The formation of the Group of Seven was still four years away when one of its founders, Arthur Lismer, painted this bold, lyrical oil of Ontario hill and sky suffused by winter light.
The English-born Mr. Lismer had been in Canada only five years, but already was besotted with Ontario’s wilderness and friends with Tom Thomson and J.E.H. MacDonald, fellow employees of Toronto’s Grip Engraving. With its sinuous forms, decorative flourishes and cobalt-blue shadows, A Clear Winter clearly owes a debt to Art Nouveau and contemporary Scandinavian landscape painting. At the same time, Mr. Lismer’s depiction of the tall, snow-laden white pine surmounting a thicket of conifers and random birches and aspens against a big sky has a forthrightness that anticipates the mature Group style.
Also winning: the orange hill, at once a warm complement and cannily positioned counterpoint to the dominant cool blues and whites. A boreal forest, quilt-like snow, sunlight brightening an aquamarine sky – it’s hard to imagine a landscape more clearly, crisply Canadian than A Clear Winter.