Lot 196: Albert Henry Robinson 1881 - 1956 Canadian oil on board Lower St. Lawrence

Albert Henry Robinson 1881 - 1956 Canadian oil on board Lower St. Lawrence
8 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches 21.6 x 26.7 centimeters signed and on verso titled and dated 1922 on the gallery label Literature:Thomas R. Lee, Albert H. Robinson, "The Painter's Painter", 1956, unpaginated
Provenance:Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal
Private Collection, Montreal Not only did Albert Robinson have a masterful command of colour and light effects, but he was known for his great feeling for the subject of rural Quebec. Group of Seven artist Arthur Lismer wrote, "His art is the colourful expression of daily life, full of charm, devoid of sentimentality, a thoroughly sincere painter who sees life with a gay, simple philosophy, as a colourful arrangement of little towns poised on a hillside, the ice going out of rivers on the north shore of the St. Lawrence, all the lyrical environment of the French-Canadian."
Produced in Robinson's most sought-after mature period of the 1920s, Lower St. Lawrence is a painterly ode to the beauty present in the delicate colour tones and light effects of ice breaking up in the St. Lawrence. At first impression, the luminescent green and blue ice edges of the ice pans dominate. But on closer examination, plum-grey in the water, grey-green and beige-pink in the ice pans and delicate tones of blue and mauve in the hills emerge, proof of Robinson's refined awareness of colour.