Œuvres d'art

Little Turtle Lake is an exquisite and vigorously painted work, remarking at the confidence of brush and robust coloration executed at the height of his artistic powers. The location, Little Turtle Lake, is in the Haliburton area, off the Gull River, north of Coboconk, where MacDonald is recorded to have painted in 1921, ‘22 and ‘23. Our recent research has discovered that the drawing for this undated sketch is reproduced in J.E.H. MacDonald, A Biography and Catalogue of his Work (plate 10), compiled by E.R. Hunter and published in 1940. The drawing itself, now in the O.J. Firestone Collection at the Ottawa Art Gallery, is distinctly inscribed and initialed by the artist “Little Turtle Lake Sept 30 '21 JM”. This leads to a reasonable hypothesis that the painting we are offering is of that same year or conceivably shortly thereafter, 1922. It is not surprising that it is precisely at this juncture in MacDonald’s career that he painted among his most celebrated canvases including "Mist Fantasy", "October Shower Gleam", and "The Solemn Land".