James MacDonald was a Canadian artist and one of the founders of the Group of Seven who initiated the first major Canadian national art movement.
Background
Ethnicity:
He was born to an English mother and Canadian father.
James MacDonald was born on May 12, 1873 in Durham, United Kingdom. His father was a cabinetmaker. In 1887, at the age of 14, James immigrated with his family to Hamilton, Ontario.
Education
MacDonald began his first training as an artist in 1887 at the Hamilton Art School, where he studied under John Ireland and Arthur Heming.
In 1889 he moved to Toronto, where he studied commercial art. MacDonald continued his training at the Central Ontario School of Art and Design (now OCAD University).
MacDonald took a position as a commercial designer in 1895 at Grip Ltd, a commercial art firm, where he further developed his design skills. He worked there as a designer until 1903. Then MacDonald worked at Carlton Studio in London from 1903 to 1907, and returned to Grip Ltd in 1907. Whilst at Carlton, he worked with Norman Mills Price, William Tracy Wallace and Albert Angus Turbayne.
MacDonald resigned his designer position at Grip Ltd in 1911 and moved to Thornhill, Ontario to pursue a career as a landscape artist. To supplement his income, he worked occasionally as a freelance designer until 1921.
After developing his own unique style to the genre, he organized a show of his work at the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto in November 1911. Fellow artist Lawren Harris was so impressed with MacDonald's work that he asked if they could work together. Harris encouraged MacDonald to continue painting and show his work whenever possible. The following year they organized their first joint exhibition.
Together in January 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 color into his dark panels.
MacDonald exhibited "The Tangled Garden" at the Ottawa Society of Artists in March 1916.
MacDonald, Harris, and other artists interested in their new Canadian approach to painting traveled to the Algoma district, Ontario, Canada, for several times since the autumn of 1918. These trips would produce some of his most acclaimed paintings, including "Mist Fantasy, Sand River, Algoma" (1920) and "The Solemn Land" (1921).
In 1920 MacDonald co-founded the Group of Seven, which dedicated itself to promoting a distinct Canadian art developed through direct contact with the Canadian landscape.
Every summer beginning in 1924, MacDonald travelled to the Canadian Rockies to paint the mountainous landscapes that dominated his later work.
From 1928 until 1932 MacDonald served as the Principal of the Ontario College of Art.
MacDonald died of a stroke on November 26, 1932, at the age of 59, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was buried at Prospect Cemetery in Toronto.
Quotations:
"I got to the beautiful Lake O'Hara lying in a rainbow sleep, under the steeps of Mount Lefroy and the waterfalls of Oesa. And there I realized some of the blessedness of mortals."
Membership
MacDonald was a founding member of the Group of Seven, which dedicated itself to promoting a distinct Canadian art developed through direct contact with the Canadian landscape.
Group of Seven
,
Canada
1920
Interests
gardening
Writers
Henry David Thoreau
Connections
MacDonald married Joan Lavis in 1899, and two years later they had a son, Thoreau MacDonald.