Elms

J.E.H. MacDonald painted the Canadian wilderness in bold, decorative colour: blazing autumn hills, rushing rivers and wide northern skies. He was a founding member of the Group of Seven, the painters who set out to create a distinctly Canadian art from direct contact with the land. James Edward Hervey MacDonald was born in Durham, England, and moved to Canada as a teenager. He worked for years as a commercial designer and lettering artist in Toronto and London, and that sense of design shows in his flat, patterned shapes. From 1918 he made autumn trips to the Algoma region north of Lake Superior, travelling in a converted boxcar that served as a mobile studio. His best known works include The Tangled Garden (1916) and The Solemn Land (1921), in the National Gallery of Canada. He later became principal of the Ontario College of Art. Algoma Stream and Autumn Poplar come from those northern trips.