Jock Macdonald fonds: Finding Aid

James Williamson Galloway (Jock) Macdonald was born in Thurso, Scotland, in 1897. Following four years of military service during World War I, Macdonald enrolled at the Edinburgh College of Art, where he studied textiles, commercial advertising, and woodcarving under Charles Paine and John Platt. After receiving his diploma in 1922, Macdonald found employment as a designer at Morton Sundour Fabrics Limited and beginning in 1925, held the position of Head of Design at the School of Art, Lincoln, England. In 1927 Macdonald immigrated to Canada to become head of design and instructor in commercial advertising at the newly-established Vancouver Art School of Decorative and Applied Arts. Soon after assuming his new post Macdonald became close friends with Frederick Varley (1881-1969), head of the school's drawing and painting department.

In 1933 Macdonald and Varley founded the British Columbia College of Art in Vancouver. The school struggled financially from the start because of the Depression and was dissolved in 1935. Following its closure, Macdonald moved with his wife Barbara and daughter Fiona to Friendly Cove, Nootka Sound, a remote area of Vancouver Island. He remained in there until November 1936, when he returned with his family to Vancouver. In Vancouver Macdonald worked as an art teacher and also continued to paint, producing in 1937 the first of his "modalities," or abstract renderings of natural phenomena. In the early 1940s he began to devote more time to painting in watercolour, creating a series of small abstract works he called "automatics." By the latter half of the 1940s, Macdonald began to apply the approach he had adopted for his automatics to large-scale oil paintings.

Jock Macdonald was appointed director of the Art Department at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art in Calgary in 1946 and the following year he moved to Toronto to become an instructor of drawing and painting at the Ontario College of Art. Macdonald continued to paint throughout this period and in 1953 he helped found Painters Eleven, a group dedicated to non-objective painting. The group's first exhibition was held in February 1954 at the Roberts Gallery in Toronto. They received critical acclaim in the United States in 1956, when they exhibited with the American Abstract Artists group at the Riverside Museum in New York. A second major Toronto exhibition of the group's work was held in 1958 at the Park Gallery. Macdonald continued to teach and paint in Toronto until his death in December 1960.

Scope and Content

The fonds consists of a scrapbook containing clippings, correspondence, and photographs related to Macdonald's career; personal documents, including Macdonald's birth and baptism certificates; a small watercolour painted by Macdonald when he was sixteen years of age; photographs of Macdonald, his family and friends; attendance books for Macdonald's classes at the Ontario College of Art and Design; correspondence; including letters to Macdonald from Emily Carr (1871-1945) and A.Y. Jackson (1882-1974); newspaper clippings; and slides. The slides mainly show paintings by Macdonald.

Source of supplied title proper: Title based on contents of fonds.
Immediate source of acquisition: The material collected while Macdonald was at the Ontario College of Art and Design, including attendance books, was donated directly to the National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives by George Hulme, executor of Macdonald's estate. The Jock Macdonald scrapbook was donated by Julie Varley. A second accrual consisting of correspondence, photographs, other personal items, and slides were purchased from Fiona Macdonald, daughter of the artist, in 2004 and 2007. A three accrual consisting of correspondence was donated by Joyce Zemans in 2008.
Terms governing use and reproduction: Permission to reproduce or publish material from the Jock Macdonald fonds must be obtained from the National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives.
Physical description: Includes 37 b&w photographs and 185 colour slides.
Language: Text in English.
Finding aids: Series level descriptions and box list available.
Related material: There are several paintings by Jock Macdonald in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

Jock Macdonald scrapbook. – 1917-1962. – 1 scrapbook.

Series consists of a scrapbook of Jock Macdonald's career compiled by Barbara Macdonald. Included are newspaper clippings; 5 photographs of Macdonald; 18 photographs and 4 transparencies of works by Macdonald; a handwritten list of works by Macdonald; and correspondence addressed to Macdonald. Correspondence mainly regards the exhibition and purchase of Macdonald's work. The scrapbook also contains 7 photographs, newspaper clippings, invitations, and other printed ephemera related to the BC College of Art.