Jock Macdonald

{{Short description|Canadian artist (1897–1960)}} {{EngvarB|date=January 2018}} {{Use dmy dates|date=January 2018}} {{Infobox artist | name = Jock Macdonald | birth_name = James Williamson Galloway Macdonald | birth_date = {{Birth date|df=yes|1897|5|31}} | birth_place = Thurso, Scotland | death_date = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1960|12|3|1897|5|31}} | death_place = Toronto, Ontario | nationality = | spouse = Barbara Niece | field = painter, educator | training = Edinburgh College of Art | movement = Painters Eleven }}

'''James Williamson Galloway Macdonald''' (31 May 1897 – 3 December 1960), commonly known in his professional life as '''Jock Macdonald''', was a member of Painters Eleven (Painters 11, or P11),<ref>Art Gallery of Greater Victoria: "Tributes", http://www.maxwellbates.net/english/tributes_bios.asp {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070830040252/http://www.maxwellbates.net/english/tributes_bios.asp |date=30 August 2007 }}, Maxwell Bates, 2004</ref> whose goal was to promote abstract art in Canada. Macdonald was a trailblazer in Canadian art from the 1930s to 1960. He was the first painter to exhibit abstract art in Vancouver, and throughout his life he championed Canadian avant-garde artists at home and abroad. His career path reflected the times: despite his commitment to his artistic practice, he earned his living as a teacher, becoming a mentor to several generations of artists.<ref name="Zemans " >{{Cite book|url=https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/jock-macdonald/biography|title=Jock Macdonald: Life & Work|last=Zemans|first=Joyce|publisher=Art Canada Institute|year=2016|isbn=978-1-4871-0108-4|location=Toronto}}</ref>

==Early life== Macdonald was born in May 1897 in Thurso, Scotland.<ref name="Waterloo " >The Waterloo County Board of Education: "Jock Macdonald", p.121, Canadians:A history of Artists & their Work, 1989, IMPACT©</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://projects.vanartgallery.bc.ca/publications/75years/pdf/Macdonald_Jock_39.pdf |title=Vancouver Art Gallery: 75 Years of Collecting |access-date=14 March 2011 |archive-date=6 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110706165315/http://projects.vanartgallery.bc.ca/publications/75years/pdf/Macdonald_Jock_39.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> Before coming to Canada, Macdonald graduated with a Specialists Teacher's Certificate from the Scottish Education Authority and a diploma in design from the Edinburgh College of Art in 1922.{{sfn|Thom |2014|p=9-13}} His first major employment was as a designer for a Scottish textile company, then he worked for the Lincoln School of Art as Head of Design in 1925.{{sfn|Thom |2014|p=9-13}}<ref name="Waterloo" />

==Career== After being recruited by Charles Hepburn Scott, Macdonald moved to Canada in 1926 to become a professor at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts.<ref name="WWA " >World Wide Arts Resources: "Biography", http://wwar.com/masters/m/macdonald-jock.html {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070716201438/http://wwar.com/masters/m/macdonald-jock.html |date=16 July 2007 }}, 21 December 2007</ref> He became well-known and respected as a teacher at art colleges in Canada at Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto.<ref name="Waterloo " /> Macdonald was initially inspired by the work of the Group of Seven and mentored by F.H. Varley, used bold colour and form to paint the British Columbia landscape but began painting abstracts in 1934.{{sfn|Thom |2014|p=9-13}}<ref name="WWA " /> In 1941, he became president of the British Columbia Society of Artists and in that capacity attended the Kingston Conference which developed over time into the Canada Council for the Arts.<ref name="Zemans " />{{sfn|Thom |2014|p=9-13}} Macdonald's training as a designer and his interest in children's paintings encouraged his experimentation with abstract art as did his interest in automatic painting.<ref name="Zemans " /><ref name="Waterloo " /> Automatic painting showed him an unexpected way to express all of the feelings which vanished if the approach was objective.<ref name="bates " >{{cite journal |last1=Bates |first1=Maxwell |title=Jock Macdonald, Painter-Explorer |journal=Artscanada |date=March 1982 |volume=38 |issue=244/245 |pages=79|url=https://librarysearch.library.utoronto.ca/discovery/search?query=any,contains,artscanada.&tab=Everything&search_scope=UTL_AND_CI&vid=01UTORONTO_INST:UTORONTO&offse |access-date=2021-04-17}}</ref> He said: <blockquote>"I felt that the curve of a wave, the breaker on the beach and the foam on the sand wasn`t all of the sea. The sea has solidity and transparency, cruelty and tenderness, joy and terror, cunning and friendship, all included in visual observation."<ref name="bates " /></blockquote> In the mid-1940s, Macdonald taught at the Banff School of Fine Arts. There, in 1946, he met Calgary artist Marion Nicoll, who was hired to teach the summer program, and exerted a profound influence on her work by introducing her to automatic drawing and watercolour.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mastin |first=Catharine |url=https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/marion-nicoll/style-and-technique/#automatic-drawing-and-painting |title=Marion Nicoll: Life & Work |publisher=Art Canada Institute |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-4871-0301-9 |location=Toronto |language=English}}</ref>

