October Elms, 1923 by James Edward Hervey MacDonald
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Cowley Abbott
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Toronto ON M5T 1G5
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J.E.H. MacDonald
October Elms, 1923
oil on board
signed and dated 1923 lower right; signed and titled on the reverse
8.5 x 10.25 in ( 21.6 x 26 cm )
Auction Estimate: $20,000.00 - $30,000.00
Thoreau MacDonald
Dominion Gallery, Montreal, 1923
Mr. Hamilton Larratt Smith K.C. and Harriet Smith
By descent to the present Private Collection, Ontario
Nancy Robertson, "J.E.H. MacDonald, R.C.A., 1873-1932", Toronto, 1965, page 7
Joan Murray, "Flowers: J.E.H. MacDonald, Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven", Toronto, 2002, page 74
Christopher Jackson, "The Thornhill Circle: J.E.H. MacDonald and his Associates", Markham, 2006, page 5
In 1912, MacDonald and his family moved north of Toronto to Thornhill, later settling on a small four-acre farm named “Four Elms” after the elm trees that towered the property. MacDonald would regularly host artist friends at the “Four Elms” and many of them would ultimately call Thornhill their home. It was in this garden that MacDonald would come to paint his iconic landmark painting, "Tangled Garden".
Although it remains unconfirmed if "October Elms" is located in Thornhill, the image of the lonesome elm trees within rolling hills was a recurring motif for MacDonald’s paintings near his home. This affection for his surroundings is found in this intimate sketch, capturing the billowing trees as they nearly touch the ground. A brilliant blue-sky peaks between the branches of trees and their imposing height is mirrored in the elongated shadows below them. Through this vivid contrast within a serene composition, MacDonald showcases his affection for his home and this quiet moment in the Canadian landscape.
It is noted in the records of Dominion Gallery that, upon delivery of this artwork by Thoreau MacDonald, this painting was titled "Elms", 1923. We extend our thanks to Charles Hill, Canadian art historian for providing additional research related to this artwork.
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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.
