Born in Durham, England, in 1873, J.E.H. MacDonald moved to Canada with his family in 1887. The family settled in Hamilton, Ontario, where MacDonald began his artistic training. In 1889, the family moved to Toronto, where the young artist and designer continued his education at the Central Ontario School of Art and Design. He embarked on his artistic career working as a designer with the firm Grip Ltd. in Toronto. He began his independent career as an artist in 1911, executing commercial projects to supplement his income. A friend of Lawren Harris, whom he had met in 1912, MacDonald produced a renowned series of paintings during the First World War, principal among them The Tangled Garden (1916, collection of the National Gallery of Canada). A distinguished artist and designer, he was the most senior member of the Group of Seven when it was founded in 1920.

MacDonald first visited the Rocky Mountains in the summer of 1924. He was so beguiled by the magnificence of the mountain landscape that he returned every summer until 1930. The sketches MacDonald produced in the Rockies were intended as source material for larger canvases, executed in his Toronto studio. These sketches therefore have an immediacy and vitality that reflects his direct confrontation with the landscape.

MacDonald was particularly drawn to the rich forms and colours of the Rocky Mountains in the region of Lake O’Hara (now part of Yoho National Park). Some 2,020 metres in elevation, Lake O’Hara is an exceptionally beautiful glacial lake, and MacDonald returned to the area repeatedly because these alpine sketching expeditions refreshed him, body and soul. Importantly, the mountains and their shifting forms and climate provided him with a wealth of artistic subjects. Struck by the vivid colours of this landscape, he wrote: “Let any one of them conjure up the finest colour your mental eye can picture, you cannot overdo it. Rainbow-green seems to me the best. It has the soft quality of light and change and variation of intensity which comes nearest to the feeling of the mountain lake colour.”[1]

Lake O’Hara, Rocky Mountains was painted in 1929, during MacDonald’s sixth sketching trip in the Rockies. By this juncture MacDonald had confidence in his understanding of the changing light patterns within the Rockies.

The painting presents a remarkable vista of the richly varied waters of Lake O’Hara backed by the tree-clad mountains of the far shore. Behind these are the magnificent forms of larger mountains, devoid of trees but still retaining glacial snow. The subtle shift of colour on the farthest peaks and the fact that the mountains on the right are truncated by the edge of the board suggest both the grandeur and enormous scale of this vista.

The power of the landscape is emphasized by MacDonald’s decision to introduce us to this mountain landscape so abruptly. A quickly executed patch of foliage at the lower left of the composition provides a brief introduction to this magnificent view. The rich variety of form and colour beyond gives the eye much to contemplate. Look, for example, at the varied surface of the lake itself. One cannot, as MacDonald surely intended, be anything but awed by the spectacle of Lake O’Hara in its mountain setting.

1. J.E.H. MacDonald, “A Glimpse of the West,” The Canadian Bookman 6, no. 11 (November 1924): 229.

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