PROVENANCE
J. Merritt Malloney’s Gallery, Toronto
Important Canadian Art & Fine Jewellery, Sotheby’s Canada, June 3, 1986, lot 289
Private Collection, Toronto
By descent to the present Private Estate, Toronto

LITERATURE
Franz Johnston to Gilbert LaBine, March 18, 1939, letter in the collection of the LaBine family

It is unbelievable how times flies up here. I have now been at Eldorado two weeks and it seems to have sped by on wings.

—Franz Johnston to Gilbert LaBine, March 18, 1939

The name Gilbert LaBine is legendary in twentieth-century mining, due in large part to his Eldorado Mine in the Northwest Territories, located on the eastern shores of Great Bear Lake. The mine’s success was founded on LaBine’s May 1930 discovery of pitchblende, an ore from which radium and uranium can be refined. This success allowed him to fly Franz Johnston and other artists, including fellow Group of Seven member A.Y. Jackson, to this remote region with the aim of capturing its pristine beauty and sharing it with the world.

Johnston took LaBine up on this offer multiple times, often focusing on the area’s immense, expansive grandeur. In the notably comparable work Great Bear Lake (circa 1939, sold by Heffel in December 2021), he employs the same crisp whites and pale blues to express the near-blinding quality of clear light on ice and snow. In this rare and fascinating example, however, he also depicts elements of LaBine’s mining operation itself. From the work’s remarkable vantage point, the viewer stands above the rugged and hardscrabble infrastructure of the mine shaft entrance, perched above the hardy pines below. In the distance, one takes in the log cabins of the mining camp, which would have housed LaBine, his crew and Johnston himself. Near the top of the composition, LaBine Point on the shores of Echo Bay juts out into the frozen expanse of Great Bear Lake, extending far into the distance until vanishing on the horizon.

In a letter to LaBine on this same 1939 excursion, dazzled by the region’s beauty, Johnston wrote, “The sun has shone every day but one since I arrived. Clear sparkling skies of blue that are never the same shade.” Exhilarated by the experience, he undertook his role with modesty and focus, adding, “To date I have made fifteen sketches, all of which appeal to the men around.… I sincerely hope what I produce as a result of my being here will show the world just what kind of country we have up in this magnetic part of Canada…” With this evocative landscape, one could argue that Johnston very much succeeded in his task, merging Canadian history and the beauty of the North in one irreplaceable image.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars