James Edward Hervey MacDonald 1873 - 1932

Purchased from Thoreau MacDonald, c.1937

Collection of E.R. Hunter, West Palm Beach, Florida

Group of Seven, Catalogue Exhibition of Paintings, Art Gallery of Toronto, May, 1920, no. 91

Six Canadian Painters, Norton Gallery and School of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, January, 1948, travelling to Clearwater, Florida and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Nancy E. Robertson,  Paintings of Canada by J.E.H. MacDonald (1873 - 1932), an article in "The Connoisseur", London, November, 1965, p. 194

E.R. Hunter, J.E.H. MacDonald, A Biography and Catalogue of His Work, Toronto, 1940, p. 52

This work is in excellent condition. The canvas has been relined and UV inspection reveals a small spot touch-up in the upper right portion of the sky, as well as around the edge under the frame. There is minor craquellure throughout the painting. We would like to thank In Restauro for their assistance with this condition report. To see their original notes, please contact Sotheby's directly.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

By 1920, when J.E.H. MacDonald and his colleagues formed the Group of Seven, they were mature, experienced, and capable artists with a decade and more of achievement behind them. Their friendship and influence on each other had begun as early as 1910 or 1911. Each brought different kinds of artistic knowledge and expression to Canada from Europe – except for Tom Thomson, who never left North America. Their intentions as painters was being discussed and determined and, to a large extent, acted upon; their idea of painting Canada's northern spirit was a keen acknowledgement that to be true to themselves they needed to paint what they knew best. They had scarcely all met, barely settled into the Studio Building, and hardly begun to fulfill their mission, when the war in Europe fractured their lives and scattered them in different directions.

After the war, and a week or so after the Memorial exhibition for Tom Thomson had closed, MacDonald's friends gathered one March evening in 1920 at Lawren Harrris's house on Queen's Park Crescent (where the Pontifical Institute at St. Michael's College stands today), and formed the Group of Seven. Their idea of North at the time didn't extend much beyond Lake Simcoe, Algonquin Park, and Georgian Bay, yet their idea of 'wilderness' was acute and a few of them had already enjoyed two autumn trips into the remote and dramatic reaches of Algoma.

Wind Clouds, which was exhibited in the first Group of Seven exhibition in May, 1920, is the first from that historic event to come to auction in many years. Moreover, it is one of MacDonald's great canvases that has somehow eluded publication or exhibition almost ever since.

As the most senior member when the Group was formed, MacDonald had a broader and deeper well of experience and achievement from which to draw inspiration. He was a top-flight designer and a mentor to younger artists; he wrote poetry, studied different philosophies, read widely, and was much influenced by the writings of the American transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

For their debut as a dedicated band of visionaries, each member of the Group was likely to have chosen examples of their best work. This was a picture that MacDonald himself favoured, clearly, and one that was admired by his fellow artists.

The canvas is a dynamo of energy – as much as, in its own way, MacDonald's The Tangled Garden is. The compression in it is massive. This is achieved, in part, by MacDonald's technique, which is always so suited to the subject that we are not immediately aware of it. Yet it is the superb handling of the pigment that gives the canvas a density that is palpable. This is the quality that welds the roiling sky to the choppy water and the land and creates a unity of composition, style, and aesthetic intent. The painting hits us with one tremendous punch.

But MacDonald was always thinking in metaphor, and one can't help but sense that this painting is a metaphor of something intangible, or that a metaphor is concealed in the picture somehow, consciously or unconsciously. Spirits seem to be abroad and active here. The picture gives the viewer a sense of acute awareness, of heightened perception. We seem to be present at an event, without quite knowing what it is. 'Who has seen the wind?', one might ask. This painting offers some evidence that J.E.H. MacDonald did.

The painting also has a history fitting for its importance. The first book on MacDonald, after his death in 1932, a slim but literate and perceptive volume published in 1940, was by E.R. Hunter. Hunter, the grandson of Sir Edmund Walker, was then thirty-one. The painting was owned by H.S. Southam and then acquired by Hunter, in whose family it has been ever since. Hunter became the distinguished Director of the Norton Gallery of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, after the Second World War, and earlier this year celebrated his 101^st birthday.