Provenance:

Pelham F. Bell-Smith (son of the artist)
Pelham Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith (grandson of the artist)
By descent to the great grandchildren of the artist

Literature:

John E. Staley, “The Premier Painter of the Rockies”, Macleans Magazine, Vol. XXV, no.2, December, 1912.
F.M. Bell-Smith, “An Artist’s Reminiscences”, Canadian Alpine Journal, Appendix IV, 1918.
Roger Boulet, Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith (1846-1923), Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, 1977, pages 68-69, plates 34-35 for other views of Lake Louise.

Exhibited:

35th Annual Exhibition, Royal Canadian Academy, Art Association of Montreal, Montreal, November, 1913, no.21.

Note:

Bell-Smith, writing in the Canadian Alpine Journal, relates that some of his most pleasant recollections are of the early days at Lake Louise: “My first visit to that charming spot was in 1889, in company with Mr. Albert Bierstadt, of New York, an artist very celebrated in his day.”

Staley writes that Bell-Smith’s canvases “express together the epic and lyric measures he has learned so well in the glorious mountain sanctuaries” and concludes that a Bell-Smith painting has become “a necessary adjunct in every collection of importance in the Dominion”.