Western Sunlight, Last Mountain Lake

1911

Oil on canvas

91.9 x 147.4 cm

Signed l.l.: C.W. JEFFERYS 11

Last Mountain Lake is north of Regina, Saskatchewan

Provenance

The Artist

National Gallery of Canada 

Exhibition History

• 1924 British Empire Exhibition, London, England
• 1984 - Western Sunlight: C. W. Jefferys on the Canadian Prairies

• 1991 - The True North Canadian Landscape Painting 1896 - 1939

Published References

• “200 paintings at the R.C.A. exhibition:  oils, watercolours, and architectural drawings fill art museum galleries…”  In Toronto Star, Dec. 2, 1911, p. 11.

• Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.  Catalogue of the thirty-third annual exhibition of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in the Art Museum Toronto November twenty-third 1911.  Toronto, RCA?, 1911.  24 p.

  p. 14  -  “Charles W. Jefferys   York Mills.

  1. Western Sunlight, Last Mountain Lake.
  2. Approaching Storm, Qu’Appelle Valley.”

  p. 24  -  “Addresses of exhibitors…Ch. W. Jefferys, York Mills, Ont.”

• “Paintings purchased:  Dominion Government Art Commission buys two from Toronto  artists.”  In The Toronto Star, Jan. 5, 1912, p. 13.

  “The …Commission has just purchased two paintings by Toronto artists for the National Gallery at Ottawa.  They are ‘Western Sunlight: Last Mountain Lake’ by C.W. Jefferys, exhibited at the Royal Canadian Academy Exhibition  recently…”

• “To hang in National Gallery:  two paintings purchased from Toronto artists.” In The Globe, Jan. 5, 1912, p. 7.

  “The Dominion Government Art Commission has just purchased two paintings by Toronto artists for the National Gallery at Ottawa.  They are ‘Western Sunlight:  Last Mountain Lake,’ by C.W. Jefferys, exhibited at the Royal Canadian Academy Exhibition recently, and ‘The Evening Cloud of the Northlands,’ by J.W. Beatty.  Both are fine representations of the spacious outdoor life of the newer Canada.”

• Saint Louis Art Museum.  Exhibition of paintings by Canadian artists: special exhibition catalogue.  St. Louis, MO, 1918. n. p. [org. by Eric Brown, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa]

  “Jefferys, Charles William, A.R.C.A.  Born at Rochester, England. Came to Canada in 1885, and settled and studied at Toronto.  President of the Graphic Arts Club, 19093-1904.  Member of the O.S.A. and vice-president and treasurer, 1908, and president, 1913.  Elected A.R.C.A., 1912.

  15  Western Sunlight   the property of the National Gallery of Canada”

• The National Gallery of Canada, at Ottawa:  a visitor’s further impressions…” [part II]

  In The Globe, November 5, 1927, p. 22. “Charles W. Jefferys has made high and substantial reputation chiefly as an

  illustrator, but his oils and watercolours, such as ‘Western Sunlight’, are very fine, too.”

• McStay, R.A.  “In the realm of art.”  In Toronto Daily Star, Feb. 28, 1931, p. 13.

  “Toronto has [at Buenos Aires show] 30 artists showing their works:…Western Sunlight by Charles W. Jeffreys [sic]…”

• Colgate, William.  C.W. Jefferys.  Toronto, Ryerson Press, [1945?].   42 p.  Illus.

• Fenton, Terry, ed.  Painting in Saskatchewan, 1883-1959.  Saskatoon, Mendel Art Gallery, 1967.

• “C.W. Jefferys’ Western Sunlight.”  In Canadian Collector, March 1985, p. 93.

  “In November 1984 the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon opened the first retrospective exhibition to be devoted to the Western Canadian canvases, watercolours, and drawings of the landscape painter and historical  illustrator C.W. Jefferys…”

• Carl Renzius:  artist and sportsman.  Toronto, Warwick Publishing, 2001. 169 p.  Illus. p. 144  -  “Western Sunlight, Last Mountain Lake, 1911” “…remind me [RS] or paintings with similar treatment…by the Canadian landscape painter and illustrator, C.W. Jefferys…in particular, Jefferys’ Western Sunlight..” “…Rungius’s Fall Round-up…could be the American cousins of the old-timer astride his pinto in Jefferys’s [sic] In the Valley of the Qu’Appelle (“Andante”).  For Jefferys, as for Rungius, in the west there was ‘one line only, the horizon, which heat shimmers frayed and tattered.  No line distinguishes the way grey-green sage interrupted the sallow, pale luster of the short grass, not the way hill turned from sunshine into browning purple shades.  Here no perspective provided depth and distance.’  Did these two contemporaries know of one another’s work?  Not likely, though they shared a hero in Frederic Remington…”