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Dimensions: 116.8 by 167.6 cm. 46 by 66 in.
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Provenance: Estate of the artist
Private Collection, Toronto
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Exhibited: Toronto, Ontario Society of Artists, 89th Annual Exhibition, March, 1961
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Notes:
Jack Bush's output has been relentlessly classified and categorized, but he can most easily and indisputably be characterized as a brilliant colourist. First evidenced by his ability to articulate the Canadian landscape in the style of his teachers (see lot 37), his output evolved through bold experimentation and the influence of his peers and, most notably, the influence of Clement Greenberg.
Within this evolution, December was painted at a moment of artistic crystallization. It is formally unlike the Flower paintings that preceded it and the Thrust paintings that followed. Instead, it is a hard-edged composition, with deep pigments of a sophisticated palette that foreshadows the Sash paintings that were later critically acclaimed. He had decidedly moved beyond the anarchic painterly fashion of Painters Eleven and towards bare colour-field painting.
December is a magnificent and thoroughly modern painting. Evidence of process and product are simultaneously evident and are a testament to Bush's capacity as a versatile Canadian abstract painter.
