Hidden Paintings of Harold McIntosh Found

An Artist's Secret Years

The Artist

It is far from unusual for an artist to relate, even if sub-consciously, dramatic events which take place in his life. Those events may take shape in something so obvious as imagery or angry brush strokes or subtle changes in the use of color which aren’t recognized as anything more than a slight variation in style. Art historians have spent years dissecting the lives of artists searching for causes and effects.

In the case of Harold (Hal) McIntosh, a small series of paintings have been found which highlight an artist who early on made a distinguished career in illustration and later on found success as a New England painter of birds and barns. These paintings came from the period of his life which lay in between.

McIntosh was a son of immigrants who, like so many other Scots, made their way to Canada in the early portion of the last century. He grew up in Winnipeg and was gifted enough that he studied at the Winnipeg School of Art with L.L. Fitzgerald, one of the famous Group of Seven known for their paintings of the prairies. But like many other young men, McIntosh was called to serve in the war, and later came home and got a job while he still pursued art. He made his way to New York where he found work as an illustrator. During the early 1950s, McIntosh became known as a master of scratchboard technique and was a mainstay of Norman Cousin’s Saturday Review of Books. His cover art was well known, he was successful and he married.

His success as an illustrator continued but McIntosh always yearned to go back to painting and in 1956, he gave up Manhattan and moved to the Northwest corner of Connecticut where it was his intention to supplement the art he really wanted to do with just enough freelance illustration jobs to make ends meet. He and his wife, Ruth, bought an old home near Sharon, Connecticut and they happily settled into his days in the studio  and the country life in general. Even happier, Ruth soon became pregnant and McIntosh was thrilled since neither of his brothers married and had children, so his and Ruth’s would carry forth the McIntosh lineage.