J.E.H. MacDonald

MacDonald was born on May 12, 1873 in Durham, England to an English mother and Canadian father, who was a cabinetmaker. In 1887 at the age of 14, he immigrated with his family to Hamilton, Ontario. That year he began his first training as an artist at the Hamilton Art School, where he studied under John Ireland and Arthur Heming. In 1889, they moved again to Toronto, where he studied commercial art and became active in the Toronto Art Student League. He continued his training at the Central Ontario School of Art and Design, where he studied with George Agnew Reid and William Cruikshank.

In 1899, MacDonald married Joan Lavis, and two years later they had a son, Thoreau. MacDonald worked as a designer at Grip Ltd until 1903, then at Carlton Studio in London from 1903 to 1907, and returned to Grip Ltd in 1907.

Harris encouraged MacDonald to continue painting and show his work whenever possible. The following year they organized their first joint exhibition. In 1912, MacDonald was widely recognized for his contributions to an exhibition at the Ontario Society of Artists. His best paintings were done there, often of great vistas in a turbulent, patterned style. The sketch Mist Fantasy, Sand River, Algoma (1920, National Gallery of Canada) shows how he used the sketches he made in Algoma: the finished canvas (1922, now in the Art Gallery of Ontario), with its long ribbons of mist, was noted by a later critic as the height of MacDonald's way of stylizing form. In 1924 he made the first of 7 trips to the Rockies, another favourite painting place.

In 1920, MacDonald co-founded the Group of Seven, which dedicated itself to promoting a distinct Canadian art developed through direct contact with the Canadian landscape. The other founding members were Frederick Varley, A. Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, and Franklin Carmichael. Together they initiated the first major Canadian national art movement, producing paintings directly inspired by the Canadian landscape.

Around this time MacDonald introduced more colour into his dark panels. Algoma, north of Lake Superior, which he visited several times with Harris's help from 1919, became the country of his heart. His best paintings were done there, often of great vistas in a turbulent, patterned style. The sketch Mist Fantasy, Sand River, Algoma (1920, National Gallery of Canada) shows how he used the sketches he made in Algoma: the finished canvas (1922, now in the Art Gallery of Ontario), with its long ribbons of mist, was noted by a later critic as the height of MacDonald's way of stylizing form. In 1924 he made the first of 7 trips to the Rockies, another favourite painting place.

In 1895, MacDonald took a position as a commercial designer at Grip Ltd, an important commercial art firm, where he further developed his design skills. In the coming years, he encouraged his colleagues—including future artist Tom Thomson—to develop their skills as painters.

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. 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.”

MacDonald's palette was dark, tough and rich, like A.Y. Jackson's, but his colouring was more fiery and his style more elegant. His sense of composition was oriented towards his meditation on design, a subject in which he was a master (he was the greatest calligrapher of the period and a designer of consequence).