In the summers of 1948 and 1949, Macdonald studied with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts.{{sfn|Thom |2014|p=9-13}} In 1954, he worked and studied in Scotland, London and France.{{sfn|Thom |2014|p=9-13}} He settled in Nice where he showed his watercolours to Jean Dubuffet who advised him to "speak in oil as you do in watercolour".{{sfn|Thom |2014|p=9-13}} His breakthrough came when Harold Town introduced him to a new paint material, Lucite 44.{{sfn|Thom |2014|p=9-13}} The new freedom he found using this medium mixed with oil transformed his work.{{sfn|Thom |2014|p=9-13}} Through his paintings, encouraged by Clement Greenberg,<ref>{{cite web |title=Clement Greenberg OSHAWA INTERVIEW Allan Walkinshaw talks with Clement Greenberg, March 15, 1978. Joan Murray Artist Files, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario. |url=http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/interviewoshawa.html |website=www.sharecom.ca |publisher=Terry Fenton, Edmonton |access-date=2021-05-11 |archive-date=19 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220319034316/http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/interviewoshawa.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> he sought to convey abstract matters such as space and time.<ref name="Zemans " /><ref name="WWA " /> One writer speaks of their whisper of mysterious space and other-worldly concerns.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Nasgaard |first1=Roald |title=Abstract Painting in Canada |year=2008 |pages=115|publisher=Douglas & McIntyre|isbn=9781553653943 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-18mk0_QWjoC |access-date=2020-08-13}}</ref> Macdonald said: <blockquote>"Artists must discover idioms which interptret man`s new concepts about nature, especially about the interrelationship of all things, the energies of motion, new spatial concepts."<ref name="bates " /></blockquote> Macdonald was an influential professor at several art colleges in Canada and helped spur the modern art movement in the country.<ref name="WWA " /> He was made an associate member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.<ref name=RCA1880 >{{cite web|title=Members since 1880 |url=http://www.rca-arc.ca/en/about_members/since1880.asp |publisher=Royal Canadian Academy of Arts |access-date=11 September 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110526215339/http://www.rca-arc.ca/en/about_members/since1880.asp |archive-date=26 May 2011 }}</ref> He was a member of Painters Eleven as well as a charter member of the Canadian Group of Painters,<ref name="bates" /> a life member of the British Columbia Society of Artists,<ref name="bates" /> President of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour in 1952, and an executive member of the Ontario Society of Artists that year.{{sfn|Thom |2014|p=9-13}} He had an important retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the first offered a living artist who was not a member of the Group of Seven.{{sfn|Thom |2014|p=9-13}}

Jock Macdonald died of a heart attack in Toronto in December 1960.<ref>A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, volumes 1-8 by Colin S. MacDonald, and volume 9 (online only), by Anne Newlands and Judith Parker National Gallery of Canada / Musée des beaux-arts du Canada</ref>

== Record sale prices == At the Cowley Abbott Auction, Important Canadian Art (Sale 2), December 1, 2022, lot 110, ''Drying Herring Roe'' (1938), oil on canvas, 28.25 x 32 ins (71.8 x 81.3 cms ), Auction Estimate: $50,000.00 - $70,000.00, realized a price of $408,000.00.<ref>{{cite web |title=Important Canadian Art (Sale 2) |url=https://cowleyabbott.ca/items/1220 |website=cowleyabbott.ca |publisher=Cowley Abbott |access-date=2 December 2022}}</ref>

== References == {{Reflist}}

== Bibliography == *Zemans, Joyce. ''[https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/jock-macdonald Jock Macdonald: Life & Work]''. Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2016. {{ISBN|978-1-4871-0108-4}} *{{cite book |last1=Jacques |first1=Michelle|last2=Jansma |first2=Linda|last3=Thom |first3=Ian M. |title=Jock Macdonald: Evolving Form |date=2014 |publisher=Black Dog Publishing Limited|location=Victoria, Oshawa and Vancouver|isbn=9781908966810|url=https://search.library.utoronto.ca/search?N=0&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nu=p_work_normalized&Np=1&Ntt=Jock%20Macdonald%3A%20Evolving%20Form.&Ntk=Anywhere |access-date=2020-08-09}} *{{cite book |last1=Thom |first1=Ian M. |title="Jock Macdonald: A Biographical Sketch". Jock Macdonald: Evolving Form |date=2014 |publisher=Black Dog Publishing Limited |location=Victoria, Oshawa and Vancouver |pages=9–13|isbn=9781908966810|url=https://search.library.utoronto.ca/search?N=0&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nu=p_work_normalized&Np=1&Ntt=Jock%20Macdonald%3A%20Evolving%20Form.&Ntk=Anywhere |access-date=2020-08-09}} *{{cite book |last1=Nowell |first1=Iris |title=P11, Painters Eleven: The Wild Ones of Canadian Art |date=2011 |publisher=Douglas & McIntyre |isbn=9781553655909 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rgvrHdQ_iXEC }}

== External links == * [https://www.gallery.ca/library/ngc036.html Jock Macdonald fonds] at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario

{{DEFAULTSORT:Macdonald, Jock}} Category:1897 births Category:1960 deaths Category:Alumni of the Edinburgh College of Art Category:Scottish emigrants to Canada Category:20th-century Scottish painters Category:Scottish male painters Category:20th-century Canadian painters Category:Canadian male painters Category:Members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Category:Canadian art educators Category:Canadian abstract artists Category:20th-century Canadian male artists Category:20th-century Scottish male artists Category:Canadian Group of Painters