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Material relating to Thoreau MacDonald, son of Group of Seven member, J.E.H.MacDonald

According to his biographer, E.R.Hunter, in Thoreau, l942, “Thoreau did mostly farm work from l9l6 to l922, and still likes to help a neighbour harvest his crop.” From Hundreds and Thousands, the Journals of Emily Carr, November 18, 1927. “I went to MacDonald’s studio today. His son, Thoreau, a boy all spirit, almost too fine to stay down on this earth, showed us his father’s things, Mr.MacDonald himself being at his school teaching. The boy is clever and will do great things one day, if he lives. They all speak of him as something apart.”

Thoreau’s biographer, E.R. Hunter, 1942, wrote, “Thoreau persisted in being himself, and did this by building about himself a protective barrier of reserve. It would have been easy to join the Group of Seven, to have haunted Algoma, or turn cosmopolite... By the time the Group of Seven reached its peak, in the early twenties, they were by no means as advanced as their detractors supposed. Their personal approach was already established by the Impressionists and Fauves”. Thoreau MacDonald’s notebooks, illustrated by vivid small drawings, appear to be factual - day-to-day life in a farming community, anecdotes about the wildlife outside his window - but there are allusions to things being not quite right - wondering if he put his snowshoes on- if he kept walking into the bush- concerns about money, developers and pollution of the environment. He is seldom personal. Once, he refused an invitation to a friend's place because he felt “too dull and cranky in his old age to be good company.” Books about him were impersonal chronologies of his life and art. Some attempts were made to define his character and personality, all saying the same things as Hunter - “he was naturally shy, shrewd and intelligent, never cared for a quick reputation, and possessed a hard core of independence and integrity. His opinions are simple and definite and he will never give in.”

Hunter, in Thoreau, l942, wrote, “Little has been said about Thoreau's paintings. He destroyed most of them, as well as many of his early drawings.”

Bruce Whiteman, in his l995 biography of J.E.H., claimed Thoreau suffered from trichromatism, that is, he did not see colours normally. Dr. Peter Morse, Thoreau’s physician for many years, - “I think he knew colour because I remember some of the paintings he did back in war-time that were hung in some of the barracks, messes and so on around the country that clearly show a lot of colour, bright yellow, and hawks flying. I never knew him to do anything as extremely vibrant as the Group of Seven. Why he did black and white extensively … it certainly suited a lot of what he did in life as an illustrator.”

Jean and Warren Bryce, friends and neighbors of Thoreau’s –“He told us about working in the Studio and setting up displays and one thing and another. He wasn’t very fond of that, was he, Jean?” “I think he felt he got used as a joe-boy – packing things around…” Bruce Pierce, a friend and patron of Thoreau’s confirmed that Thoreau was a joe-boy for Lawren Harris at the studio building – carting paintings, hanging exhibitions, and even completing some of his father’s commercial work, for which he received no credit.