Alexander Young Jackson was born October 3rd, 1882, In the family home which was located on Mackay street, Montreal, Jackson was the third of six children. When people think about Jackson they tend to see him as being a Quebec artist which is rightly so , but the roots of his family reached into Ontario and because of this his art life is identified as much with Ontario as Quebec.
Jackson was early influenced by the works of James Wilson Morrice and owes something to the French Impressionists and Post Impressionists. Even thought Jackson work has been influenced Morrice and the French Impressionists and Post Impressionists . Jackson has alway maintained a definite personal quality to his art. Jackson has devoted himself exclusively to landscape painting. It has been the back country which appeals most to Jackson. We should be glad that he has vigorously recorded a section of Canada that is so inexhaustibly rich in character and is infinite in the variety of beauty. There is in everything that he paints an inherent devotion to his own ideals, and a constant striving to dig deeper and explore more fully the sublet and significant manifestation of the Canadian Scene. Jackson is a sublet colourist and an able teachician, but the most mark of index for Jackson identification is the lyrical rhythm and flow of his compositions and the directness with which he grasps the essentials. He knows better than most artists what to leave out and his pictures never carry an overburden of distracting or trivial detail. When looking at Jackson work one can see that Canada and what it had to offer from a visual prospective was extremely important to him. It is clear that Jackson wanted to show of the best of what Canada had to offer and for Jackson this was the vast out doors found from coast to coast. In the painting of landscape Jackson had devoted him self to painting does not mean that he is limited in any way actually it is the opposite there seems to be a large variety of subject matter and a constant mood changing. It is not in Jackson’s nature to develop a sequence of variations on a subject he has found popular. It would have been against what Jackson saw as the ideals of artistic honesty to paint with one eye on the dealer or the buying public. Showing that Jackson puts an inherent devotion to his own ideals, and a constant striving to dig deeper and explore more fully the subtle and significant manifestations of the Canadian scene. The freshness found within Jackson work is because of the new visions, new subjects and new viewpoint , are apparent because he somehow manages to keep the spirit of adventure and is always looking for new material. A.Y. Jackson is not by temperament an eccentric or fluctuating experimenter. There is very much a sturdy conservatism found within his work and a dogged and persistent progress towards his own ideals. It is clear that Jackson has a very clear idea of what kind of works he wants to paint to show off the wonderful nature found within Canada. In doing this one can see that Jackson wants other Canadians to see what Canada has to offer. That we has Canadians should be proud of our country and what we have to offer in the world. In all his work, east or west, we get a whiff of the fresh, crisp atmosphere north of the forty-fifth parallel. Looking at North Lake by Jackson we get a sense of the natural beauty found within Canada. Jackson found the subject for this picture at Walsh Lake in the Yellowknife country years before the big gold rush developed there. The rugged shoreline of small spruce tress is used as a decorative design in the manner of a frieze which could have been extended at either end almost indefinitely. The warm light of a summer sunset transforms the somber greens of the northern spruce into a glowing pattern of opulent colour. In this canvas a characteristic aspect of the northern lakes is lifted to unusual distinction by catching that glorious fleeting moment, before dusk, when the eastern shores are bathed in the last warm rays of the departing day. A painting like Early Spring requires a highly analytical mind to strip the subject of non-essential and retain the vital and important facts in so bold and vigorous a design. Jackson was not concerned with photographic detail realism or with atmospheric effects. What he did wants to do was to translate the scene into a simple pattern, and a happily balance colour harmony of quite reds and the complementary green-blues of the sky and water. Despite the breadth and simplicity of painting, it is a sensitive and convincing interpretation of early spring in the Georgian Bay district when the ice is disappearing. April, Petite Riviere is a red-roofed barn set against a background of Laurentian Hills is the simple motif of this picture. It is a good example of Jackson’s power to lift a simple subject into the realms beauty and distinction by the breadth and subtlety of his personal interpretation. There is nothing accidental about the charm of this canvas, it is a carefully considered harmony of reds with a brilliant vermilion roof as the focal accent and the greenish-blue sky as a satisfying complementary. The picture is painted with rhythm and flow of design and vigour of execution. While definitely stylized in treatment, it radiates a feeling of actuality and presents a very convincing picture of a Quebec farm in the hills.

