Lot 80: JAMES (JOCK) WILLIAMSON GALLOWAY MACDONALD 1897 - 1960

JAMES (JOCK) WILLIAMSON GALLOWAY MACDONALD 1897 - 1960 ETHERIAL FORM [SIC] signed and dated lower left J.W.G. MACDONALD 1935 ; bears signature, title and dated Etherial Form [sic] 1934 in another hand on the reverse oil on panel 38.1 by 30.5 cm. 15 by 12 in.

Toronto (and travelling), Jock Macdonald, The Inner Landscape, A Retrospective Exhibition, The Art Gallery of Ontario, 1981, no. 13, illustrated

London, The Logic of Ecstacy, Canadian Mystical Painting 1920 - 1940, The London Regional Art Gallery, 1990, no. 50

Joyce Zemans, Jock Macdonald, The Inner Landscape, A Retrospective Exhibition, Toronto, 1981, pp. 63-65, illustrated in colour, p. 66

Private Collection, Toronto

In the summer of 1935, Macdonald went to the remote First Nations' settlement of Nootka after his sojourn teaching at the British Columbia College of Art. Liberated from teaching duties, Macdonald refocused his energy towards painting and drew inspiration from natural surroundings. Zemans stated that Etheric Form was the most successful work of Macdonald's early abstracts and further that:

here he began to translate the conceptual into visual experience ... Macdonald painted the first in a series which he designated thought-expressions and later called modalities. Etheric Form was one of his first modalities and was a vivid interpretation of the artist's struggle with the concept of the nature of reality.