years before A. Y. himself did. The splendid works that the latter produced, many now in public collections, do justice to his own spirit of exploration and adventure. 21. The drawing (Inventory NJG 2126 t/erso) is now in The National Gallery of Canada (NGC accession number 17782 t/erso) as a gift of A.Y. in 1972, when I had charge of placing his works for him. 22. About 22.8 x 30.5 cm; present location uncertain to NJG.

23. Now in The McMichael Canadian Collection; the inscription Hall darks flat" may indicate he was thinking of a future canvas. See also Groves, p. 213 and plate 99.

24. Reproduced in Dennis Reid, Alberta Rhythm: The Later Work of A. Y. Jackson, Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1982, p. 50, no. 20, next to the canvas in The McMichael Canadian Collection for which it is a sketch, Radium Mine, 1938 (p. 51, no. 21). 25. On one occasion in Ottawa, back in 1965, A.Y. showed colour slides of his favourite works to a group of doctor friends, including Henrietta Banting, at the home of his own physician and great friend, Dr. Robert Starrs. "Doctor Jackson," surprisingly well informed on metals and minerals and the history of mining in Canada, enjoyed expounding on "Eldorado in the early days .... The radium operation was closed during the war [1939 # 1945] and later reopened for uranium. A thousand feet down they ran into precambrian rock and that was the end of the mine. Now the place is a summer fishing camp where you pay $700 a week. No more mining." (Thus A.Y. in 1965 about the paintings of 1938).

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Appendix

Editor's Note: Dr. Groves incorporated her discussion of Carleton's Mountain Ash, Grace Lake (1940) into her account of A.Y.'s October 1933 sojourn there, wishing to stress this stay as Ua rugged. . romantic high point in A. Y.'s life." She also, however, provided the editor with a number of excerpts from the Jackson. .Savage correspondence of fall 1940, the time of Mountain Ash, Grace Lake's execution. These are presented here as an appendix, along with Dr. Groves' comments and notes, to serve as a context for our 1940 painting.

XII Letter from A.Y. Jackson to Anne Savage [four neat pages in ink]: Studio Building Severn St. Toronto, Sept. 22nd [1940] Dear Anne, This is a lovely September day, and everyone has rushed to the country. I would have too, but I have to go to Ottawa tonight. Theyl are going ahead with the movie, and intend to take the first part of it at Grace Lake, so there are some little problems to be worked out. They want to be there when the color is at its height. Another part of it will be taken at St. Tite des Caps next April. It will be in color and will last twenty minutes. Expect Keith will go to Grace Lake with me, otherwise I would get very little sketching done .... Cheerio Anne, and all good wishes, as ever Alex 1. "They" refers to the newly established National Film Board which hired Frank Radford (Budge)

Crawley to do the filming under the direction of Graham McInnes. The film. Canadian Landscape. was issued in 1942. A copy will be obtained for Carleton.

XIII Anne Savage replied to the foregoing letter in an envelope with the address «4090 Highland Ave., Montreal" and postmarked UMontreal, Sep. 25, 2PM 1940." The only indication of a date on the letter itself is «Tues.": Dear AlexCongratulations about the movie - it is really exciting - a completely new idea and it will put Canadian Painting again in

45

the Foreground - and also give some idea of the difficulties of an artist's life and the problems to be faced - bravo - it is really grand Alex Have had a very good afternoon organizing at the Gallery for a School Art League with 12 Art Teachers from the public schools - it is only 14 afternoons for the season we meet but we cover 2,000 children - better than nothing .... When do you go - I trust the weather will hold for you Very best wishes Anne [with a nice flourishing line underneath. ]

XIV Studio Building Severn St. Toronto Oct 2nd [no year, no envelope] Dear Anne All packed up, we intended to leave this morning, but I had a cold which I am doctoring up, and decided to wait over till tomorrow. The weather is looking good, and I don't like to miss it. We expect to go in to Gem Lake, further from the highway than Grace, a remote spot, we will have the whole country to ourselves. Keith, Brownie [his dog] and yours truly. We go to Grace first to have the movie taken .... Our address will be Willisville, Onto (via Sudbury). We may not get out till we leave for home. With all good wishes. as ever Alex

