James Edward Hervey MacDonald 1873 - 1932

Dominion Gallery, Montreal

Private Collection, Toronto

Although A.Y. Jackson claimed, not inaccurately, that J.E.H. Macdonald 'owned' Algoma, so powerful were his paintings of that sensational landscape, MacDonald had an equally powerful attachment to his domestic surroundings in Toronto and his home in Thornhill. One thinks of The Tangled Garden, which caused an uproar among conservative artists and critics, or his dramatic summer thunderstorms piling up over Lake Simcoe and Thornhill. For MacDonald, the intensity of his perception and the deftness of his execution was always what made his paintings, whether large or small, pack so much energy and excitement.

So it is with this exquisite floral painting. The subject is seen with MacDonald's particular acumen and vivacity. He has deployed the colours and shapes with his usual ingenuity, but what is striking is how he has managed at the same time to make the background seem both invisible and interesting.

Although he made his living as a designer of exceptional ability, MacDonald never let his 'commercial' talents interfere with his aesthetic concerns, as he might easily have done in a picture like this. Instead, he keeps to the high road of perception and insight. He seems almost to inhabit his subject by finding and revealing its essential qualities and properties. This is a painting before which one could spend long periods of time contemplating the heart of nature and discovering, perhaps, something valid and telling about oneself.