“…art has a world of her own where science is not so absolute.”
J.E.H. MacDonald (circa 1925), as cited in J.E.H. MacDonald Up Close: The Artist’s Materials and Techniques.
Yet science does shine, as Kate Helwig and Alison Douglas escort the reader through the many layers that make up a sampling of J.E.H. MacDonald’s iconic landscapes, in their detailed and beautifully illustrated research report, J.E.H. MacDonald Up Close: The Artist’s Materials and Techniques.
A founding member of the Group of Seven — a collaborative that shared a vision for a distinctive voice in Canadian art through interaction with nature — MacDonald created soft yet bold impressions of the Canadian landscape over a twenty-one year career that ended with his death in 1932. Nearly a century later, Helwig and Douglas rely on careful study, honed expertise in art conservation, cutting-edge technology, and even unpublished lecture notes and letters to infer the steps MacDonald took to create his masterworks.
In a 1925 book review, MacDonald wrote that a plein-air painter “needs no sport to amuse him outdoors. He has the one great sport.”
Thorough in its meshing of art and science, this is “CSI” in a creative space. Helwig and Douglas examine in detail Macdonald’s many artistic (and practical) choices: the use of canvas or wood as a “support” for his visions; the use of varnish, shellac, or thinned paint to set his stage; the decision to use only a few base pigments as his palette; the deliberate choice to let certain layers remain unpainted, so that the final piece would meld together in the viewer’s eye to create the bright, open landscapes that became his signature; the time spent in remote lakes and mountains that required a nimble set of painting gear.
The body of evidence presented is pressed into service in the final chapter, where Helwig and Douglas demonstrate how the knowledge combines to validate examples of previously unknown works from his oeuvre — or, are they masterful frauds?
An enjoyable read about “the first outdoor sport,” each chapter delineates a new decision that, too, layers together in “a world of her own,” to create a portrait of an artist who recorded Canada in a distinctive voice greater than the individual components making up each painting.
Kate Helwig, M.Sc., M.A.C, is a senior conservation scientist at the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa, Ontario.
Alison Douglas, B.F.A., M.A.C., is the conservator at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario.
- Publisher: Goose Lane Editions (Jan 16, 2024)
- Publication Date: January 16, 2024
- Language: English (216 pages)
- ISBN:9781773104157 (Paperback)