Hamilton Southam

A speech by Hamilton Southam on the occasion of
the posthumous book launch of
Donald W. Buchanan's book,
Le Monde secret de Zadkine vu par Donald Buchanan/
The Secret World of Zadkine as Seen by Donald Buchanan
(Paris: Editions L'art, 1967)
at the National Gallery of Canada,
September 28, 1967

"Mademoiselle le Directeur, mesdames, messieurs,

Avec votre permission je diral les quelques mots que j'ai à dire ce soir en anglais. Donald Buchanan parlait bien le français, il aimait bien le français, il aimait bien le Canada français, il aimait bien la France - et le livre que nous lanç ons aujourd'hui traite d'un des plus eminents sculpteurs français. Quand même il était comme moi un Canadien d'expression anglaise et je crois que je parlerai de lui plus à mon aise en anglais. Et je veux surtout être à mon aise quand je parle de lui.

With only a few minutes in hand I hesitate to sum up so complex and wonderful a person as Donald Buchanan. He was both a private and a public person. With your permission I would like to say a little about both his personalities - starting with the private one. He was a very private person - reserved in manner and mysterious in style. We are met this afternoon to consider a book called "The Secret World of Zadkine as Seen by Donald Buchanan". Truth to tell, there was a secret world of Donald Buchanan, or perhaps even a universe of secret worlds.

A capital element in Donald's situation was undoubtedly his deafness, brought on by a serious illness in his younger days. But anything our friend lost through the enforced dullness of his ears he more than made up by the extraordinary use he put his eyes to. Donald's affliction was not nearly as heavy as that which destiny visited on John Milton, but he could almost say with that great poet:

With "…wisdome at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou Celestial light
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate…"

Donald was a seer, and because he saw as he did, his mind was luminous, and he was magical. He appeared and disappeared over the years in accordance with some rule of life he never bothered to explain. He was one of the freest men I ever knew, incorrigible bachelor that he was, though not the happiest. He seemed to envy his married friends their domestic felicity, and would come from time to time to share it. After a year's absence or so there would be a knock on the door, or a phone call, and Donald would have come back for a few days. Despite his gruff manner and his irregular hours Donald was one of the best of house guests. He was fundamentally a dear and gentle person - my wife would put it that way, so why shouldn't I? - and he got on well with children, which is always a good test of a bachelor's worth.

Any house with Donald staying in it would be changed in various ways: not always for the better. I've mentioned the hours he led - disgraceful - by which I mean that he stayed up late and got up early. Bedtime and meals tended to be reorganized to suit his personal taste for good after-midnight conversation and good French table wines. But however exhausting, and occasionally expensive all this was, it was a thousand times worthwhile. As long as you had Donald in the house, it all became part of his secret universe, and a most marvelous universe that was.

Marvelous, because within it his own secret world was linked to those of others - to the secret world of Zadkine, for example, or of Giacommetti, or of Moore, or of Matisse - and in his conversation he led you entranced from one to the other. He would sit beside your fire in the winter, or on your verandah at the lake in the summer, preferable with a glass of burgundy or claret in his hand, and he would talk in his short, clipped sentences, or in silence pass you his latest photographs, and somehow - it's hard to explain - your world would be transfigured by a glimpse of all of his. When he was killed in a pointless automobile accident a couple of winters ago all that died with him.

You will forgive me for having spoken this much of Donald Buchanan as a private person. He was, or course, an important public figure as well. His contributions to this country, particularly in the field of the arts, were of incalculable value. For thirty years - to the day of his death - he was a discoverer, a founder of institutions, an animator of cultural movements of great importance for Canada. He played key roles in the early days of the CBC and of the National Film Board. He founded the National Film Society before the war, and had a hand in founding Canadian Art during the war. He helped set up our Design Council and served for several years as Associate Director of this National Gallery. He was never busier - nor more creative -than in the days before he died. No one contributed more than he to the success of Expo's extraordinary exhibition of the fine arts. In a couple of years, when the National Arts Centre opens across the street, you will be able to see the fruit of his work as the first chairman of our fine arts committee.

Donald's last project was this book on Zadkine which we are launching today. He attached a good deal of importance to it - and you will readily see why when you look at it. It's an important book, not only because it has a good deal to say about Ossip Zadkine - undoubtedly one of the two or three leading sculptors in the world today - but because it says something also about Donald, whom some of us regard as having been one of the most significant Canadians of our generation. Essentially, it is a book about one wonderful person by another such person - read it, and see for yourself what I mean.

