Frood Lake, Morning Haze

About Frood Lake, Morning Haze

This oil landscape painting is by the legendary Group of Seven artist AJ Casson.

He was the youngest member of the Group of Seven, Canada’s renowned landscape artists. Alfred Joseph Casson’s first exposure to art was in high school. A respected commercial artist, Casson loved water colours and developed his own clean, simple style as a painter. He is best known for his renderings of landscapes, forests, and farms in Southern Ontario.
This oil on canvas captures the rugged rocky landscape of the shores of Frood Lake near Sudbury in Northern Ontario. An avid canoeist, Casson spent many hours in the wilderness paddling lakes and documenting the scenery in his signature rich expressive style. The palette is earthy—a rich melange of browns, grays and soft greens.

“I had to develop my own style. I began to dig out places of my own.” A. J. Casson

Alfred Joseph Casson was born in Toronto (1898-1992). His first exposure to art was in high school. By age 15, he was already working as an apprentice at a lithography business in Hamilton—the beginning of a lifelong career as a commercial artist. He moved on to two commercial art firms in Toronto where he worked as an assistant to the artist Franklin Carmichael, one of the founding members of the renowned Group of Seven.
Carmichael encouraged him to sketch and paint on his own. Casson was invited to join the Group of Seven in the 1920s, with whom he painted for years. Following their demise, he formed the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour in 1933. He became a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1940 and an Officer of the Order of Canada. Casson became the Art Director and finally the Vice President of the Ontario College of Art. He retired in 1957 to paint full time. He died a few days short of his 94th birthday and is buried on the grounds of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinberg, Ontario, beside five other members of the Group of Seven. His work is held in many private collections around the world and publicly in the Ontario Gallery of Art, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and the National Gallery of Canada.