A sale of selected works from The William Syson Collection.
The paintings in the collection are by Beatrice M.L. Huntington (1889–1988) and her husband William ‘Spanish’ Macdonald (1883–1960). Beatrice Huntington’s works span seven decades and show her development and versatility as an artist from early sketches and designs through to formal portraits. Key examples in the collection show her brief but significant engagement withthe European avant-garde in the 1920s as well as influence from her husband as they travelled together in Spain and France. There are also examples of her portraiture from the 1920s and 30s when she enjoyed success as a portrait painter. A group of later works, dating from her return to painting after her husband’s death in 1960.
William Macdonald is chiefly represented by a body of work from his time in Spain, mainly painted during the 1920s, but also by examples of his portraiture and notably by a lively self-portrait. Four Canadian landscapes complete an important part of the family’s narrative as they spent time in Nova Scotia and Quebec in the 1930s and during the Second World War.
