Isabel McLaughlin
Isabel McLaughlin (1903-2002) CGP, OSA, was born in Oshawa, Ontario in 1903 to Adelaide Mowbray and local celebrity Robert Samuel McLaughlin, who was the first president of General Motors of Canada. McLaughlin grew up in Parkwood Mansion, a massive estate of 55 rooms, and home also to her father’s vast art collection that included work by members of the Group of Seven, Clarence Gagnon, and Emily Carr. Her mother and her grandmother were both proficient needlers, whose work often depicted flowers and nature. McLaughlin inherited this love of nature, first practicing art in her high school botany class.
Masters Gallery. Print. Link here.
McLaughlin’s formal arts education began at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she studied figure painting in watercolor under Louise Saint from 1921 to 1924. The following year, upon her return to Canada, McLaughlin attended the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD), studying under Yvonne McKague and Arthur Lismer, the latter of who fiercely defended her modernist paintings. Her style was considered provocative at the time—so much so that in 1927, Lismer announced that he would be leaving the school due to tensions with his more traditional-leaning colleagues. This departure upset his adoring students and provoked a group of them, McLaughlin included, to form a school of their own. In the following years, McLaughlin and her peers rented a building from the Art Gallery of Toronto (now AGO), fixed it up, and began the Arts Students League (ASL) school. Many important artists would come to teach at the school: Florence Wyle and Frances Loring, A.Y. Jackson, and Bertram Brooker included. On a month-long sojourn at the family cottage of Edna Breithaupt, ASL co-founder, McLaughlin began to explore oil painting. Of her first attempts, Yvonne Housser stated that McLaughlin “didn’t get into as much of a muddle as some others.” Many of McLaughlin’s paintings of this period show influence of the Group of Seven, a number of whom served as mentors to her. Fred Housser referred to McLaughlin at this time as “one of the boldest young women painters we have.”
In 1929, McLaughlin returned to Paris, where she intended to Study at the School of Paris under Andre Lhote—however, upon hearing that his students’ work often closely resembled his own, she decided to attend the Scandinavian Academy instead. In 1930, through the help of friend A.Y. Jackson, McLaughlin met with fellow Canadian painter Prudence Heward and the two traveled Europe together. In late 1930, they visited Vienna to study with Frantz Cizek, where McLaughlin learned a ‘musical interpretation’ chalk-painting method. Following her travels, her style became increasingly abstract. In 1933, McLaughlin exhibited her first solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto. Later in the same year, she was invited to join the Canadian Group of Painters (CGP), which was formed upon the dissolution of the Group of Seven.
McLaughlin’s style continued to develop throughout the 1930s. Influence of the cubist movement became evident: the planes of her landscapes became flatter, and forms became more simplified. Her most influential work, Tree, was finished in 1936, and was met with mixed reviews. The piece is now held within the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. As her reputation grew, the press began to entertain a rumor that McLaughlin didn’t exhibit or sell as frequently as her contemporaries as to give younger, financially-insecure artists better odds. Later, she would say this was partially true, but that she didn’t sell as much because she charged more than most: “I just didn’t want to compete with [younger artists],” she said of her motive for her high prices.
In 1939, McLaughlin became the first female president of the Canadian Group of Painters; this was the first time a woman had headed any major art society in Canada. She continued to study under esteemed artists, taking from them only what she most loved. In 1950, after studying full abstraction under Hans Hofmann for two years, McLaughlin left his study after Lawren Harris advised her to ‘go her own way.’
Throughout the 1950s, McLaughlin’s work became softer and calmer in tone, often depicting her travels around Canada, as well as in Bermuda, Taos, and Hawaii. In 1956, McLaughlin visited Trinidad and Tobago, alongside McKague, Jackson, and other members of the Heliconian Club of Toronto. While she had been to the Caribbean many times, staying in her family’s home in Bermuda, the works produced during this trip are representative of this era of her artistic development. The group sketched daily, traveling by taxi in search of painting locations. During this time, she produced many works depicting the landscapes which they found. Her pieces of this time are celebrated for their strong design, sense of rhythm, and modernity.
Between her travels, McLaughlin continued to revolutionize the CGP, saying in 1955 that she wanted it to be “a brand new creature, having shed its old chrysalis.” Throughout her career, McLaughlin was dedicated to the openness and constant evolution of artistic practice. Of her own artistic success, she said: “One has to develop. I have great changes of thought. I could always leap about with my ideas, moods, interpretations. I was lucky that I could do that, and I hope I will always be that way.”
McLaughlin’s later paintings of the 1960s were increasingly abstract and novel but are fewer in number. Retrospectively, McLaughlin claimed she didn’t have much time to paint after her father became ill in the 1970s. In the later years of her life, she began to write poetry as opposed to painting. These poems were not published. She lived her older years with equal, if not more adventure than her early years, traveling France and going on safaris in Africa. McLaughlin was known to order “a double dry martini, straight up.” She continued to participate in the art world by way of donations to galleries, such as the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, the Art Gallery of Toronto, and the Heliconian Club. At the end of her life, she lived in a Toronto apartment with her impressive art collection. She never married; she is said to have “married art.” McLaughlin died in Toronto on November 6th, 2002. She is remembered as an important Canadian modernist, who excelled in design, form, and innovation.
Written by Maddy Chinneck.
Sources:
Csillag, Ron. “Group of Seven inspired pioneer.” Focus Magazine, 21 Dec. 2002. Print.
Green, Rod. “Isabel McLaughlin: An Early Modernist.” Masters Gallery. Print.
Hall, Karen. “McLaughlin still lives with the myths.” The Windsor Star, 30 May 1983. Print.
Jackson, Marg. “The return of Isabel McLaughlin.” The Oshawa Times, 8 Mar. 1983. Print.
Murray, Joan. Isabel McLaughlin: Recollections. Robert McLaughlin Library. Print.
Murray, Joan. “An extraordinary life: Isabel McLaughlin.” 2003. Robert McLaughlin Library. Print.