Ann MacIntosh Duff (1925 - 2022) specialized in the medium of watercolour, painting landscapes and still lifes from memory rather than observation. For most of her career, MacIntosh Duff divided her time between her two studios in Georgian Bay and Toronto. MacIntosh Duff often included objects with symbolic and universal meanings in her work; binoculars, cameras and telescopes all allude to different ways of seeing the world.
Ann MacIntosh Duff was born in Toronto in 1925. In 1952, MacIntosh Duff became a member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour (CSPWC) where she remained an active member for thirty years. In 1959, she began working with Douglas Duncan at the Picture Loan Society, one of the most influential galleries in Canada at the time which also showed works by David Milne, Harold Town, Bertram Brooker and Paul-Émile Borduas. She exhibited there until Duncan’s death in 1968. In 2007, the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery held, To Love and To Cherish, a retrospective of MacIntosh Duff’s work. In 2022, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection acquired over 200 of MacIntosh Duff’s watercolours making it the largest collection of her work in the country. In 2023, the institution held a major survey of her work. This fall the museum will release a comprehensive publication, Ann MacIntosh Duff, on her life and work.