In closing I would like to thank Ossip Zadkine himself for his kind help in preparing the book, and particularly for the perceptive note about Donald which he contributed by way of a preface to it. Zadkine had hoped to be here this afternoon, but earlier this week sent a telegram to say that his wife was unwell and that he could not leave Paris at this time. I would like to thank our Paris editor, M. Jianou, who was most helpful throughout the process of getting the book printed, and as you will see well printed in France. I would like to thank our Canadian publisher, Maynard Gertler of Harvest House in Montreal, for whom getting this book out has been, as it was for all of Donald's friends, a labour of love. I am sure that if all Canadian publishers approached their work in the spirit that Mr. Gertler brought to this enterprise, and displayed all his skill and patience, the future of the arts and letters in Canada would be safely assured.

Above all I would like to thank the Board of Trustees, the Director and staff of the National Gallery, and particularly Dr. Fenwick, for this afternoon's occasion. The Gallery's participation makes it a public as well as a private occasion - and so it should be, for Donald was both a private and a public person. The National Gallery's gesture in arranging this little ceremony was extraordinarily humane. And, if I may say so, that is just what our national institutions should be in these extraordinary times we are passing through. In the name of all of Donald Buchanan's friends, Miss Boggs, and in the name of all who will enjoy his glimpse of the secret world of Zadkine, we thank you."

-source: from the estate of Mrs. Dorothy R. Dyde with kind permission from Mrs. Dyde's daughter, Frances Plaunt. Hamilton Southam gave kind copyright permission to place his speech in its entirety on this Site.

Robert Ayre

The New Associate Director of The National Gallery

Friends of the arts throughout Canada will be gratified by the appointment of Donald W. Buchanan as Associate Director of the National Gallery, in charge of special projects... I can say that he will be a strong right hand to Alan Jarvis, the new Director. He is a man peculiarly fitted by inclination, energy and training for the Gallery's extension work and expansion program... he has developed the knowledge and technical ability needed for his new position.

At the same time, with the thoroughness that is so characteristic of him, he has made the most of those opportunities to know Canada. Born at Lethbridge, Alberta, son of the late Senator Buchanan, he is one of those Westerners who take the whole country for their bailiwick...

One of the first things that strikes you in Donald Buchanan is his Canadianism. In his radio and film work, in his writing - the Phaidon book "Canadian Painting from Paul Kane to the Group of Seven"; the further range, "The Growth of Canadian Painting"; the Morrice biography, and his numerous magazine articles - and in his efforts to improve Canadian taste through the Design Index, he has helped develop our self-consciousness as a nation, has made us better known abroad and has endeavoured to make us better worth knowing.

-Robert Ayre, "The New Associate Director of The National Gallery," Toronto Daily Star, July 16, 1955

Donald Buchanan, A Great Canadian

News of the sudden death of Donald W. Buchanan in Ottawa on Saturday night came as a profound shock to his friends in Montreal, to his associates on Expo '67 committees and to all throughout the country who knew of his distinguished contribution to the arts. He was a member of the board of trustees of the National Gallery, which he had served in several capacities for many years, and when he left in 1960 he relinquished the position of associated director which he had held since 1955. He had much of the responsibility for the planning of the new gallery and the move from the old National Museum, and for the erection of the Canadian pavilion at Venice to house our exhibits at the Biennale. When he was head of the industrial design section, he did a great deal, through the Design Index, to improve manufacturing standards and public appreciation of good design.

He was secretary of the advisory committee on fine arts for Expo '67, as well as supervisor of cultural themes and co-ordinator of the fine arts exhibition. It is sad that he will not see this work brought to fruition, but it was only one of the many ways he found to serve the cause of the arts in Canada.

In the days before he went to the National Gallery, he had been supervisor of rural circuits and later as supervisor of displays.

As a student at the University of Toronto and at Oxford, he was engrossed in constitutional history, but he had a strongly developed visual sense and the first of his many visits to the old cities of Europe tipped the balance in favor of the arts.

In 1936 he published his biography of the Montreal painter James Wilson Morrice. "The Growth of Canadian Painting," in which he discussed some 30 artists he had visited in their studios, many of them personal friends, appeared in 1950, to be followed five years later by the large format Phaidon Press book on Canadian painting. He contributed to numerous periodicals and from 1944 to 1959 he and I were associated as joint editors of the magazine Canadian Art.

