50. Donald Shaw MacLaughlan
(1876-1938)

The Great Oak, Tennessee

(click on image to print)
MacLaughlan: The Great Oak

The Great Oak, Tennessee

Etching and drypoint, 1909, 152 x 159 mm., Bruette 99 undescribed ii/ii, Library of Congress 94, 95. Very fine impression on old laid paper, trimmed by the artist to just outside the platemark (Whistler’s influence) and pencil signed in the narrow margin at the bottom. MacLaughlan was born on Prince Edward Island in Canada and moved to Boston, with his family in 1890, where he studied art. But his future lay in Europe and by 1898 he was in France, etching furiously as he took in the sights, later in Switzerland, Italy and England, doing the same. He was among the first of the New-Worlders to join the etching revival (Haden and Whistler were still alive, Bone had just begun his career and McBey was still working in a bank) and the excitement of his discovery of Europe is palpable in his prints and drawings. They drew considerable contemporary praise. MacLaughlan returned to America rarely, but he did do several etchings of Chicago and several of Tennessee, of varying dates, but most, significantly, of 1917. Always peripatetic, he died in Marrakesh, Morocco.