Bright Day, Georgian Bay, 1961 (circa)
Oil on board
32 x 47 3/4 in
81.3 x 121.3 cm
81.3 x 121.3 cm
This painting is presently on view at our Toronto gallery
$25,000
Inscriptions
signed, 'G. Roberts' (lower right)Provenance
Roberts Gallery, Toronto
Private collection, Ontario
No better appreciation of the feeling Goodridge Roberts captures in Bright Day, Georgian Bay as logged in his widow’s description of Georgian Bay near Pointe au Baril where she had spent part of nearly every summer of her life. “The eye is never sated by this landscape, where a sense of endurance persists in the ancient rocks and pines leaning away from the prevailing west wind as they cling to a speck of earth in a rock fissure. In an instant, change can occur as a sudden thunderstorm or wind storm whips up the waves in the open bays.” Joan described its “...rugged beauty of rocks, water, islands, and pines…its peaceful, pleasing arrangement of forms where a few yards can alter totally a pattern of rock, juniper bushes, and pines.”¹
In preparation for a November exhibition at Roberts Gallery, in August in the summer of 1961, Joan and Goodridge rented a cottage at Pointe au Baril, “It was out toward the open water with only a few small cedar trees to break the exposure to the prevailing west wind. On this rather barren island with the wind, the whitecaps on the island and the dazzling sunshine…”²
As a personal note, in his memoir, Walter Klinkhoff wrote that he and Jack Wildridge of Roberts Gallery would vie to see who could get first selection of Goodridge Roberts’ paintings when he returned home from painting at Georgian Bay.
Art For the Canadian Soul was an appropriate title Barbara Black gave to her review praising the Goodridge Roberts touring retrospective exhibition curated by art historian, professor, and editor/publisher Sandra Paikowsky CM, which was shown at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in 1998. Back in 1970 the National Gallery of Canada had hosted a retrospective of Roberts’ painting, something rather extraordinary in those years, to do a retrospective of a living artist (Concordia’s Thursday Report, April 23, 1998
https://ctr.concordia.ca/archives/is230498/art1.html?utm_source=perplexity)
¹ Joan Roberts, Joan & Goodridge: My Life with Goodridge Roberts (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 2009) 15, [reproduced].
² Ibid., 138
In preparation for a November exhibition at Roberts Gallery, in August in the summer of 1961, Joan and Goodridge rented a cottage at Pointe au Baril, “It was out toward the open water with only a few small cedar trees to break the exposure to the prevailing west wind. On this rather barren island with the wind, the whitecaps on the island and the dazzling sunshine…”²
As a personal note, in his memoir, Walter Klinkhoff wrote that he and Jack Wildridge of Roberts Gallery would vie to see who could get first selection of Goodridge Roberts’ paintings when he returned home from painting at Georgian Bay.
Art For the Canadian Soul was an appropriate title Barbara Black gave to her review praising the Goodridge Roberts touring retrospective exhibition curated by art historian, professor, and editor/publisher Sandra Paikowsky CM, which was shown at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in 1998. Back in 1970 the National Gallery of Canada had hosted a retrospective of Roberts’ painting, something rather extraordinary in those years, to do a retrospective of a living artist (Concordia’s Thursday Report, April 23, 1998
https://ctr.concordia.ca/archives/is230498/art1.html?utm_source=perplexity)
¹ Joan Roberts, Joan & Goodridge: My Life with Goodridge Roberts (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 2009) 15, [reproduced].
² Ibid., 138
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