User:Charles Beale

MANLY EDWARD MACDONALD (1889-1971) A.R.C.A., O.I.P.

Manly MacDonald was a Canadian semi-impressionistic painter. He was born in Point Anne, Ontario. In 1908 he enrolled in the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, then taking courses in 1911 at the Albright School of Art in Buffalo, New York, and then at the prestigious School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 1912 to 1913. He returned to studies at OCA from 1914 to 1916. In 1917 he received his first scholarship from the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts enabling him to travel through Europe. He was commissioned in by the Canadian War Memorials Fund and the National Gallery of Canada to paint scenes of women working in the fields in the Quinte region of Ontario. He is elected a member of the Ontario Society of Artists that same year. By 1920 MacDonald is an Associate of RCA and receives a second RCA scholarship to Europe. MacDonal and his wife, Beverley Lambe, also an artist had two cildren, Sarah, born in 1918 and Duncan in 1923. MacDonald showed his work at the Wembley Exhibition, Middlesex, England and at the British Empire Exhibition at Wemblet the following year. MacDonald showed his work yearly for many years at the Canadian National Exhibition until the changing art scene in Canada shunted him aside. He continues to exhibit at prestigious events like the Art Gallery of Toronto's "Pictures by Canadians", and at a major exhibition of Canadian painters at the Tate Gallery, London, England in 1938. MacDonald begins his teaching career at RCA in 1940 and then at OCA from 1943 to 1944. He exhibited in the Canadian Exhibition of Contemporary Art in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1944. MacDonald taught again at OCA from 1946 to 1947 and by 1948 is an Academician of RCA. However, in 1951 he and a few of his contemporaries resign from OSA over "creeping modernism" in Canadian art.He becomes a founding member of the Ontario Institute of Painters in 1958. The previous year he was awarded an important commission by the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority to paint seven Eastern Ontario mills and in 1959 is honoured to be chosen by the City of Toronto to paint the waterfront as a gift to Queen Elizabeth II. MacDonald continues to teach and exhibit until ill health forces him to stop. This was only months before he died in 1971 at age 81.

Manly MacDonald has been referred to as the "Interpreter of Old Ontario" because he captured scenes in towns, villages, hamlets and the countryside of Ontario for posterity. He worked en plein air on all his landscapes and in all kinds of weather. He was a seasoned portrait artist, as well as an etcher. MacDonald produced his own series of linocut cards and was always included in the Coutts, Coutts-Hallmark and Hallmark Canadian Christmas Card Series over the years.