Lot #30: Wooded Landscape Oil Painting On Board Artist Signed MF Kousal 30"

Prolific is hardly adequate to describe M.F. Kousal. A stroll around antique malls in southern Ontario confirms that. Kousals traditional landscapes are regularly offered for sale representative of his estimated 12,000 to 14,000 paintings.Raised near Brno, in the Moravian region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Mathew F. Kousal and wife Frances (Lucka) came to Canada in 1927, ending up on a farm near Dresden, Ont. But farming was just his day job. In the old country, Mathew had been an artistic wunderkind and by the time of his arrival had fine-tuned his ripening talent. While toiling on Ontario farms during the Depression, he sold a few paintings, sometimes for as little as five dollars. A Chatham banker with an artistic bent agreed to become Mathews patron near the end of the Second World War. In bankrolling the family Mathew, Frances and three daughters the benefactor provided breathing space so Mathew could organize his first major exhibitions, which took place in larger cities during the immediate postwar years. His comforting landscapes found enthusiastic purchasers.