“Janet”
Thomas Reid MacDonald

Painting
Oil on Linen
33.5 x 19.5 in.
Circa 1975

Inducted: 2012 into the Hamilton Hall of Fame

 An oil painter and instructor of life drawing and painting at the Art Association of Montreal, Thomas Reid MacDonald was an elected member of the Royal Academy of Canada.  He served as head of the department of Fine Arts at Mount Allison University in Sackville New Brunswick in 1945 and 1946, and from 1947, Director of the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario.

He studied with Adam Sherriff Scott and Edmond Dyonnet.

Exhibition venues included the World's Fair, New York, 1939; London World's Fair, England; and the Royal Canada Academy.

When he arrived in Hamilton in 1947 to become the Art Gallery’s first full-time director/curator, T.R. MacDonald found a modest 33-painting collection housed in a few library rooms. Upon retiring 25 years later, he had built one of Canada’s most important collections. An accomplished artist, his works are found in the National Gallery of Canada, National War Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario. As curator he drew on his knowledge and relationships with artists to build Hamilton’s collection. Hailed as a “collecting genius”, his enduring legacy continues to enrich thousands across the city. A commissioned war artist during WWII and a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, MacDonald died in 1978 and enters the Gallery posthumously.

$2,800