Church by the Sea, N.S., 1922 by James Edward Hervey MacDonald

Provenance:
Thoreau MacDonald, Thornhill, Ontario
Mr. & Mrs. R. MacDonald, Woodbridge, Ontario
Sotheby Parke Bernet, auction, Toronto, 18 October 1976, lot 63
Masters Gallery, Calgary, 1979
Private Collection, British Columbia

Exhibited:
"J.E.H. MacDonald, R.C.A., 1873-1932", Art Gallery of Toronto; travelling to the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 12 November 1965-6 February 1966, no. 91

Literature:
'Church by the Sea, Nova Scotia by J.E.H. MacDonald, A.R.C.A.', "The Canadian Forum", III:28 (January 1923), reproduced page 115
"Canadian Drawings by Members of the Group of Seven", Toronto, 1925, unpaginated, reproduced plate 1
E.R. Hunter, "J.E.H. MacDonald: A Biography & Catalogue of His Work", Toronto, 1940, pages 28-29, 31-32, 54-55
Nancy Robertson, "J.E.H. MacDonald, R.C.A., 1873-1932", Toronto, 1965, pages 11-12, 42, reproduced page 55
Peter Mellen, "The Group of Seven", Toronto/Montreal, 1970, page 114, reproduced page 115
Gemey Kelly, "J.E.H. MacDonald, Lewis Smith, Edith Smith: Nova Scotia", Halifax, 1990, pages 17-23, 38
Robert Stacey and Hunter Bishop, "J.E.H. MacDonald Designer", Ottawa, 1996, pages 4, 63-66, 82, 121
Ian Thom, "Embracing Canada: Landscapes from Krieghoff to the Group of Seven", Vancouver, 2015, see pages 84-85 for "Church by the Sea" in the collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery

J.E.H. MacDonald played a key role in the early history of the Group of Seven. Like many of his colleagues, he first made his living as a commercial artist, working at Grip Printing and Publishing Co. in Toronto from 1894 or 1895. It was there he met the artist Lewis Smith. MacDonald first painted in Nova Scotia when he visited Lewis Smith and his sister Edith at Rockingham near Halifax in 1898.

Following a short period working in London, England from 1903 to 1907, MacDonald returned to Toronto as head designer at Grip Limited. It was there he met Tom Thomson, and later Arthur Lismer and Fred Varley, and where the foundations for the future Group of Seven were laid. While the landscapes of northern Ontario would become their favoured sketching subjects during the early years of the movement, several members also worked in Nova Scotia. Arthur Lismer taught in Halifax from 1916 to 1919, where he was visited by A.Y. Jackson in 1919 while waiting for his discharge from the army, and in 1921 Lawren Harris also painted in Halifax.

MacDonald returned to Nova Scotia in the summer of 1922, visiting Lewis Smith and his sister Edith in the village of Petite Rivière, a coastal village about seventy-five miles south-west of Halifax. In her excellent catalogue of MacDonald’s work in Nova Scotia, Gemey Kelly quotes a 1906 description of the village. “The village of Petite Rivière is prettily situated among the hills surrounding a river of that name, and around its mouth quite a business is carried on, but transportation is greatly impeded by the sand bar which compels the vessels to lie off a mile, all the freight has to be transferred to small boats and so brought to land.” The sand bar would be the subject of MacDonald’s first two Petite Rivière canvases, "Outside Harbour Bar" and "Sea Shore, Nova Scotia", both shown in the spring 1923 exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists, the latter purchased by the National Gallery of Canada that same year.

While MacDonald was especially attracted to the rocks and surf along the ocean shore, he also painted the nearby wharves, fish houses and barns. A number of these oil sketches would be reworked as illustrations for Grace McLeod Rogers’ "Tales of the Land of Evangeline", first published in 1890 (the 1891 American edition was illustrated by Henry Sandham) and reprinted with MacDonald’s illustrations by McClelland & Stewart as "Stories of the Land of Evangeline" in 1923. However, this superb oil sketch of the Wesley Methodist (now United) Church in Petite Rivière was first published as an ink drawing in "The Canadian Forum" in January 1923 and subsequently reproduced in the portfolio of" Canadian Drawings by Members of the Group of Seven" launched on the occasion of the Group’s exhibition in January 1925. Three large boulders define the foreground, set against the broadly brushed grassy incline. The facade of the church, placed off centre, dominates the composition. The adjacent house with its two chimneys is just suggested in the oil sketch but more clearly defined in the drawing. Trees separate the buildings from the ocean horizon below the gently flowing bank of clouds.

In 1924 MacDonald worked up the oil sketch into a canvas titled "Church by the Sea" (Vancouver Art Gallery) that was first exhibited with the Ontario Society of Artists in March of that year. The canvas closely follows the composition defined in the oil sketch, the foreground rocks, the church and house, the water and clouds being the principal elements. However, in the canvas the house has only one chimney, a porch has been added echoing the sloped roofs of the church’s side aisles and touches of red and yellow create decorative patterns on the adjacent tree and grass. The most notable difference is the treatment of the sky, light-filled and blue in the sketch, overcast in the canvas. Heavy rain falls on the horizon at the left.

MacDonald’s biographer, E.R. Hunter observed that MacDonald’s Nova Scotian paintings marked a transition between the rolling rhythms and textured brush strokes of his Algoma canvases and the greater simplification of his mountain paintings following his first trip to the Rockies in the summer of 1924. A beautiful, tranquil sketch, brushed in rich colours, "Church by the Sea" marks an important transition point in MacDonald’s oeuvre.

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" (1995), for contributing the preceding essay.