Vintage Oshawa Photo Blog

“Hot Topics” blog posts come from the desk of Sam Mogelonsky, our Communications & Social Media Coordinator.

Have you visited vintageoshawa.tumblr.com? Every Thursday for #ThrowBackThursday we will be posting a photograph from the Thomas Bouckley Collection on the blog, as well as on our facebook page. These are amazing images that show the exciting history of our community.

The Collection was donated to the RMG by the late Thomas Bouckley, amateur historian and collector of Oshawa’s history. The entire computerized collection comprises over 2,300 historical photographs of Oshawa and about 100 works are featured in three exhibitions per year. Click here to Browse the online database.

The Vintage Oshawa blog is a place to share Bouckley historical images, as well as a place for residents of Oshawa to share their vintage photographs of Oshawa’s past, helping to create a visual history of the city. Please submit your images and caption information to help us grow this online collection. Questions? Submit your photo!

Image: R.S. Williams Piano Workers, 1910

Painters Eleven at Sixty

Tom Hodgson, Yellow Hydrant, 1953; oil, sand and acrylic ? on masonite; Gift of Martin Vagners, 1989

This post comes from our Senior Curator, Linda Jansma.

‘This exhibition is not a compact to agree, but rather the expression of a long repressed desire on the part of eleven painters to disagree harmoniously in terms visually indigenous to this age.’

While a fall 1953 meeting at Alexandra Luke’s cottage officially launched Painters Eleven as Ontario’s first abstract painting group, their inaugural exhibition took place at Roberts Gallery in Toronto from February 13 – 27, 1954. The above quote is taken from the exhibition flyer; indeed, the group wasn’t interested in presenting a manifesto similar to the Automatistes’ Refus Global, but in seeking opportunities to show their abstract work to the public.

Jock Macdonald, one of the oldest members of P11, would write in a letter to friends about that early exhibition: “It was the bombshell of the Art world in Toronto. It set the established and recognized artist on their ears.” Roberts Gallery had a huge attendance for the exhibition opening for which each member could contribute three paintings. As one Toronto Daily Star reporter noted: “The show has one common denominator: it gives conservatism a polite but firm kick in the pants and blazes independent trails.”

The RMG has organized an exhibition celebrating P11’s first sixty years and has included early work by each of its members. The gallery’s first mandate emphasized collecting and exhibiting the work of the group and the RMG now has the largest collection of work by Painter’s Eleven, as well as an extensive archive. Four paintings from that first exhibition are part of the RMG permanent collection, including Forest by Kazuo Nakamura, Yellow Hydrant by Tom Hodgson, and Tumult for a King by Harold Town (a Varsity reviewer remarked, about the latter painting, that it was “rather violent, too violent perhaps”).

Kazuo Nakamura, Forest; 1953; oil on masonite; Gift of Charles E. McFaddin, 1974

In the invitation for the group’s second Roberts exhibition, they further clarified their aims:

‘There is no manifesto here for the times.
There is no jury but time. But now
There is little harmony in the noticeable disagreement.
But there is a profound regard
For the consequences
Of our complete freedom’

After sixty years, the jury is back, and the verdict, is no doubt, positive.

Harold Town; Tumult for a King; 1953- 54; oil and Lucite 44 on masonite; Gift of the artist’s estate, 1994

The Curator’s View: Av Isaacs

This post comes from our Senior Curator, Linda Jansma.

I was going through the lobby of the gallery recently, when a gentleman in the lower Alexandra Luke Gallery caught my eye. “Hmmm, looks like Av Isaacs,” I thought. A quick step closer confirmed that Av was taking a turn around the gallery, something he does two or three times a year.

This was serendipitous. The day before, we had taken delivery of approximately 25 8” x 10” black and white photographs from Pat Feheley. She had inherited them from her father, Budd, who was a co-founder of Park Gallery in Toronto which he opened in the 1950s on Avenue Road. The photographs were taken at an opening of work by Painters Eleven and included candid shots of Jock Macdonald, Hortense Gordon, Ray Mead, Harold Town and Tom Hodgson. But the other people in that crowded room were a mystery.

Portrait of Jack Bush at Park Gallery 1958 Photo courtesy the new studio photography

Portrait of Jack Bush at Park Gallery 1958. Photo: The New Studio Photography

So I sat with Av for a half hour in the gallery space with that pile of photographs on my lap, one by one passing them on to Av. Av was the owner of Isaacs Gallery, a Toronto institution that he opened in 1955. He represented artists like Michael Snow, Joyce Wieland and Jack Chambers. He reminisced about living below Jock Macdonald in a duplex on 4 Maple Avenue while the latter was teaching at the Ontario College of Art, and his own father’s reaction when he sold a work by William Ronald for the princely sum of $900 (his father was incredulous). He told me of the opening of the RMG-organized exhibition of the work of William Kurelek and the impression the presence of a red-robed bishop had made on him, as well as the after-party at the home of our Director Emerita, Joan Murray, and how the majority of the guests ended up fully clothed in her swimming pool.

Tom Hodgson (left), Jock Macdonald (right) Park Gallery opening 1958 Photo credit: The new studio photography

Tom Hodgson (left), Jock Macdonald (right) Park Gallery opening, 1958 Photo:
The New Studio Photography

Av was able to identify a number of people in those photographs which will be incredibly helpful as they’re archived into the collection. But the best part was sitting beside a Canadian legend and hearing his stories.

Thanks for dropping by Av.

Interested in learning more? Click here to read about our upcoming Michael J. Kuczer exhibition. Kuczer also lived in Toronto at 4 Maple avenue with Isaacs and Jock Macdonald.

The Curator’s View: Thomas Bouckley Collection, An Art Perspective Part 2

This post comes from the desk of Sonya Jones, Curator of the Thomas Bouckley Collection.

While studying and reviewing the photographs in the Thomas Bouckley Collection, I’m always looking for new ways to re-contextualize and interpret the Collection. What’s refreshing is that no matter how well I think I know the collection, I’m always pleasantly surprised to discover something new, or see something in a different light. For example, in a blog posted in 2012, (click here to view) I put on art historical lenses and selected a number of images from the collection that reminded me of famous artworks.

Since then, I’ve discovered more images that have similarities to artworks, whether through subject, composition, or both. Just for fun, here are a few more examples: