James Edward Hervey MacDonald (1873 to 1932)
About the Artist:
James Edward Hervey MacDonald was born in England of a Canadian father and English mother and came to Canada in 1889. The family settled in Hamilton for a few years where MacDonald took classes at the Hamilton Art School under John Ireland and Arthur Heming, working at a Hamilton Lithography firm during the day. He moved to Toronto in the early 1890’s to continue his studies and also began working for Grip Limited. He worked at Grip from 1895 to 1911 with a break working in England for 3 years. Encouraged by his associates, particularily Lawren Harris, MacDonald quit his position at Grip to become a full-time landscape painter in 1911.
In the fall of 1918 several members of the expanding group, Harris, Johnston and MacDonald embarked on the first of their famous "box-car" trips. These journeys consisted of traveling in box-cars rented from the Algoma Central Railway.
Whenever the artists found what they considered a good working location the
box-car would be uncoupled and the artists would start to work. MacDonald is best known for his work during this time. A.Y. Jackson wrote later of his friend, "I always think of Algoma as MacDonald's country. He was awed by the landscape and he got the feel of it in his paintings."
In 1920 MacDonald and Harris gathered their ideas together with five other artists to form the Group of Seven. An informal association without a constitution, they mounted their first exhibition that year at the Art Museum of Toronto. The public reaction was cautious but on the whole favourable and what is now considered by some to be the most important movement in Canadian art began.
Due to financial pressures, MacDonald accepted a full-time teaching position at the Ontario College of Art in 1921 but did continue his painting expeditions, making seven trips to the Rocky Mountains between 1924 and 1930.
Vancouver Art Gallery
75 Years of Collecting
Stuart McCuaig
Climbing the Cold White Peaks :
A Survey of Artists in and from Hamilton 1910 to 1950
About the Painting:
oil on cardboard
Lake MacArthur, Yoho Park, 1924
An iconic Canadian landscape, painted on one of MacDonald's numerous trips to the Rockies, this picture displays the fiery colours of his palette and exemplifies the Groups desire to create paintings which reflect the landscape and spirit of the Canadian wilderness.
