William Alister MacDonald: Watercolours from Thurso, the Thames, and Tahiti

The life of Scottish watercolourist William Alister Macdonald (1861-1956) contained more mystery and intrigue than a novel by the authors he knew as friends. Mid-life in the early 1900s he painted widely across Britain, Europe and North Africa. Aged sixty, abandoning his wife and son in London, he settled in Tahiti, where he befriended authors Charles Nordhoff, James Norman Hall and Zane Grey. Critical acclaim of his work peaked in 1935 with the discovery of over 120 watercolours capturing London streets and lost panoramas from the Thames, its river life and trade at the turn of the last century, now part of the Wakefield Collection at London’s Guildhall. Yet in Tahiti his reputation has endured with appreciation of his timeless, exquisite landscapes and studies of paradise. This first fully illustrated biography of Macdonald’s life provides a long-overdue opportunity for his European and Polynesian work to be reappraised and his story told.

Dr Iain Macdonald is Associate Professor in the Department of Design Innovation, Maynooth University, Ireland. Born in Edinburgh and graduating from Edinburgh College of Art, he began his career at BBC Television Centre as a motion graphic designer and was a Senior Designer nominated for a BAFTA before becoming a commercials director at the Moving Picture Company. Since 2010 he has been a Design academic achieving a Doctorate while working at Edinburgh Napier University. His research and publications cover motion graphics, co-design and public health communication.