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WILLIAM
RONALD SMITH got to New York City right
out of the Ontario College of Art because he was a hockey player. The Canadian Amateur
Hockey Association had a scholarship available for $1,000. Ronald applied stating
only that he would "love to go to New York to study with Hans Hofmann and get
to know other painters." He won the scholarship.
WILLIAM RONALD in his studio in Kingston, New Jersey, l960,
photo by Tess Board.
In l952, he visited New York for six months, attended Hofmann's
classes and lived on Leyroy Street and then later on 2nd Avenue. Hofmann was not
only one of the foremost teachers and philosophers of art, he was the leading educator
of modern artists in the U.S. Second Avenue was the noisy, vibrant Jewish neighbourhood
of street vendors, delicatessens and clothing stores. Ronald saw theatre, heard great
jazz and devoured the art scene. For a boy born in Stratford who grew up in Fergus
and Brampton it was a new world. He knew he would be back.
WILLIAM RONALD, Abstract l952, mixed media on paper,
collection National Gallery Canada, Ottawa
In staid Toronto, during the 1950's, the windows of the Robert
Simpson Company at Queen and Yonge provided one of the few sources of visual excitement.
In October of 1953, onlookers were perplexed and surprised by the abstract art featured
in the room settings of the Home Furnishings Department. The initiator was a Simpson's
display artist and window dresser named William Ronald. The art and publicity for
Abstracts at Home stimulated enough interest that a month later, the seven artists
involved plus four others, decided to try for a real exhibition. These artists were
Alexandra Luke, Harold Town, Oscar Cahen, Kazuo Nakamura, Jack Bush, Hortense
Gordon, Walter Yarwood, Ray Mead, Tom Hodgson, Jock Macdonald and William Ronald.
In February l954, Painters Eleven, as they had named themselves, had their
first exhibition at Roberts Gallery in Toronto. It was a seminal moment for art in
Canada.
The work of Painters Eleven was aggressive and challenging. Many viewers,
whose sensibilities still lay in the 19th Century, or with The Group of Seven,
did not know how to react. Gallery goers in New York, and to a lesser extent in Montreal,
had been gradually exposed to new work which could be seen in the context of international
change. For the most part Torontonians were ignorant of these developments, so the
abruptness of the change to cutting edge art was harder for them to handle. Ronald
observes that "the
collectors in Toronto were only 100 miles from the Albright Knox in Buffalo and they
didn't know what the hell was going on."
New York Years
After one more show with Painters Eleven at the Roberts
Gallery in l955, Ronald moved to New York. His break came when Robert Beverly Hale,
the Curator of American Art at the Metropolitan Museum was in Toronto, saw Ronald's
work and invited him to visit when in New York. Then Ronald sold a work to a well
known New York collector, Countess Ingeborg de Beausac. To celebrate her new apartment
and her big,new painting, 'Inge' threw a large party. Among the guests was the leading
art dealer Samuel Kootz who was taken aback that his client had bought an unknown
Ronald rather than a Soulages. However, Kootz, always on the lookout for new talent,
agreed to come to Ronald's studio located in a decaying building in a rundown area.
Kootz was a fastidious man. Between his comments on the "goddamned rats as big
as dogs" he asked for five paintings. One was subsequently bought by the Guggenheim
Museum. Kootz took him on.
William Ronald's first commercial solo exhibition
opened in New York in April l957. Ronald was on top of the world. The weekend the
show opened, the Sunday New York Times featured a photograph of one of the
works with a positive review. Jock Macdonald, Ronald's teacher and mentor at the
Ontario College of Art, flew down for the opening. Macdonald was proud of him and
generous in his praise, telling Kootz, "I see no end to his talent." Ronald
says that statement has carried him throughout his entire career. Kootz represented
Hofmann, Kline, Rothko, Motherwell and deKooning. "Kline complimented me on
my work. I couldn't believe it. Rothco came to the Kootz Gallery later, when no-one
was there. He sat down and looked at one of my paintings for 20 minutes. I never
spoke to him. I was shell-shocked. They all came to my first show."
Ronald had not cut his ties with Painters Eleven. He negotiated an invitation
for the group to exhibit at the 20th Anniversary of American Abstract Artists
held at the Riverside Museum in New York, April 8, l956. It was the greatest hour
for Painters Eleven . Ronald came back to Toronto to have a solo exhibition
at Av Isaac's Greenwich Gallery in November of that year. He showed at Laing Galleries
in April l960 and with Isaacs Gallery in l961. He returned a hero. He had made it
in New York. "The
art scene was so strong. New York had taken it away from Paris and the fucking French.
