Pegi Nicol MacLeod, (17 January 1904 – 12 February 1949), was a Canadian painter whose modernist self-portraits, figure studies, paintings of children, still lifes and landscapes are characterized by a fluidity of form and vibrant colour. Born Margaret Kathleen Nichol, she was a teacher, war artist and arts activist. In 1936 she became a member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour and one year later she joined the Canadian Group of Painters.

Biography

She was born in

Listowel, Ontario Listowel is an unincorporated community in Ontario, Canada, located in the Municipality of North Perth. Incorporated as the Town of Listowel in 1875, it was dissolved in 1998 following amalgamation with several other communities in the northern ...

, to William Wallace Nichol and Myrtle Ivy Riggs. Pegi was their only child. The family moved to

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...

in 1908 when Pegi was four where her father became principal of the Ottawa Technical School. The family lived on Frank Street and Pegi attended elementary at Cartier Street School. In 1914, when war broke out, the family moved to Toronto and Pegi attended

Harbord Collegiate Institute Harbord Collegiate Institute (HCI or Harbord) is a public secondary school located in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The school is located in the Palmerston-Little Italy- Annex neighbourhood, situated on the north side of Harbord Street, be ...

. The Nichols returned to Ottawa after the war where Pegi finished her early education at the Ottawa Collegiate Institute.

Art education

In 1921 MacLeod enrolled at the newly re-established Art Association of Ottawa school. She studied art under Franklin Brownell from 1922 to 1923.Reid, Dennis (2012). "A Concise History of Canadian Painting," Third Edition, p. 192. Oxford University Press, Oxford. In 1923 she moved to Montreal to study at the

École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savo ...

with

Edwin Holgate Edwin Headley Holgate (August 19, 1892 – May 21, 1977), was a Canadian artist, painter, muralist, and wood-cut artist. Holgate played a major role in Montreal's art community, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, where he both studied and t ...

. There was an emphasis on figure study and life drawing at the school. The art critic Donald Buchanan attributed her and many of her classmates' interest in the figure and portraiture to their training at the École. She was at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal with Paul-Émile Borduas,

Lillian Freiman Lillian Bilsky Freiman (1885 – November 2, 1940), nicknamed The Poppy Lady, was a Jewish-Canadian philanthropist, and Zionist. In 2008, she was designated a Person of National Historic Significance by the Canadian Government for being "a gift ...

Goodridge Roberts William Goodridge Roberts (1904–1974) was a Canadian painter known for his landscape paintings, still lifes, figure paintings and interiors. He was also a teacher. Career Goodridge Roberts was the son of poet and novelist George Edward Theod ...

, Anne Savage, and Marian Scott, who would all go on to become established artists in their own right. In 1932 she won the Willingdon Arts Competition prize for painting.

Personal life

She lived in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most pop ...

from 1934 to 1937 and became good friends with Eric Brown, the first director of the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the ...

. Through Brown and his wife, Maud, Nicol developed friendships with artists in Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal, as well as leading figures of the Canadian cultural and social establishment, including

Vincent Massey Charles Vincent Massey (February 20, 1887December 30, 1967) was a Canadian lawyer and diplomat who served as Governor General of Canada, the 18th since Confederation. Massey was the first governor general of Canada who was born in Canada afte ...

and his wife, Alice Massey. She began a five-year relationship with Richard Finnie by 1925. She married Norman MacLeod on December 10, 1936. The couple then moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

, but she returned annually to

Fredericton, New Brunswick Fredericton (; ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The city is situated in the west-central portion of the province along the Saint John River, which flows west to east as it bisects the city. The river is the dom ...

, where, with Lucy Jarvis in 1940, she opened an art centre for aspiring artists at the

University of New Brunswick The University of New Brunswick (UNB) is a public university with two primary campuses in Fredericton and Saint John, New Brunswick, Saint John, New Brunswick. It is the oldest English-language university in Canada, and among the oldest public un ...

Artistic career

A painter of people and landscapes, her artworks tend to reveal a sombre though joyful, reflective and humanitarian insight. In 1927 and 1928, encouraged by ethnographer

Marius Barbeau Charles Marius Barbeau, (March 5, 1883 – February 27, 1969), also known as C. Marius Barbeau, or more commonly simply Marius Barbeau, was a Canadian ethnographer and folklorist who is today considered a founder of Canadian anthropology. A ...

, MacLeod travelled to the west and northwest of Canada. Thanks to Barbeau and to the

Canadian Pacific Railway The Canadian Pacific Railway (french: Chemin de fer Canadien Pacifique) , also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canad ...

, MacLeod received free transportation on her summer trip. She painted at Morley Station in the foothills of the Rockies and among the Stoney First Nations. During her time in British Columbia MacLeod met artist

Emily Carr Emily Carr (or M. Emily Carr as she sometimes signed her work) (December 13, 1871 – March 2, 1945) was a Canadian artist and writer who was inspired by the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. One of the painters in Canada to ad ...