The Red Maple. Painted in Jackson’s Toronto studio in November 1914, this landscape is based on a sketch from nature produced along the Oxtongue River in Algonquin Park. With the foreground screen of fragile young branches and fluttering read leaves set against a background of Churning rapids, this composition captures a distinctive natural phenomenon in Canada, and one symbolic of budding nationalist sentiments, which the outbreak of war a few months earlier had make more acute. Entrance To Halifax Habour. This was painting Shortly after the close of the Great War before the ships had discarded their camouflage. The scattered village of frame houses and the patches of wet ground showing through the slushy snow make a bold pattern which holds the composition together. Jackson has caught the spirit and character of the country on a March day when the winter snows are rapidly departing. Edge of the Maple Wood When Jackson painted this canvas he was unknowingly weaving, in pigment, a magic carpet which carried him from Quebec to Ontario and definitely changed his future art associations. The picture was painted in Sweetsburg, Quebec, in 1901, shortly after his return from European study, and is one of the few early canvases by Jackson still in existence. Exhibited in Toronto in 1911, it attracted the attention and enthusiasm of J.E.H. MacDonald and Lawren Harris. Neither of these Toronto artist had ever heard of Jackson, but it started a correspondence and friendship. The picture was purchased by Harris, but what was more important, Jackson was prevailed upon to come to Toronto and join a Canadian Art movement which was just beginning to get under way. After an interruption by the Great war, the movement crystallized in the Group of Seven and Jackson was on of the original members. It is a canvas, painted entirely out-of-doors, of early spring in the Canadian countryside. In it day it was unusual enough. Jackson had made no attempt to select the conventionally pretty or picturesque subject which dominated the exhibitions at the time. This picture is quite different from Jackson’s recent work, it is not stylized, but faithfully observed and directly painting. Aside from the fresh breath and warm sunshine of April in Quebec. Winter on the north shore of the St. Lawrence has been the subject of many canvases by Jackson. It is a country he knows intimately and paints with sustained enthusiasm. In this canvas the rambling winter road and half-buried fence rails wind over the undulating ground past the sparse settlement and disappear among the hills. There is a feeling of big space and a sense of actuality, but what is more important is the pattern of from and colour, It is the grace and lyrical movement of the line and the subtle colour arrangement that gives to this canvas a unity and distinction. It is interesting to observe all the variations the artist uses of the simple motif of a winter road running right into the canvas. The open road has a fascination for Jackson and appears frequently in his winter pictures. Red Cedar In a very restrained of colour, Jackson has worked out an exquisite harmony of greys which express the spirit of the picture. The unity and relationship of the elements, sky, water, and rock, in a pattern of repeated rhythm, ties the whole canvas together in a well-sustained expression of the mood and subject. Despite the simplicity of the colour and composition, there is a vibrant feeling of latent life and force combined with impressive dignity. The gnarled cedar, battered by the wind, grimly clinging to a meagre existence on the rocky hilltop, adds immeasurably to the decorative arrangement of this picture of a brooding, stormy day on Georgian Bay. At St. Hilarion, Quebec Jackson admirable facility of selection and elimination is well illustrated in this canvas. He has seized on the significant fact and suffused them with the magic and charm of colour. There is a lyrical realism in the rhythm of the undulating snow-covered hills, with the winter road dipping up and down and disappearing over the hill-top on the horizon. The little sleighs moving slowly along the road add a human note without being insistent. The contrast of the rounded snow forms with the flat plains and angular slopes of barns and houses is typical of Jackson ‘s work. Jackson does not worry us with the introduction of finicking details, but grasps with amazing insight the bigger things and present them with a flow and ease of design in this picture with radiates the charm of a winter day in the St. Hilarion district. The works of A.Y. Jackson showed that Canada a lot of offer artistically. That some how would be able to use what Canada’s nature to help make the country come together. That all Canadians would be able to see that we have more in common than we ever though possible. Jackson works help Canadians that there was so much more to Canada then just a city live. That there was a lot of value to be found in abounded amount of nature that was to be found from coast to coast.

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