31 x 43 cm
Further images
Inscriptions
signed and dated, 'Albert Robinson 1908.' (lower right); inscribed, '15802' (verso, upper right corner); titled and signed by the artist, 'UNLOADING BRICKS IN HARBOR / MONTREAL P.Q. / Albert H. Robinson (verso, centre)Provenance
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal
Private collection, Westmount, Quebec
Unloading Bricks in Harbour Montreal is a visually lovely work painted in a technique of post Impressionism. Dated 1908, Robinson painted this fine composition a couple of years after he returned from art studies in Paris where he witnessed first hand the French masters who were important influences on the path of art in Canada.
In Thomas R. Lee’s biography of Albert Robinson, A Painter’s Painter, Lee recounts an amusing anecdote about Robinson’s work at Montreal’s harbour: “...in summer [Robinson] haunted the harbour, the docks, the grain elevators and the boats. A cousin, Robert Aiken, was harbour paymaster so Robinson pretty much had the run of the place. The first sale he made after coming to Montreal was a harbour-front scene, Boats Loading at a Grain Elevator, which was purchased by Cleveland Morgan. Robinson became a familiar figure around the docks and no one bothered him- no one that is except the rats. There were thousands and apparently all art lovers. The great number of rats on occasion forced him to pick up his easel and run.” [1]
______________________
Footnote:
[1] Thomas R. Lee, Painter’s Painter, 1956, republished in Retrospective Exhibition at the Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, 1994 p. 8.
