Laurentian Hillside, 1913 by James Edward Hervey MacDonald
J.E.H. MacDonald
Laurentian Hillside, 1913
oil on book binder’s board
initialed lower left; signed and inscribed “Sketch for Laurentian Hillside” on the reverse
6 x 8 ins ( 15.2 x 20.3 cms )
Auction Estimate: $20,000.00 - $30,000.00
Price Realized $17,250.00
Sale date: December 6th 2023
G. Blair Laing., Toronto
Egerton Brown
G.E. Brown
Acquired by the present Private Collection, March 1999
Possibly “Second Annual Exhibition of Little Pictures by Canadian Artists”, Toronto Art Galleries of the Public Reference Library, 7‒28 February 1914, no. 229 as “October Color, Laurentians”
“Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven”, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, England; travelling to National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo; Gröninger Museum, Groningen, The Netherlands, 19 October 2011‒28 October 2012, no. 85
“Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven”, Vancouver Art Gallery; travelling to the Glenbow Museum, Calgary; Art Gallery of Hamilton, 30 October 2015‒25 September 2016
Peter Mellen, “The Group of Seven”, Toronto/Montreal, 1970, page 44
Paul Duval, “The Tangled Garden”, Scarborough, Ontario, 1978, pages 49‒52
Ian A.C. Dejardin, et al., “Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven”, London, 2011, no. 85, reproduced page 158
Ian Thom, et al., “Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven”, Vancouver/London, 2015, reproduced page 90, caption page 202
The two artists worked closely together as evidenced by Harris’ sketch, “Laurentian Landscape” (sold at Sotheby’s/Ritchies, 27 May 2003, lot 152) that has a similar open foreground, yellow-leafed trees along the water’s edge and rocky hill. An overall mauve and khaki palette is predominant in the Harris sketch, evidence of the inclement, overcast weather that MacDonald had observed. Similar weather effects are depicted in MacDonald’s sketch, “Rain, Laurentians” (National Gallery of Canada) with its bold brushwork, overcast hills and dramatic sky effects. But in this sketch for “Laurentian Hillside” MacDonald did catch up with nature’s colouring. Purple‒grey rocks and lovely green slopes define the foreground with lovely red, orange and yellow trees by the water’s edge. A birch rises from centre right to touches of blue upper right. Autumn foliage creates an arabesque across the rocky slopes of the hill echoing the orange and yellow trees below. The hill is painted in purple‒greys and greens and mists rise across the crest of the hill.
The artists painted a good number of sketches on each expedition though production was always subject to weather conditions. Only selected studies were worked up into canvases. Clearly MacDonald was so pleased with the effects captured in this sketch that he used it to develop a major canvas over the winter of 1913‒1914. The resultant canvas, “Laurentian Hillside, October” (lot 121), is being offered in this sale. MacDonald exhibited a related etching, “Autumn Weather, La Toque, Laurentians”, in the Art Museum of Toronto exhibition “Etchings by Toronto Etchers” in April 1914. Impressions of this etching are in the collections of the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Art Gallery of Ontario.
We extend our thanks to Charles Hill, Canadian art historian, former Curator of Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada and author of “The Group of Seven‒Art for a Nation”, for his assistance in researching this artwork and for contributing the preceding essay.
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James Edward Hervey MacDonald
(1873 - 1932) Group of Seven, OSA, RCA
James Edward Hervey MacDonald, painter was born in Durham, England on 12 May 1873. Among the Group of Seven, of which he was a founder, J.E.H. MacDonald was one of the best trained, first at the Hamilton Art School from about 1887 and, after 1889, in Toronto lithography houses and at the Central Ontario School of Art and Design, where he studied with William Cruikshank. In 1895 he joined Grip Ltd, an important commercial art firm, where he encouraged the staff (which included Tom Thomson from about 1907) to develop as painters. MacDonald was a key member of the later Group. Lawren Harris recalled that a show of MacDonald's in 1912 at the Ontario Society of Artists gave him his first recognition of the Group's "ethos."
MacDonald was Harris's greatest early friend among the Toronto painting community. Together in 1913 they went to the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, to see the survey of Scandinavian landscape painting which was to influence their work. 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.
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). Like other members of the Group, he loved Chinese and Japanese art.
Among other tasks he performed was the decoration of St Anne's Church, Toronto (1923), and teaching at the Ontario College of Art. He also wrote poetry after a nervous breakdown in 1917. He was an eccentric gardener and enjoyed playing on a set of chimes made of old plough points. One of his favourite authors was Henry David Thoreau, for whom he named his son, illustrator Thoreau MacDonald. The artist died in Toronto on 26 November 1932.