I never heard him admit to a secret desire to be a painter himself, but in 1959, "driven by some long repressed urge," as he says, he bought a camera and found himself "recording for a brief period, with awed and curious eye, the appearance and growth of Canadian cities."

Quick Eye

His camera went with him on his wanderings in Europe, to the great cities and to the vineyards he loved. He became a connoisseur of wine and wrote almost as appreciatively of vintages as he did of pictures. He had a quick eye for droll details and incongruities, always the human touch, and he delighted his friends with the humorous captions he wrote for the photographs in his scrapbooks. A few of these went into "Sausages and Roses - Casual Photographs from Three Continents," published in 1963, and into the exhibition "A Not So Reverent Journey" circulated by the National Gallery.

I will always remember him as a great Canadian. In the preface to "The Growth of Canadian Painting" he says: "My hope is not only that this book will serve to show how deep and genuine has been the growth of creative activity in Canadian paintings but also that it may bring something of the flavour of Canada itself, the land and its culture, to readers in other countries." Donald Buchanan did help to make us better known abroad and he endeavored to make us better worth knowing.

-Robert Ayre, "Art World Mourns: Donald Buchanan, A Great Canadian," The Montreal Star, February 28, 1966

Joyce Fairburn

Artistic World Pays Tribute

The late Donald Buchanan yesterday received perhaps the most meaningful tribute the artistic world can offer one of its own.

His very last work was published posthumously, thanks to the combined goodwill and financial sponsorship of a group of 10 of his close friends, some of them giants in Canada's cultural community.

The book was launched in the grand style at the National Gallery of Canada by old friends and admirers with a quiet ceremony and bottles of good wine...

Yesterday's tribute was a fitting one for the writer-photographer who was one of the moving forces in establishing the National Gallery and served as its associate director until 1960.

Before his death in a car accident two years ago, Mr. Buchanan had completed a study of photographs and poetry of Ossip Zadkine, one of the leading contemporary sculptors in the world.

But it might never have appeared had a committee of friends not banded together to ensure publication.

Among them were Canada's outstanding portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh, Mr. Buchanan's brother Hugh, Edward McNally of Calgary and Mrs. H. A. Dyde of Edmonton, a friend for more than 30 years.

Chief organizer of the little group was Hamilton Southam, the director of the national centre of the performing arts in Ottawa....

...The tribute paid to him yesterday was a frank and moving testimony of the extent to which his mysterious personality affected those who knew him well.

The most eloquent came from Zadkine himself and is contained in a preface to the book.

-Joyce Fairburn, "Artistic World Pays Tribute," Lethbridge Herald, September 29, 1967. [Joyce Fairburn is now a Senator in the Canadian government.]

Alan Jarvis

Donald Buchanan

Thanks to Donald Buchanan [for the new facilities of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa]... with all the publicity that attended the opening of the Lorne Building - too little mention was ever made of a most remarkable Canadian, the man who really masterminded the interior organization of the building and who supervised the complex operations involved in carrying out the move expeditiously and utterly without mishap to a single work of art. That character (and I use the word consciously and advisedly) was Donald W. Buchanan, until recently the Associate Director of the National Gallery. Buchanan is a man who has enriched Canada's cultural life, single-handedly and single-mindedly, to an almost unaccountable degree, and his light should not be left under a bushel. Under a bushel, that is, to a wider public. However, Don must be the subject of another whole columns. Suffice it for now to say that if his present sabbatical sojourn abroad turns into a permanent loss of such a remarkable person from the Canadian art scene, then 1960 will be recorded as a black year in Canadian art.

-Alan Jarvis as quoted in "Donald Buchanan," Vancouver Province, October 7, 1960.

Harry McCurry

In my opinion, he is in every way the type... we badly need in Canadian Museum Service... I consider him extremely well-fitted [to work in the National Gallery].

-Harry McCurry in a letter dated September 29, 1934 to Hon. Vincent Massey, National Gallery of Canada Archives.

Jack W. Pickersgill

MP Gives Choice For Design Post

[Donald Buchanan, former associate curator of the National Gallery, is the man to head up the National Design Council, Hon. Jack Pickersgill has suggested in the Commons.

Mr. Pickersgill made his suggestion during the Commons debate on setting up the council.]

If there is one man to whom the Canadian people owe the design council and the pioneering work it has done in the last decade or more it is to Mr. Donald Buchanan, who has associated with the National Gallery and who provided most of the initiative and inspiration for the starting of this work.

