Provenance
The Art Emporium, Vancouver
Miss A. Bonnycastle, Vancouver, May 1936
Mr. and Mrs. G. A. Parker, Victoria
Gift to the present Private Collection, Ontario, 25 December 1984
Literature
Joyce Zemans, "Jock Macdonald: The Inner Landscape", Toronto, 1981, page 62
Ian Thom, "Jock Macdonald: Evolving Form", Vancouver/London, 2014, page 161
JWG Macdonald, 'Art in Relation to Nature' reproduced in "Joyce Zemans, Jock Macdonald: Life & Work" [online publication], Art Canada Institute, Toronto, 2022, pages 106-116
Born in Thurso, Scotland in 1897, artist/designer educator Jock Macdonald was a trailblazer in Canadian art. A graduate of the Edinburgh College of Art and experienced designer, Macdonald emigrated to Canada in 1927 to become head of design and instructor in commercial advertising at the newly established Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (now the Emily Carr University of Art + Design). Macdonald fell in love with the B.C. landscape and often joined his colleague, Group of Seven member, Frederick Varley, who was head of drawing, painting, and composition at the VSDAA, on sketching and camping trips in the mountains. When the Depression forced severe salary cuts in the VSDAA budget, Macdonald and Varley founded the innovative and pioneering B.C. College of Art.
Three years later, after announcing the College’s bankruptcy, Macdonald, his wife and daughter, along with his colleague, Harry Täuber and Täuber’s friend and lover, Les Planta, boarded the S.S. Princess Maquinna for the remote island of Nootka, home of the "Nuu-chah-nulth". (In March 1778, Captain James Cook became the first European to set foot on British Columbian soil when he visited Friendly Cove [Yuquot] on Nootka Island.)
Macdonald was hoping that, in leaving behind the economic reality of life during the Depression in Vancouver, he could explore his growing interest in the spiritual essence of art within the natural environment. He was also hoping to establish an artists’ colony. They took up residence in an abandoned cabin, three miles from the village of Friendly Cove, primarily eking sustenance from the land and the sea.
In the end, despite the hardships, his time at Nootka became a pivotal experience during which Macdonald confirmed his belief in the relationship between art and nature and evolved an artistic practice that included both representational work and experimentation with abstraction. The Nootka work, based both on his theoretical readings and the experience of working directly in nature, would become the basis for his artistic evolution.
Fascinated by the experience of the landscape and the sea, Macdonald worked at all times of day, recording the changing weather conditions and the experience of living in this remote and often challenging environment. He would come to know the shoreline well, from every vantage point, as he rowed to Friendly Cove to pick up provisions and mail.
In "The Fringe of the Coast, Nootka, B.C." we observe, through the artist’s eye, the desolate shoreline, the bleached and broken driftwood, the pools of water, the forlorn pine in the center of the work and the somewhat threatening clouds through which sunlight is filtered. But the painting is not just a literal interpretation of the scene, it is dominated by a strong rhythmic energy. Macdonald wrote: “Art is not found in the mere imitation of nature, but the artist does perceive through his study of nature the awareness of a force which is the one order to which the whole universe conforms... The interpretation of emotional feeling and emotional understanding is the problem of the artist... 'The Fringe of the Coast, Nootka, B.C.' embodies the artist’s emotions, capturing its viewers, and pulling them into the surging atmosphere of the painting."
While he created few major canvases during this period, Macdonald sent a number of smaller paintings back to his dealer, Harry Hood, at the Art Emporium in Vancouver. Revenues from these sales would help to sustain the family’s life on Nootka. "The Fringe of the Coast, Nootka, B.C.", probably painted on April 13th, 1936, was sent to Vancouver that month, along with a number of other oil on panel works which Barbara Macdonald, the artist’s wife, recalled “sold right away.” (The artist noted in his diary that this painting was sold to Miss A. Bonnycastle in May 1936.)
We extend our thanks to Joyce Zemans, art historian, curator, professor at York University, former director of the MBA Program in Arts, Media & Entertainment Management at the Schulich School of Business, and curator of the exhibition: "Jock Macdonald: The Inner Landscape" (AGO, 1981) and author of several publications on J.W.G. Macdonald, for contributing the preceding essay.
