Stark Warmth: Prints and Drawings by Thoreau MacDonald

Thoreau MacDonald, Untitled #7 (Canadian Forum Cover), c.1922-32, zinc lithograph print, Tom Thomson Art Gallery Permanent Collection


I recently curated my first exhibition for the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Stark Warmth: Prints and Drawings by Thoreau MacDonald. My background is in historical and early-modern Canadian art; MacDonald's draughtsmanship and sense of design is some of the most economical and elegant out there.


Here is the didactic text that appears in the exhibition.


Strange how lonely the Canadian landscape is, even in southern Ontario, even when it is you depicting it with all the warmth and affection that gets into everything you do.
- Barker Fairley to Thoreau MacDonald, 1973

With always tender and sometimes somber insight Thoreau MacDonald (1901-1989) recorded the passing vestiges of pre-modern southern Ontario, its rural landscape, wildlife and older agrarian way of life. MacDonald wrote that, as a child, he just drew because he wanted pictures of things, especially things that were somehow fleeting: from the implements of manual farming to the soaring elm tree, devastated by disease since the 1950s. Claiming to be neither “a naturalist nor an artist, just a fond observer,” MacDonald’s images extol self-reliance and respect for the natural order, and cherish the practices that enrich a community’s life – values upheld by his namesake and kindred spirit, the 19th century American writer and activist Henry David Thoreau. Unpretentious to the core, MacDonald found meaning in art only insofar as it was linked to simpler and mundane aspects of everyday life. For him drawing and printmaking were activities akin to wielding “a well handled axe or scythe,” ones marked by “apparent simplicity and decision.”

Born in Toronto’s High Park region, MacDonald’s formative years were spent in several farming outskirts around the city. The son of founding Group of Seven member J.E.H. MacDonald, Thoreau got his professional start as a teenager assisting his father when he was ill with freelance design commissions. Thoreau rose to art editor at the famed periodical Canadian Forum in the early 1920s and, a decade later, was one of the most respected book designers in Canada. In 1932 he turned to private bookwork under Woodchuck Press, for which many of the images in this exhibition were originally printed. A younger colleague of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, MacDonald’s limited palette, scale and means stand in quiet contrast to his contemporaries. His landscapes are not mythic and roiling wildernesses, but rather ones cut and warmed by human presence. MacDonald’s output was prolific and diverse. He designed certificates and diplomas, labels, bookplates, exhibition catalogues, commissioned prints, Christmas and business cards and stamps from various private and public institutions in Canada and the United States. As a lifelong advocate for conservation and species protection, MacDonald’s imagery is as much appreciated by naturalists and nature lovers as by artists and designers.





Me and retired U of T Forestry Prof Paul Aird. Dr. Aird spoke eloquently from the perspective of a naturalist and conservationist about his love for MacDonald's work at the opening to Stark Warmth on February 8.