A rare and important sketch by Arthur Lismer is now available for private sale. Painted in 1953, this work belongs to the mature phase of the artist’s sustained engagement with Georgian Bay, a subject he first encountered in 1913 and returned to consistently throughout his career. Here, Lismer turns his attention to the dense undergrowth of the forest floor, building a tightly woven surface of brush, root, moss, and foliage observed at such proximity that the image begins to verge on abstraction.

Lismer first visited Georgian Bay in 1913, and it became one of his principal painting locations over several decades. In 1951, he first travelled to Vancouver Island and began painting around Long Beach and the Tofino area, returning there regularly through the 1950s and 1960s. After this point, his focus increasingly shifted to the West Coast, making Georgian Bay Undergrowth 1953 a culmination of his enduring fascination with the subject.