Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal
Private Collection, Montreal
Literature
David P. Silcox, “The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson”, Toronto, 2003, page 302
J.E.H. MacDonald visited Agawa Canyon in Algoma for the first time during the fall of 1918, together with Lawren Harris,Franz Johnston, and Dr. James MacCallum. The region was not a settled or a resort area; rather, they had to camp in the remote and rugged wilderness. Harris, rented a boxcar from Algoma Central Railway and turned it into a bunker for the Group of Seven painters to stay. The men were able to negotiate an arrangement whereby they could hitch onto trains travelling through the Algoma region and when they found an opportune location to paint, they would be dropped off to spend as many days as they wished exploring and painting the wilderness. The outing was so successful that they all set out again in September 1919 and twice in 1920 with Jackson and Lismer; each trip they ventured farther north and west.
Not unlike other members of the Group, trips to the Algoma region inspired some of MacDonald’s best work of this rugged landscape, and like Thomson, he was an advocate for the small oil sketch produced en plein air. David Silcox writes that “for MacDonald, the torrent of colours, the vertiginous spaces, and the aggressive power of the land’s massive shapes and grand vistas provided the ideas for the echoing silences of [the artworks he produced there].”
Under the tutelage of George Agnew Reid, MacDonald had a penchant for capturing the effects of ethereal light through the soft application of colour reminiscent of Impressionist painters of Europe. The atmospheric effect created with delicate strokes of paint was paramount for MacDonald in his early career. “Agawa Canyon, Algoma” captures the soft light of a misty summer morning in an impressionistic rendering of Canadian terrain.
