Lot 2: James Williamson Galloway (Jock) Macdonald 1897 -

James Williamson Galloway (Jock) Macdonald 1897 - 1960 Canadian watercolour on paper Cross and Recross / Colour in Stained Glass "15 x 18 3/4 inches 38.1 x 47.6 centimeters signed and dated 1951 and on verso titled on the Roberts Gallery label Cross and Recross and titled on the work in graphite Colour in Stained Glass Provenance:Roberts Gallery, Toronto By descent to the present Private Collection, Toronto In 1947, Jock Macdonald and his wife Barbara left British Columbia for Toronto where he had accepted a teaching post at the Ontario College of Art. Finding the art school severely lacking in its curriculum, Macdonald took it upon himself to educate the younger generation of artists in the practices and philosophies of modernism. He took great pride in the accomplishments of his students, and boasted William Ronald and Dennis Burton amongst his most best-known pupils. In his own work, Macdonald remained dedicated to abstraction and continued to make automatic watercolours, in which he allowed his unconscious mind to dictate the movement of his paintbrush. Cross and Recross is a striking example from this body of work in which his passion for the natural world manifested itself in the liberated spontaneity of his dynamic use of colour. Abstraction was only slowly entering the Canadian artistic consciousness, and Macdonald's developments in Expressionism were extremely influential. He would eventually become the unofficial leader of the group Painters Eleven, which formed in 1953 and was dedicated to the promotion of abstract art in Canada. "