, whose work exerted an influence on her own. Pegi stayed in Calgary with the F.G. Garbutt family who were strong supporters of the arts. The Garbutts and Pegi stayed friends for life. While there, Pegi painted a portrait of Alice Garbutt that demonstrates her increasing use of strong contour lines. MacLeod exhibited two of her portrait studies of the Stoney First Nations in the major exhibition, ''West Coast Art – Native and Modern'' organized the National Gallery of Canada in December 1927. This exhibition was, and has been, much written about and marks the first real effort to include the cultural production of Northwest Coast First Nations within the institutionalization of Canadian art history. During her travels in 1927, MacLeod is said to have created notebooks and drawings according to her friends. However, nothing is extant to confirm this. The artist also began a draft of a book on her experiences on the west coast. It is possible that MacLeod's mother may have destroyed her book draft, Marian Scott has stated that the artist's mother destroyed much of her early work. MacLeod travelled west again in 1928 to paint in the Upper Skeena River area. She wrote about her travels for the

Canadian National Railway The Canadian National Railway Company (french: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) is a Canadian Class I railroad, Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern United States, M ...

Company's magazine and the article marks her first important foray into art writing. The solo exhibition ''Portraits, Landscapes and Studies'' by Pegi Nicol was held in Montreal at the Leonardo Society from February 4–11, 1928 and in the same year she was invited to show with the

Group of Seven The Group of Seven (G7) is an intergovernmental political forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States; additionally, the European Union (EU) is a "non-enumerated member". It is official ...

in Toronto. In the late 1920s, MacLeod moved from Ottawa to Montreal, and then to Toronto, where she worked on window displays for the T. Eaton Company. This position had a strong influence on her art, as demonstrated by her painting ''A Descent of Lilies'' (1935). MacLeod was art editor of ''The

Canadian Forum The ''Canadian Forum'' was a literary, cultural and political publication and Canada's longest running continually published political magazine (1920–2000). History and profile ''Canadian Forum'' was founded on 14 May 1920 at the University of T ...

'' from 1935 to 1936 and helped to establish the Picture Loan Society. MacLeod was opposed to World War II, though in 1944 she accepted a commission by the

to paint many scenes depicting the Women's Division of the

Armed Forces A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

as means of showcasing the war from a female perspective.

''Manhattan Cycle''

Following the Second World War she returned to depicting the scenes of New York City and in 1947 exhibited her oil and water colour paintings in Toronto, Ottawa, and Fredericton under the title "Manhattan Cycle." The ''Manhattan Cycle'' focused on the people and scenes around MacLeod's apartment on East 88th Street in New York. She wrote to her friend and fellow artist, Isabel McLaughlin in 1946 that she had been involved with 88th street for six years and still found it fascinating. The ''Manhattan Cycle'' consisted of 110 artworks by 1947 and was the first time MacLeod exhibited a series of works in Canada focused entirely on her time in New York. The ''Cycle'' also toured to the Winnipeg School of Art at the request of

Joe Plaskett Joseph Plaskett (12 July 1918 – 21 September 2014) was a Canadian painter. Biography Plaskett was born in New Westminster, British Columbia in 1918. He initially studied history, and taught school for six years but in 1944, became interes ...

and then on to Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, Victoria, and Vancouver in 1948.

Selected exhibitions

A major

retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ''retrospectare'', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in medicine, software development, popu ...

of her work was held at Galerie Walter Klinkhoff in 1982Gallery Walter Klinkhoff and a circulating retrospective exhibition was done by the

Robert McLaughlin Gallery The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a public art gallery in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest public art gallery in the Regional Municipality of Durham, of which Oshawa is a part. The gallery houses a significant collection of Canadian cont ...

in Oshawa in 1984, along with a book of her letters and an introduction by Joan Murray.

Death

MacLeod died of

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal bl ...

in New York City in 1949, leaving a legacy of more than a thousand works of art that include many paintings and other art forms including designs for hooked rugs. Today MacLeod is a well-regarded artist whose wartime work, which includes more than one hundred oil paintings, sets her apart from many of her contemporaries. Pegi Nicol MacLeod - untitiled

External links

Canadian Women Artists History Initiative

Canadian War Museum

The Canadian Encyclopedia

National Gallery of Canada
at the

, Ottawa, Ontario
Ruth Comfort Jackson fonds
at the National Gallery of Canada

at the National Gallery of Canada
Pegi Nicol MacLeod, Lethbridge College Buchanan Art Collection

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Macleod, Pegi Nicol Canadian women painters Canadian war artists 1904 births 1949 deaths World War II artists 20th-century Canadian women artists 20th-century Canadian painters People from Perth County, Ontario Artists from Ontario Canadian watercolourists Women watercolorists Deaths from cancer in New York (state) École des beaux-arts de Montréal alumni Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada) Lisgar Collegiate Institute alumni Canadian expatriates in France Canadian expatriates in the United States

Biography

Art education

Personal life

Artistic career

''Manhattan Cycle''

Selected exhibitions

Death

See also

External links

Further reading

Secondary sources

Writings by Pegi Nicol MacLeod

References