Isabel McLaughlin

Isabel McLaughlin, (10 October 1903 – 26 November 2002) was a modernist Canadian painter, patron and philanthropist. She specialized in landscapes and still life and had a strong interest in design.

Biography Whitefish Falls in 1936. Top row: Randolph Hewton, Mr. Whittall, Charles Comfort, Yvonne McKague Housser. Middle row: Isabel McLaughlin, Gordon Webber, Bennie Hewton. Bottom row: Hal Hayden, Audrey Taylor, Prudence Heward, Rody Kenny Courtice, Mr. Macdonald. Born in Oshawa, Ontario, McLaughlin was the third of five daughters to Adelaide Mowbray McLaughlin and founder of the McLaughlin Motor Car Company and first president of General Motors Canada, Col. Robert Samuel McLaughlin. She studied watercolour painting with Louise Saint in Paris while learning French at the Sorbonne in Paris (1921–1924).

From 1925 to 1927, she studied art at the Ontario College of Art with Group of Seven member Arthur Lismer and Yvonne McKague Housser, the latter of whom she referred to as "remarkable". She then attended the Art Students' League, as it was called, a school started by Lismer's students on the grounds of the College of Art with, as mentors, Lismer and Housser. Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Bertram Brooker, Lowrie Warrener, Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, came and besides advice, expressed enthusiasm. In 1929, she studied in Paris at the Scandinavian Academy with Prudence Heward, with whom she formed a lifelong friendship, then in Vienna with Housser in 1930. (Her artistic pursuits are described in the 1994 NFB film on the Beaver Hall group, "By Woman's Hand").

McLaughlin was recognized as a dedicated artist from early in her career. She was an invited participant in the Group of Seven exhibition in 1931. Her first solo show was at the Art Gallery of Toronto in 1933. Her early work is described as having a sculptural simplicity of style. the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg Ontario.

Commissions Among McLaughlin's public commissions was a mural for the children's reading room of the Oshawa Public Library in 1955. McLaughlin was also a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, as well as an executive member of the Heliconian Club in Toronto and its President (1940–1942). She was also a member of the Federation of Canadian Artists (1942).

Record sale prices In the spring 2022 sale of auction Cowley Abbott, McLaughlin's Backyards, lot 74, oil on canvas, 25 x 26 ins ( 63.5 x 66 cms ), estimated at $15,000.00 - $20,000.00, realized a price of $40,800.00.

Gifts to Oshawa and elsewhere McLaughlin gave financial gifts to the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Windsor, the Art Gallery of Guelph, the Heliconian Club and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery. In 1987, McLaughlin made a donation of art work from her personal collection of art works by other artists than herself to the Robert McLaughlin Gallery as well. Some of these artists included Gerhard Richter, Prudence Heward, Louis Archambault, B. C. Binning, André Charles Biéler, Emil Bisttram, Emily Carr, Paraskeva Clark, Lyonel Feininger, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Alexandra Luke, Peter Haworth, Bobs Cogill Haworth, Hans Hofmann, J. E. H. MacDonald, Anne Savage, Arthur Lismer, and Sarah Robertson among others. A second donation followed in 1990 which included many works by Jackson, Lismer and Housser.

Before her death, she gave her archives to Queen's University. Following her death, McLaughlin's remaining collection of art work was donated to the Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Isabel McLaughlin (1903–2002): Painter, Patron, Philanthropist was held at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario, in 2007, to celebrate the gift to the archives at Queen's University at Kingston.

McLaughlin lived to be 99, dying in 2002.

Legacy In 1948, Housser painted a watercolour depicting McLaughlin titled Isabel the Archaeologist, Cap Chat River. A mid-life portrait photograph was authorized by Reva Brooks in the 1950s.

In 1998, McLaughlin was one of the four artists in 4 Women Who Painted in the 1930s and 1940s, curated by Alicia Boutilier for the Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa. In 2016, the Art Gallery of Guelph included her work in the exhibition Dear Life, which traced the ways in which women have shaped the course of art across the 20th, and now the 21st, centuries.