J. E. H. MacDonald

James Edward Hervey MacDonald (12 May 1873 – 26 November 1932) was an English-born Canadian artist, best known as a member of the Group of Seven who asserted a distinct national identity combined with a common heritage stemming from early modernism in Europe in the early twentieth century. to an English mother, Margaret (Usher), and a Canadian father, William MacDonald, who was a cabinetmaker. In 1887 at the age of 14, he emigrated with his family to Hamilton, Ontario. That year he began his first training as an artist at the Hamilton Art School, To supplement his income, he worked occasionally as a freelance designer until 1921. The two artists felt that the approach to the northern Scandinavian wilderness could be adopted by Canadian painters to create on canvas a truly Canadian form of landscape art.

In March 1916, MacDonald exhibited The Tangled Garden at the Ontario Society of Artists. Though derided by art critics of the day, it was a fairly conventional post-impressionistic painting of sunflowers—one that recalls Vincent van Gogh's treatment of the subject from nearly forty years before, but in which MacDonald would have relied on sketches of sunflowers he made in his own garden at Thornhill, Ontario. Accustomed to the smooth blending and muted tones of Canadian academic art in the style of the Canadian Art Club, the critics were taken aback by the brightness and intensity of the colours. The art critic for the Toronto Daily Star called it "an incoherent mass of colour". Hostile art critics thereafter singled out MacDonald for attacks in the press.

In the autumn of 1918, MacDonald, Harris, and other artists interested in their new Canadian approach to painting travelled to the Algoma district north of Lake Superior in a specially outfitted Algoma Central Railway car that functioned as a mobile artist studio. The group would hitch their car to trains travelling through the area, and when they found a scenic location, they would unhitch and spend time exploring and painting the wilderness. The other founding members were Frederick Varley, A. Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, and Franklin Carmichael. MacDonald had worked with Lismer, Varley, Johnston, and Carmichael at the design firm Grip Ltd. in Toronto. Together they initiated what they asserted was the first major Canadian national art movement, producing paintings directly inspired by the Canadian landscape. In 1921, MacDonald was appointed instructor in decorative art and commercial design at the Ontario College of Art and his teaching commitments somewhat curtailed his painting activities. However, every summer from 1924 until 1930, MacDonald travelled to the Canadian Rockies to paint the mountain landscapes that dominated his later work.

File:J.E.H. MacDonald - Falls, Montreal River - Google Art Project.jpg|Falls, Montreal River, 1920, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

File:J. E. H. MacDonald, Algoma Waterfall 1920.jpg|Algoma Waterfall, 1920, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg

File:J. E. H. MacDonald, Moose Lake, Algoma 1920.jpg|Moose Lake, Algoma, 1920, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg

File:J. E. H. MacDonald, Forest Wilderness 1921.jpg|Forest Wilderness, 1921, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg

File:Lake McArthur, Yoho Park - James MacDonald.jpg|Lake McArthur, Yoho Park, 1924, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

File:J. E. H. MacDonald, Lodge Interior, Lake O’Hara c. 1925.jpg|Lodge Interior, Lake O’Hara, , McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg

File:J.E.H. MacDonald - Cathedral Mountain, 1927, Oil on paperboard.jpg|Cathedral Mountain, 1927, private collection

File:The Solemn Land - James MacDonald.jpg|The Solemn Land, 1921, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

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Later years

From 1928 until his death, MacDonald served as the Principal of the Ontario College of Art, and he painted with less frequency and less consistent success.

Today, MacDonald is viewed with general admiration for his art, with one writer commenting, "no Canadian landscape painter possessed a richer command of colour and pigment than J. E. H. MacDonald ... His brushwork is at once disciplined and vigorous. His best on-the-spot sketches possess an intensity and freshness of execution not dissimilar from Van Gogh." His former home and garden in Vaughan, Ontario have been restored. Owned by the City of Vaughan, they are open to the public.

MacDonald suffered a stroke in 1931, and spent the following summer recovering in Barbados. He died in Toronto on 26 November 1932 at the age of 59. He was buried at Prospect Cemetery in Toronto.

File:Dark Autumn, Rocky Mountains - James MacDonald.jpg|Dark Autumn, Rocky Mountains, 1930, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario

File:J. E. H. MacDonald, Aurora, Georgian Bay 1931.jpg|Aurora, Georgian Bay, 1931, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg

File:Mount Lefroy - James MacDonald.jpg|Mount Lefroy, 1932, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario

File:J.E.H. MacDonald - Mountain Solitude (Lake Oesa) - Google Art Project.jpg|Mountain Solitude, Lake Oesa, 1932, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario

File:J. E. H. MacDonald, Goat Range Rocky Mountains 1932.jpg|Goat Range Rocky Mountains, 1932, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg

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Legacy

On 8 June 1973 Canada Post issued 'J.E.H. MacDonald, painter, 1873–1932' designed by William Rueter based on MacDonald's Mist Fantasy, Northland (1922) in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. The 15¢ stamps were printed by Ashton-Potter Limited.

MacDonald has been designated as an Historic Person in the Directory of Federal Heritage Designations.

Record sale prices

At the Cowley Abbott Spring Live Auction of Important Canadian Art, 2024, lot 101, Lake O’Hara (1925), oil on board, 8.5 x 10.5 in ( 21.6 x 26.7 cm ), Auction Estimate: $70,000.00 - $90,000.00, realized a price of $216,000.00.

References

Footnotes

External links

CBC Digital Archives - The Group of Seven: Painters in the Wilderness
Thoreau and J.E.H. MacDonald fonds at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
Brandon, Laura. War Art in Canada: A Critical History. Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2021.