Merry Christmas!
Dear Clients and Friends,
Merry Christmas! Best wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2010.
Yours truly,
GOLD INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT LTD.
In Jasper Park, A.Y. Jackson, 1924, oil on canvas
Every year, since 1995, we’ve run on our front page — and now on our home page, too — a piece of art from the Thomson family’s collection.
It started as a holiday greeting to our readers and has become a bit of a Canadian tradition. This year, we offer you holiday cheer and inspiration with In Jasper Park, an extraordinary work by A.Y. Jackson. This tradition was started by The Globe and Mail’s late controlling shareholder, Kenneth Thomson, who had a passion for many things, among them Canadian art and newspapers. Not only was he a great collector; Mr. Thomson believed that these works should be shared by everyone. Thus, he donated more than 3,000 pieces to the Art Gallery of Ontario, and funded a redesign of the gallery by Toronto native Frank Gehry to — among other things — house the Kenneth and Marilyn Thomson collection.
The Globe’s visual arts critic Sarah Milroy explains the artwork’s significance
By 1924, A.Y. Jackson had already climbed a few peaks in his life. He had fought in the First World War and after being wounded, worked as a war artist. Prior to that he studied painting at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he had imbibed the nectar of impressionism, and had returned home to forge what would become the Group of Seven with his artist friends in Toronto, making numerous sketching expeditions throughout Ontario and Quebec. Here, though, Jackson has left the cozy Laurentian villages and their rolling, muddied cart paths for something untamed - the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, which held him in awe. “The obedient in art are always the forgotten,” Jackson once wrote to a friend. “Chop your own path. Get off the car track.”
