"Farmland, Tecumseh Township" Oil Painting on Panel by Charles Fraser Comfort

Charles Fraser Comfort, LLD, RCA, OC (1900-1994), an artist of major importance in the Canadian art world, was an officer of the Order of Canada, and a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, as well as holder many other honors and memberships in professional societies. He was the only artist to serve as the Director of the National Gallery of Canada. He was influential in the establishment of the Canada Council for the Arts in 1957. His paintings are in important Canadian collections, and in museums, institutions, and private homes throughout the world.

During World War I, he served as an official war artist documenting the Italian Campaign of the Canadian Armed Forces. Later, he painted in England and the Netherlands, but accomplished his major works in Canada, where he painted subjects from coast to coast, while developing his styles of Realism, Precisionism, and Expressive Nationalism. Some of his most famous works are his designs for the carved frieze on the exterior of the Toronto Stock Exchange and the eight painted murals overlooking its trading floor. One of his favorite subjects, beside sunrises, sunsets, wilderness, and water, was farmland - as in this painting.

He was a founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters (a collective of 28 artists formed to succeed the Group of Seven). Its purpose was to promote Canadian National Art that moved beyond the landscape paintings of the Group of Seven to incorporate industrialization, portraiture, history and genre painting, cities, villages - and with new techniques and styles - into a Canadian National Art. The new Group promoted communication and cooperation among Canadian artist to achieve this goal.

This farmland painting on wooden panel shows the influence of the Group of Seven, whose work Charles Comfort admired. Tecumseh Township is now a suburb of the city of Windsor, Ontario, and the area has become heavily developed since 1970. This farmland scene, in prominent brush-strokes, shows Tecumseh Township in its mid-twentieth century appearance. It is singed "Comfort" in the lower right, and it is in its original parcel-gilt gesso frame. The gallery label on the back states the artist's name, the title, and the date of July 1970.

The overall measurements including the frame appear above. The actual size of the panel itself is 15.63"W x 11.63"H.