Isabel McLaughlin

Who is Isabel McLaughlin?

Isabel Grace McLaughlin, CM, O.Ont, CGP, Hon. CPA was a Canadian visual artist, patron and philanthropist. She was an early Modernist Canadian painter specializing in landscapes and still life with a strong interest in design. McLaughlin appreciated depicting small "...growth, lichen, rocks and mosses; the exquisite beauty of colur and pattern delighted..."

Born in Oshawa, Ontario, McLaughlin was one of five daughters to the founder of General Motors of Canada President Col. Robert Samuel McLaughlin. She studied art at the Ontario College of Art 1926–1930 under Group of 7 member Arthur Lismer and Yvonne McKague Housser whom the later she referred to as "remarkable"., Paris 1929, Vienna 1930 and with Hans Hofmann ca. 1947-52. McLaughlin was to become lifelong friends with McKague Housser and the two went on painting excursions together often. In 1948 McKague Housser painted a watercolour depicting McLaughlin in it titled: "Isabel the Archaeologist, Cap Chat River"

In 1933 McLaughlin was a founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters and served as its first woman president in 1939

On December 1, 1987 McLaughlin made a substantial donation of art work from her own personal collection of works by other artists to The Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Some of these artists included Prudence Heward, Louis Archambault, B. C. Binning, Andre Bieler, Emil Bistram, Emily Carr, Parekseva Clark, Lyonel Feininger, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Alexandra Luke, Peter Haworth, Bobs Coghill Haworth, J. E. H. MacDonald, Anne Savage, Irene Kindness, Arthur Lismer, Sarah Robertson among others.