XV Grace Lake Oct 9th [no year - letter in pencil] Dear Anne All snug in the tent. Tomorrow we go to Willisville to bring in the movie men. l They will be here two or three days, unless

they have to wait for weather. It has been good sketching weather, but little sunshine, and they will need that for photography. Keith has made a swell camp, stove in the tent, balsam boughs a foot deep to sleep on, and logs all round banked up to keep the wind out, we can stand any weather. So far it has been very mild, we are still picking blueberries. Color is good, but a good wind will blow all the leaves off, they are just quietly dropping, all except the oaks. We have a radio too, so we are in touch with the wicked world, not much of an advantage these days. A settler brought some mail in, including your letter .... The prospect of another job for A.L. [Arthur Lismer] sounds good, and he would be much more inspiring person in it than the present holder. The situation in Ottawa is not going to improve, and it would be better to end it. McCurry is too cautious, civil servants get that way, it is safer to do too little than too much, but when you think of the kind of bird we might have had in that position, we can be thankful to have McCurry. After the movie men have gone, we go to Gem Lake. I hope to get a dozen sketches there, and then make for home before it all freezes up. Hope the movie is all you hope for. I told them to get some good backgrounds, and make the artist incidental, or merely a symbol, to show how painters work. Well we have to start early tomorrow, so good night, and all the best. as ever Alex 1. In January 1969 NJG got a fine letter from Graham McInnes, saying that the film was John Grierson's idea, and that he and Budge Crawley spent about ten days with A.Y. and Keith.

XVI Nov. 4th Studio Bldg. Severn St. Toronto Dear AnneWe got out of the hills just in time. We had to break the ice for miles to get our canoe through. We stayed in an old shack at Gem Lake, and the last ten days made up for a lot of the weather we had earlier. Keith looked after everything and left me free to paint, and so I scrambled all over the country.

47

Apart from a few scru b oaks and yo ung poplars the trees were bare when we left. We got into Willisville in the dark after a fifteen mile paddle with a few portages thrown in. So our little adventure is over. A settler o n the way o ut gave me your letter [not kept]. The movie men were waiting for us in T oron to, and started work right away o n shots in the studio and the shack. The next reel will be at St. Tite des Caps in April. They are very pleased with what they have done so far .... It seems very mild and soft down here after the north , makes me feel like a rough neck. Between the phone ringing, knocks o n the door , telegrams, the pace is terrible. This is just to wish you all the best, are yo u coming to Toronto soon? Just hop in your car and whiz up . as ever

Alex

A.Y.'s exchange of letters with his devoted friend in M o ntreal has lost the urgency of a " love affair" in the making. If she had been able to come to T oronto in November 1933, who knows how things might have gone? But - Uit was not to be."

Figure 6

JACKSON, Alexander Young October, GTace Lake,

c. mid 19305 Reproduction courtesy of Sotheby's

List of Illustrations

Plate 1: Figure 1: Figure 2: Plate 2: Plate 3: Plate 4: Plate 5: Figure 3: Plate 6: Plate 7: Figure 4: Figure 5: Plate 8: Plate 9: Plate 10: Plate 11: Figure 6:

A.Y. Jackson, Grey Day, October, c. 1933 Florence Wyle, Keith's Cabin, Leoch Lake, 1933 A.Y. Jackson, "our little tent," 1933, private collection A.Y. Jackson, "Looks Like Grace Lake," c. 1933 A.Y. Jackson, Tent at Grace Lake, c. 1933 A. Y. Jackson, Mountain Ash, Grace Lake, 1940 A.Y. Jackson, Camp at Grace Lake, c. 1933 A.Y. Jackson, "our ship," 1938, collection of N.J. Groves A.Y. Jackson, Radium Mine at Great Bear Lake, 1938 A.Y. Jackson, Pool at Great Bear Lake, 1938 A.Y. Jackson, Eldorado Mine on Echo Bay, 1938, The McMichael Canadian Collection A.Y. Jackson, Radium Mine, Great Bear Lake, 1938, National Gallery of Canada A.Y. Jackson, Dead Spruce, Eldorado, 1938 A.Y. Jackson, Dead Spruce, Great Bear, 1938 A.Y. Jackson, Port Radium, 1938 A.Y. Jackson, High Mountain and Detail, Great Bear, 1938 A.Y. Jackson, October, Grace Lake, c. mid 1930's, reproduction courtesy of Sotheby's

p.4 p. 14 p.17 p. 19 p. 19 p.23 p.27 p.31 p.33 p.35 p.36 p.36 p.38 p.39 p.40 p.41 p.47