(2 Dec. 1905-20 April 1992), artist. (Stuart McCormick) Born east of Alexandria on the McCormick Road, on Lot 21 in the 2nd Concession of Lochiel, GC. Parents: Roderick J. (Rory) McCormick and his wife Annie Amanda Geelan. He came as a child with his parents to the McCormick woollen mill property on Lot 35 in the 2nd Concession of Lochiel. Early education: local schools. He became a stock company actor in the United States. He is said to have received training in acting for six months in Cleveland, Ohio, from Dr Timen, a Russian emigré who was director of the Cleveland Literary Theatre. Afterwards, he received training (which he thought inferior to that of Dr Timen) from a Sam Bradley. It has not been possible to trace Timen, unless he was the John W. Timen who was an elocution teacher in Cleveland, 1931. It is possible, in any case, that the name as it has come down to us has been misreported. Samuel R. Bradley was an early Cleveland film producer (died 6 Jan. 1958?). He was president in 1925 of the Cleveland Motion Picture Production Company, and for a few years around 1929 he was director in Cleveland of Bradley players, a “Professional Workshop” for training people for the “theatrical profession.”

     Stuart McCormick returned to his family home near Alexandria about the early 1930s. Reasons stated for his abandonment of an American stage career are his poor health, the onset of the Depression, and the decline of American stage productions with the advance of the cinema.

     An entirely self-taught artist, he began to paint after his return to GC, and (by his own recollection) when he was about thirty years old. A prolific artist, he painted scenery, buildings and (rarely) individuals. In the 1940s and 1950s he provided the illustrations for a number of works by Dorothy Dumbrille: All This Difference, Deep Doorways (illustrations for the Standard-Freeholder serialization only, not for the hard-cover edition), O Clouds Unfold (Standard-Freeholder again; this novel was not republished in volume form), Up and Down the Glens, and Braggart in My Step. He appears as one of the characters in the Dumbrille novel All This Difference (1945), but it is hard to guess whether the sketch on p. 19 of the novel is a self-portrait or just a statement about artists as figures in romantic lore. Apart from these works by Dorothy Dumbrille, he did few or no book illustrations. He painted only a very few portraits. At the request of Fr Ewen J. Macdonald, he cleaned and restored the time-blackened portrait of Bishop Alexander Macdonell which was preserved in the house of Alexander Duncan (Buie) Macdonell of Alexandria, and is now in the National Archives, Ottawa.

     Stuart McCormick continued to live near the McCormick woollen mill in the McCormick family house, called Fasg na Coille (House in the Trees), formerly the house of Col. Alexander Chisholm. A journalist who found Stuart McCormick there in 1946, living with his elderly mother, thought the Gaelic name of the house “defies pronounciation.” Stuart McCormick’s modest studio was in the house. In 1959, the City of Cornwall commissioned him to produce a painting of the Long Sault Rapids to be presented to Queen Elizabeth when she came to Cornwall to open the St. Lawrence Seaway in June of that year. (Standard Freeholder 28 April 1959, Glengarry News 30 April 1959) Eventually, he and his brother Frank McCormick sold their property at the old woollen mill (the mill itself was destroyed in a fire in 1949) so that it could be used for the Glengarry Golf Course. Stuart McCormick lived in Alexandria in his later years, and finally, as his health declined, he became a resident at the Maxville Manor, in Maxville. He died at the Hotel Dieu Hospital in Cornwall. He is buried in St. Finnan’s cemetery. The gravestone reads “McCormick Stuart Glengarry’s Artist 1905-1992” He never married.

     Stuart McCormick was a resident artist in GC at a time when artists were rare indeed in Eastern Ontario, and long before GC got the large artistic and literary community that began to assemble there with the coming in of the city residents in the 1960s. He remained throughout his artistic career in GC an honoured figure there. Few people doubted that his choice of life had been a good one. Clive and Frances Marin have written that “McCormick’s work formed an artistic record of Glengarry landmarks and countryside from the Depression onwards.” (Marin 393) His paintings were sold mostly to local people, and for small sums. He painted mainly in oils. He is remembered as having preferred to paint by a northern light. The colour reproduction of his oil painting of three immigrant ships appears on the cover of The Lochaber Emigrants to Glengarry, 1994 (see Archibald McMillan). In 1968, Ness Abraham of Cornwall was reported to own more than 50 of his paintings. The colourful and celebrated Perkins Bull (1870-1948) was an early purchaser of three paintings, and is said to have arrived in Alexandria for this purpose accompanied by his bodyguards.

     In recent years, when paintings by Stuart McCormick have been offered on auction sales, the advertisements have prominently drawn attention to their presence. Prices have risen steadily. One of his paintings was sold at Williamstown for $2000 in June 1996, while six small paintings of his were sold, again at Williamstown, for a total of $10,000 in Sept. 1996. While concentrating on painting, Stuart McCormick remained loyal to his original interest in the theatre, and for many years he directed stage plays given once or twice a year at Alexander Hall, Alexandria, and he also acted in them.

“Stuart McCormick: the Man Who Put Glengarry’s Face to Canvas,” Glengarry News 29 April 1992 (with line sketch on editorial page) * McCormicks 200, 209-210, 215-216, 226 (with portrait) * biog. sketch, GHS newsletter, Feb. 1994, also newsletter Sept. 1996; and see these newsletters for occasional reproductions of McCormick works * Dumbrille, U , Chapter 8: “An Artist and His Home” (with sketch of his house) * entry in Colin S. MacDonald, A Dictionary of Canadian Artists (1967-) * Timen: Cleveland city directory 1931 (“elocution tchr”) * Samuel R. Bradley: Cleveland city directory, 1925, 1928-1931; Cleveland Necrology File, The Western Reserve Historical Society, of Cleveland * (anon.), “Painting Comes Naturally to Artist Stuart McCormick, Glengarry Resident,” Standard Freeholder 2 Nov. 1946: interview, description, with good portrait; valuable source * Ted Greenslade, “Alexandria Man among Top Artists in Canada,” SFH 16 March 1968: description, biog.; valuable source * Joe Banks’ column, GN 27 April 1994 * painting by presented to retiring high school teacher, GN 22 June 1945 * his painting of Bullfrog Tavern is missing from high school, Alexandria, GN 30 Sept. 1954 * his painting of John A. (Cariboo) Cameron loaned to Cornwall Public Library, GN 16 Feb. 1956 * Bibliography of Glengarry: index (for further information on illustr. to Dumbrille books, sketches published in GHS annual volumes, &c.) * in interests of proposed golf course, option taken on 50 acres owned by Frank and Stuart McCormick, GN 25 May 1961 * Stuart McCormick art exhibit, Alexandria, GN 14 Aug. 2002 * involved with stage plays in Alexandria: GN 16 May 1924, 24 March 1933, 23 March 1934