Dugald Sutherland MacColl

Identity:

Dugald Sutherland MacColl was a painter and etcher, art critic and writer. In 1897 he married Andrée Adele Desirée Jeanne Zabe.

Life:

MacColl received his education in Scotland, but spent most of his life working in London, where he wrote art criticism for the Spectator, the Saturday Review and the Week-End Review. He was editor of the Architectural Review from 1901 to 1905.

MacColl painted mainly in watercolour, and exhibited with the New English Art Club, which he joined in 1896. His writings focused attention on movements outwith the Royal Academy such as the New English Art Club and the Glasgow school. Not surprisingly he found a friend in the rebel Whistler with whom he was in correspondence in the 1890s.

MacColl also wrote intelligently on Impressionist art and theory, but was hostile towards Post-Impressionism, being Roger Frys most serious critic.

MacColl was Keeper of the Tate Gallery from 1906 until 1911, and Keeper of the Wallace Collection from 1911 until 1924. He helped to found the National Art-Collection Fund, first proposing the idea in three reports published in the Saturday Review in September 1900. He was also an outspoken critic of the use to which the Chantry Bequest had been put.

Bibliography:

MacColl, Dugald Sutherland, Nineteenth Century Art, Glasgow, 1902; MacColl, D. S., 'A Year of Post-Impressionism', Nineteenth Century and After, vol. 71, 1912, pp. 285-302; MacColl, D. S., Confessions of a Keeper and Other Papers, London, 1931; MacColl, D. S., Life, Work and Setting of Philip Wilson Steer, London, 1945; Spalding, Francis, 'Dugald Sutherland MacColl', The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, ed. L. Macy, http://www.groveart.com (accessed 20 June 2002).