I'm so grateful to have been there."
Ronald was under contract and producing 18 canvasses a year for Kootz and did so
for seven years. The scene was so hot that paintings were going out the door wet.
During this time Ronald and his first wife, Helen, decided to move out of New York
to a house on an acre of land in New Jersey. "Then, like now, you have to be
rich or poor to live in New York. In retrospect, it was a mistake." By l963,
he had taken out American citizenship. He thought he was going to be in the U.S.
forever.
That year his last exhibition with Kootz opened on December 1st. When he and Helen
got back from a holiday there was a letter from Kootz terminating the relationship.
Ronald was stunned and didn't know what to do. Jock Macdonald had said "Never
come back to Canada. "Hofmann said "Well, you can always go back to Canada."
Ronald didn't remember Macdonald's advice. "Well, I've got two beautiful daughters
and six grandchildren I wouldn't have had if I stayed in New York."
Perhaps Kootz saw the direction changing: painterly abstraction had run its course
and was being overtaken by a cooler, non-expressionistic approach. But Ronald's work
defies easy labeling. It has never been purely abstract expressionist or non-objective.
If anything, Surrealism has continued to have an enduring influence on his work.
When asked which artists of the New York School he admired or who may have influenced
him directly or indirectly he remembers how Pollock "released everybody...he
was exciting...crazy." Franz Kline's bold black and white strokes on a large
canvases drove his equivalent positive and negative forces to the limit. Hofmann,
the teacher of structural clarity, pushed his own work beyond structure stating that
"The aim of art is to vitalize form." Although plane was Hofmann's key
formal means he advocated that a "picture should be made with feeling not knowing."
Ronald speaks of Bradley Walker Tomlin as "a great artist who never got the
attention he deserved." Tomlin's use of underlying grids did influence Ronald
because his geometric shapes were used to achieve a fluid and organic structure.
But it is Jock Macdonald who remains closest to Ronald's heart. When Macdonald died
in l960, Ronald lost a man he considered to be not only the most important influence
in his life, but like a father. "He was closer than most fathers could ever
be. He was eager. I was eager. When he died it was awful...just awful."
Return to Canada
Ronald came home and branched out in a new direction. He started
broadcasting with CBC-TV and then CBC-FM. For three years he was on-air host of 'As
It Happens' and then went to CITY-TV to do 'Free For All.' But he never stopped painting.
He completed a large mural for the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in l968, had museum
exhibitions and gallery shows with David Mirvish, Quan, Dresdnere and the Morris
Gallery. When John Morris suggested he apply for a Canada Council grant and asked
what he would do if he got it, Ronald said offhandedly, "I'd paint the Prime
Ministers or something." He got the grant. The press got hold of it, and the
16 canvasses of The Prime Ministers of Canada became a reality. The exhibition
was opened by Pierre Elliot Trudeau at the Art Gallery of Ontario in April l984 and
toured to museums across the country.
WILLIAM RONALD, Portrait of John G. Diefenbaker,
acrylic on canvas, l979
The exhibitions are more sporadic now. He showed at Christopher
Cutts last year and this spring was the subject of a Bravo CITY-TV exhibit of current
paintings and a short film which showed him at work in his former studio in Toronto.
Ronald now works out of the former Bell Telephone building in downtown Barrie. The
three story red brick building is soon to be renamed The William Ronald
Building. A 4,000 foot studio provides him with the right environment to work
on his big canvasses.
WILLIAM RONALD, Earth l995, acrylic & flash,
courtesy Christopher Cutts Gallery, Toronto
The building is owned by Peter Meier whose interests lie in
real estate, art and promoting the work of William Ronald. (He is organizing a new
exhibition for Berlin within the next year. ) Ronald paints on the good days and
into the night. He says of his deteriorating health, "I'm 71. I don't remember
a day without pain. I've had two heart attacks, a quadruple bypass. I've got arthritis
and my knees are gone. I still paint and I paint fast. I worry about going blind."
But the outrageousness, the wildness, the outspokeness, the vitality and fun of William
Ronald are still there. He has recently purchased a used Rolls Royce, metallic sand
with dark green leather upholstery. His two comely female assistants drive him around
because he hasn't driven for 12 years. He rides in the back seat behind dark sunglasses
enjoying his celebrity.
"You have to believe in yourself, because it is a bitch. If I didn't do New
York I would be nothing here." When asked how he sees himself, he replies "good...one
of the best painters that ever lived in Canada." How would he like to be remembered?
"As a great fighter...great painter."
# # # #
AUTHOR
Penny-Lynn Grosman is a Toronto art consultant
& former Education Officer at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
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