Chinook 1945

This painting is reflective of Marion Nicoll’s naturalistic style, which informed the early years of her career, and depicts a subject she knew well from growing up in Alberta—the warm, dry wind known as a chinook. A prominent arc of purples and greys in the top quarter of her composition depicts the atmospheric effect, which results from warm air currents originating in the Pacific Ocean temporarily settling in the Rocky Mountain Foothills. Nicoll conveys the temperature of the chinook on a late summer day after harvest through the yellow light that dominates the scene. Illuminated rows of plants draw the viewer from the foreground to the middle-ground, where a burst of light on the haystack sets the horses into relief. The bright sky pulls the viewer to the background. Chinook is one of Nicoll’s few known works in tempera, and her choice of this medium instead of watercolour is significant since the thicker opaque paint enriched the scene’s colours and lighting. This early landscape holds an important place in Nicoll’s artistic evolution, and it has been included in two retrospective exhibitions.

Nicoll often sketched out-of-doors in the Alberta Foothills. Her preliminary drawings for Chinook reveal how carefully she arranged her composition. The simpler of the plans shows a circular configuration between two horses grazing peacefully in the lower left with their manes flowing in the wind. A vertical thrust of the fence dominates the right side. The second sketch, bearing a closer relationship to the finished painting, has more considered attention to the chinook arc and increased attention to the vertical patterns formed by the fence ties and posts. The final painting brings together the ideas of both sketches but with one additional horse, which creates a stronger middle-ground focal point.

Throughout her practice, she remained keenly aware of changing atmospheric effects throughout the seasons, months, and days of the year, and these themes informed her subsequent abstract paintings, including the Chinook Series (I–IV), 1963–66. The work is also one of the earliest examples with her distinctive signature, “M. Nicoll,” which she used for the rest of her practice. This gender-neutral identity offered anonymity on submission forms for exhibitions at a time when most were adjudicated by male artists.