Born in Scotland, Jock Macdonald worked initially as a commercial designer at the firm of Morton Sundour in northern England. In 1925, he began working as a design teacher at Lincoln School of Art, England, but the next year applied for a job teaching at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design). His application successful, he arrived in Vancouver in September 1926.

Crucially for Macdonald, Group of Seven member Frederick Varley was also hired by the art school that year. It was with Varley’s encouragement and guidance that Macdonald began to paint and explore the landscape of coastal British Columbia. In short order, Macdonald became one of the most interesting artists working in the province. He exhibited his first canvas executed without Varley’s advice, Lytton Church, BC (1930, collection of the National Gallery of Canada), at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts exhibition in Toronto in 1931.

For both Macdonald and Varley, the landscape of the Coast Mountains was a profoundly rich subject. They went on many sketching trips into the mountains, taking time from their teaching duties in Vancouver. Macdonald was particularly struck by the terrain and painted the region many times. His attention was captured by the form of the Black Tusk, a stratovolcano that dominates what is now Garibaldi Provincial Park, just south of Whistler, BC. Macdonald first essayed the peak in his important canvas The Black Tusk (1932, collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery). The mountain looms above a glacier field in the foreground and is silhouetted against a swirling pattern of cloud. The canvas, like the landscape in which the distinctive peak is located, is both dramatic and visually exciting. Of this landscape, Macdonald later wrote: “The lakes are pure emerald, the glaciers are fractured with rose-madder, turquoise-blue and indigo crevasses, and the mountains are black, ochre and Egyptian Red.”[1]

With a landscape so remarkable, it is little surprise that Macdonald returned to the subject two years later, when he executed two oil sketches depicting the peak. One of these works, The Black Tusk, Garibaldi Park (1934, collection of the Royal BC Museum and Archives), is a striking composition that silhouettes the Black Tusk against an active sky. The lower reaches of the mountain retain some snow but are largely bare. The jagged form of the Black Tusk, as in the 1932 canvas, is the dominant feature of the composition.

In the second 1934 sketch, our Black Tusk, Macdonald has radically adjusted the mountain vista. Instead of appearing as a large mass above a loosely defined landscape, the volcanic pinnacle is depicted as a slender peak rising above a richly articulated mountainscape. The peak itself seems to surge upward into the clouds. Macdonald has carefully defined the mountain through the use of shadow falling on the snow and the vertical rock forms, which forcefully lead the eye towards the peak’s summit. This strong upward movement is reinforced by the rock forms on the left side of the painting and by Macdonald’s decision to depict a thin line of rock atop the ridgeline on either side of the peak itself. The peak seems to thrust through this thin line of rock, giving the composition a sense of both energy and power.

Macdonald places the summit of the Black Tusk slightly to the centre right of the composition. This subtle decision on Macdonald’s part, together with the billowing clouds in the sky, gives the landscape a sense of movement that animates our perception of the mountain. This oil sketch, like the artist’s other images of the Black Tusk, is a remarkable testament to the skill and power of Macdonald’s artistic vision.

We thank Ian M. Thom, Senior Curator—Historical at the Vancouver Art Gallery from 1988 to 2018, for contributing the above essay.

1. J.W.G. Macdonald, “Vancouver,” in F.H. Varley: Paintings and Drawings, 1915–1954 (Toronto: Art Gallery of Toronto, 1954), unpaginated.

There is an unfinished landscape sketch on verso. This image can be viewed at Heffel.com.

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