Signed and dated 1941 and verso titled and inscribed ‘11’

Prov:
Ex. Collection of Robert F. Christy and Dagmar von Lieven Christy, Vancouver By descent to the present Private Collection, California

Literature:
Joyce Zemans, Jock Macdonald: The Inner Landscape, A Retrospective Exhibition, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1981, page 101

The first collectors of this painting were Robert F. Christy and Dagmar von Lieven Christy. Robert was a prominent Canadian American theoretical physicist and astrophysicist. After graduating from the University of British Columbia, he studied physics at the University of California under Robert Oppenheimer. Christy worked on the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago during World War II, then with Oppenheimer at the project’s Los Alamos laboratory. In 1960 he turned his attention to astrophysics, ultimately winning the Eddington Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society for his research.

Jock Macdonald spent the summer of 1941 in the Rockies with Group of Seven artist Lawren Harris. Both artists were striving for an art that transcended the mundane, and in the Rockies, they found a stunning landscape that embodied the spiritual. Joyce Zemans writes, “At Lake O’Hara, the mighty glaciers offered what Harris described as ‘a channel into our essential inner life, a door to our deepest understanding, wherein we have a capacity for universal experience.” In this powerful and rugged painting of Ringrose Peak towering above Lake O’Hara, Macdonald has captured a vision of the majesty and cosmic harmony that he and Harris perceived in the Rockies.

Jock Macdonald was a trailblazer in Canadian art from the 1930s to 1960. He was the first painter to exhibit abstract art in Vancouver, and throughout his life he championed Canadian avant-garde artists at home and abroad. His career path reflected the times: despite his commitment to his artistic practice, he earned his living as a teacher, becoming a mentor to several generations of artists. As a strong supporter of artists’ organizations, he was a founding member of both the Canadian Group of Painters and Painters Eleven, and was instrumental in establishing the Calgary Group.

Ref:  Jock MacDonald - Art Canada Institute written by Joyce Zemans