Backgrounder
Pegi Nicol MacLeod was a unique figure in the history of Canadian art. Working in Ottawa, Toronto, New York City, and Fredericton in the 1930s and 1940s, this talented artist produced watercolour and oil paintings that depicted her family and surroundings in a dynamic modernist style. Her use of bold colours and expressive lines captured the spontaneity and energy of life. Macleod exhibited regularly throughout her life. Today, her works can be found in major art galleries and private collections across the country.
Born Margaret Kathleen Nichol in Listowel, Ontario, she moved to Ottawa as a young child, where, at the age of 17, she graduated from the Ottawa Collegiate Institute. She then studied at the Art Association School of Ottawa (1921-23) and the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal (1923-24). In 1925, she returned to Ottawa and transformed the upstairs of her parents' home into a studio. She changed her name to Pegi Nicol and adopted a bohemian lifestyle. Before long, she was exhibiting her work in Ottawa, Montréal, and Toronto. After living briefly in Montréal (1931-32), she returned to her Ottawa studio, where she developed a unique modernist style, characterized by bold colours, expressive lines, movement, and intensity.
MacLeod came to prominence within the Canadian art community during the 1930s, when she was elected to the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour and the Canadian Group of Painters. She was also a founding member of the Picture Loan Society, a cooperative venture for artists having difficulty in exhibiting and selling their work. In 1937, she moved to New York City with her husband, but always retained connections with developments in Canadian art. Between 1940 and 1948, she spent her summers in Fredericton, where she and fellow artist Lucy Jarvis co-founded the Observatory Art Centre at the University of New Brunswick, for teaching and displaying art.
During the Second World War, the director of the National Gallery of Canada commissioned MacLeod to paint women in the armed forces. Part of the Canadian War Records Program, the works she produced in 1943 and 1944 exhibit her usual vibrant colours and expressionistic lines. In 1947, she organized a show called "Manhattan Cycle" to be exhibited in Canada. It included 110 paintings on New York, mainly of people in the city's streets, that was still on tour when she died prematurely at the age of 45. The National Gallery of Canada held a retrospective of her works very shortly after her death.
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