Franz Johnston’s landscape painting frequently pivots around an impressionistic relationship between shadow and illumination, and that is perhaps no better expressed than in his prismatic displays of light on snow. The location of this exceptional landscape is possibly along Lake of the Woods, near the Ontario-Manitoba border, where Johnston rented a lakeside cottage. The sun, lowering on the early winter horizon, illuminates flecks of the sweeping cumulus clouds in softened pinks and creams. The trees, poplars or birch in their autumn foliage, crowd a foreground bathed in soft shadow. There is a delicate contrast between the thinness of the trees and the vast distances of the receding far shore and fading sky, unified by the palette: the white-trunked trees are subtly rendered in the pinks and bright blues of the sky and water, while the autumn-yellow leaves flare across the top of the canopy.

The verso of the work displays a dimly lit interior scene that explores lighting in a more intimate way. The evening glow of a living room, attentively filled with furniture and adorned with landscape paintings, suggest that this is possibly the artist's own home - or at the very least a patron of the arts closely familiar to Johnston. The title on the verso, written in bright blue, leaves no room for doubt which side the artist considered the more important; but taken as a pairing, each face of the board explores the subtle interplays between light and shadow that Johnston is known for.

This superb work comes by descent from the collection of Hugh C. McRae, a successful Toronto mining industrialist who also owned Franz Johnston’s The North Country, sold by Heffel in October 2021.