Pegi Nicol MacLeod

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Pegi Nicol MacLeod, born Margaret Kathleen (Nicol) MacLeod (4 January 1904 - 12 February 1949), was a Canadian member of the first wave of artists of Canadian modernism painting. She was born in Listowel, Ontario and was a pupil of Franklin Brownell in Ottawa. Successively she studied at the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts in Montreal. In 1932 won the Willingdon Arts Competition prize for painting. MacLeod lived in Toronto from 1934 to 1937 after which time she married and went to live in New York City with him. Annually however, she returned to Canada - particularly to Fredericton New Brunswick, where in 1940 she opened an art center for aspiring artists at the University of New Brunswick.

A painter of people and landscapes, her pieces tended to have a somber though joyful, reflectively insightful and humanitarian feel to them. They were often painted in muted tones showing the influence, most likely, that the renowned Group of Seven artists had on many Canada painters in the first half of the Twentieth century. MacLeod was against the Second World War, though in 1944 she was commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada to paint many activities of the Women's Division of the Armed Forces through out World War II as means of showcasing the war from a uniquely female perspective. Today MacLeod is seen as a well regarded artist, whose WW2 work, which includes 110 oil paintings, in particular sets her apart from many of her peers at the time.

MacLeod died of cancer in New York City in 1949, leaving more than a thousand works of art behind, which included many paintings as well as other art forms such as designs for hooked rugs.