Move Regretted

It is a matter of the deepest regret to me and to many other Canadians, not all of them political friends of mine, that Mr. Donald Buchanan left the National Gallery - I do not intend to go into that - and that at the present time he is not even living in his own country.

If the minister wants the ablest Canadian who could be found to be the head of the design council, I suggest that he seek to repatriate Mr. Buchanan and get him to undertake this job.

[Mr. Buchanan resigned from the National Gallery last fall. He is now traveling in Europe.]

-, MP Gives Choice For Design Post, Ottawa Citizen, May 2, 1961

Nancy Townshend

Donald W. Buchanan, originally from Lethbridge, Alberta, was Canada's unsung hero in mid-20^th century Canadian art history... until this Site.

Ossip Zadkine

...but what struck me most, after a few moments, were his eyes. They radiated a sort of presence, a quietude; they were an instrument of great perfection, that obviously served far more purposes than just going to the right or the left. Eyes that gripped one and never let go. They searched the very depths of one's being. When he walked along the streets his eyes did not just take in the walls, the street or the distance, but penetrated "the object itself"....

-O. Zadkine, "The Imaginary Museum of Donald Buchanan", Le Monde secret de Zadkine vu par Donald Buchanan, (Paris: Editions L'art, 1967)

Unnamed

Donald Buchanan

The quick mind and sight and sensitivity of Donald Buchanan made his contribution to Canadian art quite remarkable. That he was a bachelor seemed to heighten his gift - his urge - to tell the world that it should cherish the companionship and strength that may be found in the study and understanding of art. Perhaps he wasn't lonely, for the horizon of his mind was broad in space and time; but he walked alone. In the Film Board, in the National Gallery, in Expo, in his perceptive camera work, in his gay initiative, in his sparing, begrudging use of words spoken or written - Donald Buchanan lived and worked a life of almost selfish devotion to principles and causes that were entwined always with Canada and art. He pretended to be an old-fashioned cross-patch, but he loved to laugh and he was critical not of human beings or normal human failings but of the pomp, fraud and second rate that he found too much with us. His protesting influence in Canadian art this last 30 years will be still more appreciated now that his untimely death means we will have to go on without it.

-"Donald Buchanan," newspaper clipping, National Gallery of Canada Archives

Donald Buchanan

DONALD W. BUCHANAN, whose tragic death was reported from Ottawa the other day, was a small, quiet man who made a big contribution to the artistic life of this country. Once head of the industrial design section of the National Gallery, and the mainspring behind the movement of the gallery to its new quarters, he had also been co-editor of Canadian Art and was at the time of his death co-ordinator of the Fine Arts exhibit of Expo '67.

But this is only a small part of his contribution. He had a well-deserved reputation as an authority on painting. He had been a supervisor of talks for the CBC and an executive of the National Film Board. A tribute by Robert Ayre, The Montreal Star's art critic, sums up his contributions to Canada: "...He endeavoured to make us better worth knowing." It would be fair to say he succeeded.

- , Donald Buchanan, Montreal Star, March 1, 1966, National Gallery of Canada Archives

Mr. Donald W. Buchanan

The accidental death of Mr. Donald Buchanan Saturday night comes as a shock to the community he served so well. At the age of 57 he had established a solid reputation for himself as a photographer, author and art collector. A Trustee of the National Gallery, he was also co-ordinator of the Expo '67 fine arts exhibition, and the creator of several books of photographs with text. For years, he was intimately associated with the development of the National Gallery, first as head of its industrial design section, then as associated director.

Mr. Buchanan was a man of wide-ranging interests in an age that is popularly supposed to be given over to specialization. He had studied modern history at the University of Toronto and at Oxford, wandered around Europe for a year, returned to Canada and worked as a freelance writer before joining the CBC in 1937 and, after three years there as supervisor of talks, came to the National Film Board as an executive. He joined the National Gallery in 1947, serving until 1960, when he again engaged in writing and photography.

Mr. Buchanan's was a full life, cut off in its prime. He will be mourned not only in Ottawa but everywhere in Canada where he added a touch of grace and beauty to the lives of the people who regarded his photography and read his works, and who knew of the service he had been giving the arts through the National Gallery.

- , "Mr. Donald W. Buchanan," Ottawa Citizen, February 28, 1966, National Gallery of Canada Archives