Artwork by Isabel McLaughlin,  Bobcaygeon, Ont.

Isabel McLaughlin
Bobcaygeon, Ont.

oil on board
titled on the reverse; dated 1928 on an exhibition label on the reverse
10.5 x 13 in ( 26.7 x 33 cm )

Auction Estimate: $3,500.00$2,500.00 - $3,500.00

Price Realized $10,800.00
Sale date: March 25th 2025

Provenance:
Private Collection, Victoria
Exhibited:
"Isabel McLaughlin: Recollections", The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, March-September 1983, no. 1
Literature:
Joan Murray, "Isabel McLaughlin: Recollections", Oshawa, 1983, reproduced page 17, page 14: "one of McLaughlin's first oils shows Harris's influence...The medium is used with creamy thickness -- also like Harris -- though McLaughlin's interest in pattern is already apparent."
Joan Murray, "An Extraordinary Life: Isabel McLaughlin", Oshawa, 1983, reproduced pages 2- 3
Isabel McLaughlin's debut as a painter occurred in this small oil painting that, like "Alice in Wonderland", suddenly seems to outgrow its surroundings. Painting with fellow students from Riverbend on an outing to Bobcaygeon she concocted this brightly colored, strong scene of snow-covered houses. McLaughlin knew when to stop, how not to overwork and made the different parts of the street scene connect to create an effect both materially rich and substantial. Despite the appearance of simplicity, there are a multitude of things going on here. McLaughlin's painting presents a combination of homage to her peers as well as respectfully presenting her own forte: design. In her later work, she further explored, and reconciled, these two different sides of her sensibility, creating an accomplished body of work.

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Isabel McLaughlin
(1903 - 2002) Canadian Group of Painters

Born in Oshawa, Ontario, the daughter of Mr. & Mrs. R.S. McLaughlin, she studied at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto; the Art Students’ League, New York; the Scandinavian Academy, Paris, and in Mexico. She held her first solo show at the Art Gallery of Toronto in the winter of 1933, when the Toronto Globe notes, “Miss McLaughlin has become interested in a section of Canada, unexplored by artists, namely, Northern Ontario mining settlements. Kirkland Lake and Cobalt are represented in the group of paintings which also includes the Ottawa, Quebec, Muskoka, and Southern Ontario landscapes in the neighborhood of her home at Oshawa and in Toronto. City streets, which have held tenaciously to a few colorful cottages of an earlier day, standing wedged between newer structures have gained the interest of this young artist…. The work exhibits a fine sense of design – a quality well expressed in the still-life drawings and plant studies. A series of watercolors, named “Here and There in Toronto,” reveals the fact that the artist likes to place on canvas those familiar and unnoticed pictures that we meet and should see every day from windows or a street corner.”

Subsequently, she exhibited at Scott & Sons, Montreal jointly with Sarah Robertson, and Prudence Heward (1934); at Malloney Galleries, Toronto, with Rody Kenny Courtice, Kathleen Daly, Yvonne McKague and Paraskeva Clark (1936); Picture Loan Society, Toronto (1937). In 1933, she became a founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters and exhibited often with this society. In her earlier work, she was influenced by the Group of Seven but then she moved toward a more simplified modern approach. Even in the 1960’s, she was still very much interested in landscapes. She lived and died in Toronto. Represented in the collections of: National Gallery of Canada; Art Gallery of Ontario; Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s Univ., Kingston; The McMichael Conservation Collection, Kleinburg, Ont., and elsewhere.

Literature Source:
"A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume 4: Little - Myles", compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1978