View of the City of Toronto

The distant, panoramic view of Toronto from the island allows the viewer to take stock of a developing city. The bucolic foreground provides a contrast to the celestial urban vision – Toronto graced, as it were – in the distance. Dartnell was the editor of the British Canadian and Canada West Commercial and General Advertiser, a strongly Conservative paper founded September 1852. One wonders if the painting wasn’t originally destined to hang in the offices of the newspaper.