The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a public

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long ...

Oshawa Oshawa is a city in Ontario, Canada, on the Lake Ontario shoreline. It lies in Southern Ontario, approximately east of downtown Toronto. It is commonly viewed as the eastern anchor of the Greater Toronto Area and of the Golden Horseshoe. It ...

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

, Canada. It is the largest public art gallery in the

Regional Municipality of Durham The Regional Municipality of Durham (), informally referred to as Durham Region, is a regional municipality in Southern Ontario, Canada. Located east of Toronto and the Regional Municipality of York, it forms the east end of the Greater Toronto A ...

, of which Oshawa is a part. The gallery houses a significant collection of Canadian

contemporary Contemporary history, in English-language historiography, is a subset of modern history that describes the historical period from about 1945 to the present. In the social sciences, contemporary history is also continuous with, and related t ...

and modern artwork. Housed in a building designed by noted Canadian architect

Arthur Erickson Arthur Charles Erickson (June 14, 1924 – May 20, 2009) was a Canadian architect and urban planning, urban planner. He studied at the University of British Columbia and, in 1950, received his B.Arch. (Honours) from McGill University. He is kn ...

, the collection focuses on works by

Painters Eleven Painters Eleven (also known as Painters 11) was a group of abstract artists active in Canada between 1953 and 1960. They are associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement. History Since the 1920s, artists in English Canada had been heavily i ...

, who were founded in the Oshawa studio of Painters Eleven member Alexandra Luke.

History

Oshawa designer William Caldwell organized a group of artists to establish a commercial gallery space on Simcoe Street North, in Oshawa. Shortly thereafter, Ewart McLaughlin and his wife (known as Alexandra Luke, a member of

) offered financial support and a significant collection of works to help create the foundation of a public gallery for the city. The gallery was incorporated with the name of Ewart's grandfather, Robert McLaughlin, founder of the McLaughlin Carriage Company.

Collection

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery's Permanent Collection numbers over 4,500 works. Dedicated to the collection, preservation, and exhibition of the best in Canada's art heritage, the gallery possesses an extensive selection of Canadian paintings, sculptures, and prints. The gallery also holds significant archives related to

, alongside the largest collection of works by Painters Eleven in Canada. The gallery's dedication to abstract art can be connected to Alexandra Luke of Oshawa, Ontario, an artist who had studied with

Hans Hofmann Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstrac ...

Provincetown Provincetown () is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States census, Pr ...

, Mass. Luke was an exponent of abstract art, and she organized a show of all abstract Canadian art in Ontario through the South Ontario Art Gallery Circuit. This exhibition opened in Oshawa at Adelaide House in October 1952. The collection had the distinction of being the first Canadian exhibition of abstract painting to be assembled in Canada on a national scale and devoted exclusively to this art form.

References

External links

*
Canadian Art Group
(Painters Eleven)
Painters Eleven website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Robert McLaughlin Gallery Art museums and galleries in Ontario Buildings and structures in Oshawa Museums in the Regional Municipality of Durham