Additional Images

Provenance:

Private Collection, Toronto

Literature:

A.Y. Jackson, A Painter’s Country, The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson, Toronto, 1958, pages 17 and 30.

Kenneth Carman Veitch, Species History: Hemlock and the Tannin Industry of Muskoka, Journal of the Forest History Society of Ontario. volume 4 issue 2, 2013, pages 26 and 27.

Note:

In 1881, the Breithaupt family, a well respected and prominent German family from Berlin, (now Kitchener) Ontario, purchased land in Penetanguishene to expand upon their successful industrial tannery business, then known as the Breithaupt Leather Company. The tanning industry contributed significantly to the economy of the Muskoka region, employing hundreds of people in their manufacturing operations, as well as rural residents who laboured in the Muskoka wilderness, cutting down trees in order to harvest the bark - essential to tannery operations, which uses the tannins in Hemlock bark to dye the leather.

In addition to their tannery in Penetang, the Breithaupt family also owned a summer home in that area, where they would invite friends and family to visit during the summer months. Rosa Breithaupt introduced her cousin, A.Y. Jackson, to the Georgian Bay area when she invited him to spend his summer at their cottage, igniting the beginning of what would become a decades-long relationship with the Georgian Bay area that would become the focus of many of his paintings.