Ian MacKinnon-Pearson

Ian Mackinnon-Pearson (1896-1963) CPE

Ian Mackinnon-Pearson was born in 1896 in Glasgow, Scotland. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art, later going to Paris to study etching and engraving with Edouard Leon. He immigrated to Canada in 1939, finding work as an etcher and engraver as well as a wood craftsman. Mackinnon-Pearson and his wife Cecilia—also an engraver—settled in Saint-Hilaire-sur-le-Richelieu, where they had a joint exhibition. Mackinnon-Pearson joined the Society of Canadian Painter-Etchers and Engravers (CPE) in 1942 and was elected to be their Quebec representative the following year. Mackinnon-Pearson exhibited with the CPE every year throughout the 1940s; in 1948, his drypoint, The Road to the Shick-Shocks, Ste-Anne-des-Monts-Gaspe, was selected for the CPE’s annual limited-edition series. Mackinnon-Pearson’s early work generally depicted European subjects, but later he shifted to Quebec subjects and themes, including landscapes of the Gaspe peninsula and Charlevoix region. Mackinnon-Pearson had grown fond of the Quebec he knew and lived in, and after the Musee de la Province acquired a number of his prints in 1943, he made the following statement to curator Paul Rainville: “It gives me great pleasure to have some of my works included in your collection and to make a contribution to the pictorial history of Quebec City. I would hope that Quebec will not change but that is impossible so all that can be one is to seize the image while it is there” (pg. 108 of Denis Martin’s Printmaking in Quebec, 1900-1950).