Description:

James Williamson Galloway (Jock) Macdonald, OSA, RCA (1897-1960), Canadian
YOUNG SUMMER, 1959

oil and Lucite 44 on canvas
titled and dated to exhibition label verso; inscribed "1960 exhibition" verso
42.25 x 47.5 in — 107.3 x 120.7 cm

Estimate: $30,000—40,000 CAD

  • Provenance:

    Dorothy Cameron Gallery Ltd., Toronto, ON
    Private Collection, Toronto, ON, acquired in 1964
    By descent to the present Private Collection, Toronto, ON

  • Dimensions: 42.25 x 47.5 in — 107.3 x 120.7 cm
  • Exhibited: 88th Annual Exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists, Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto, ON, 26 March-24 April 1960, no. 48.
    Jock Macdonald: The Inner Landscape Retrospective, Art Gallery of Ontario, 11 Apr - 7 Jun 1981; Art Gallery of Windsor, 20 Jun - 16 Aug 1981.
  • Literature: Catalogue of the 88th Annual Exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists, Toronto, ON, Art Gallery of Toronto, 1960, unpaged, repro. b/w.
    Jock Macdonald: The Inner Landscape – A Retrospective Exhibition (exh. cat.). Catalogue by Joyce Zemans. Toronto, ON: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1981
    Monk, Philip, Art: Defining the abstract, Maclean’s (27 April 1981), 57.
    Zemans, Joyce, Jock Macdonald. (Canadian Artists Series). Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1985: 26, pl. 53, 81 repro. b/w.
    Zemans, Joyce, Jock Macdonald: Life & Work, Toronto, ON: Art Canada Institute, 2016: 73 repro. col., 74.
  • Medium: oil and Lucite 44 on canvas
  • Notes: Jock Macdonald’s gripping late painting, Young Summer (1959), is making its auction debut after being held in a family collection for over sixty years. Young Summer has been regularly cited in the major literature on the artist for over four decades and was included in his largest retrospective.

    While Macdonald’s commitment to abstraction began decades before he painted Young Summer, it coalesced in the middle 1940s and matured until his death in 1960 at the age of 63. When he arrived in Toronto from Vancouver in 1947 to teach at the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University) Macdonald was confident and experienced, possessing the rare dual aptitudes of exceptional art-making and exceptional teaching coupled with a ceaseless artistic curiosity.

    Young Summer was painted a few years after Harold Town introduced Macdonald to the medium Lucite 44 that allowed Macdonald to blend oil paints to a consistency akin to watercolour and that dried almost as quickly. This change meant Macdonald could paint large canvases with the effect of the bold abstracting watercolours he had been painting for more than ten years.

    Macdonald’s deliberate description of completely abstract forms in Young Summer evokes Mark Rothko’s painting of the late 1940s in its technique, while the images themselves evoke the slides of drops of acid Macdonald projected for his students to conjure non-objective imagery.[1] Macdonald scholar Joyce Zemans includes Young Summer with Fugitive Articulation, and Memory of Music, as one of the “magnificent yellow canvases” Macdonald painted in the autumn of 1959 and the only one of the trio not in a public collection.[2] Beholding a painting of this pedigree, fresh to market, and not publicly exhibited in more than a generation, is an extraordinary occasion.

    [1] Joyce Zemans, Jock Macdonald (Canadian Artists Series) (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1985), 26.
    [2] Joyce Zemans, Jock Macdonald: The Inner Landscape – A Retrospective Exhibition / Le Paysage Interieur – Retrospective (exh. cat.) (Toronto, ON: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1981), 228.

    We thank Gregory Humeniuk, art historian, consultant and curator for this essay.
  • Condition: Good overall condition.
    Small area of craquelure upper right quadrant, minute scattered accretions throughout.

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November 20, 2025 8:00 PM EST
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