Artwork by Albert Henry Robinson,  Evening Lights

A.H. Robinson
Evening Lights

oil on board
titled on the reverse
8.5 x 10.5 ins ( 21.6 x 26.7 cms )

Auction Estimate: $18,000.00$14,000.00 - $18,000.00

Price Realized $16,520.00
Sale date: November 20th 2018

Provenance:
Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal
Kastel Gallery, Montreal
Private Collection, Toronto
Literature:
Paul Duval, Canadian Impressionism, Toronto, 1990, page 130
Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Albert Robinson left Canada to pursue academic training in Paris in 1903, where he studied at the Académie Julian under William Bouguereau and at the École des beaux-arts before embarking on painting trips throughout Normandy in the summers of 1904 and 1905. Holding fast to the tenets of his formal European training, Albert Henry Robinson would nonetheless remain faithful to his Canadian roots, returning to paint the rural landscapes of Ontario and Quebec for the remainder of his career alongside Clarence Gagnon, Edwin Holgate, and A.Y. Jackson.

His vision of the harbours and villages of his home is an idyllic one—a portrait in soft focus. In “Evening Lights”, Robinson captures the pale lavender light of dusk as the sun sets on a rural town blanketed in snow. Robinson’s scenes of the Quebec countryside and its inhabitants are characterized by their simplified forms and gentle hues, mixed with generous amounts of white paint and applied with the artist’s characteristic crisp, rectilinear brushstrokes. Rather than capturing the country through depictions of barren terrain, Robinson narrows his focus on the dwellings of emerging towns and cities in the early twentieth century, lending life and narrative to the prevailing landscape painting tradition in Canada.

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Albert Henry Robinson
(1881 - 1956) Canadian Group of Painters, RCA

Albert Henry Robinson (RCA) was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1881. Robinson studied in Hamilton with John S. Gordon and left for Paris in 1903. He continued his training at the Julian Academy with Bouguereau and Bachet, and then with Ferrier at the L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts. During his time there he travelled to Normandy and Corsica. After returning to Hamilton, John S. Gordon hired him as an assistant and Robinson exhibited his work for the first time in 1906. In 1910 he met and befriended A.Y. Jackson. Between 1918 and 1933 Robinson travelled along the shores of the St. Lawrence and in the Laurentians painting many landscapes, which constitute the bulk of his work.