Henry Sandham (1842-1910) was an illustrator and painter who lived successively in Montreal, Boston, and London, England. He was associated with the Montreal studio of William Notman, where he received his early training, later headed the art department, and was briefly a partner. Sandham produced illustrations for several leading magazines of his day, including the Century Magazine.
Thoreau MacDonald (1901–1989) was a Canadian artist, book illustrator and art editor. Son of Harriet Joan Lavis and Group of Seven painter J.E.H. MacDonald, he was born outside Toronto and named for American transcendentalist author Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). Largely self-taught, Thoreau MacDonald worked with his father to develop his artistic ability. His prints and drawings are chiefly in black and white owing to colour blindness. He never married. Thoreau MacDonald’s working career was spent for the most part at the Ryerson Press and Canadian Forum magazine, for which he produced hundreds of drawings and linocuts. In 1933 he became a founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters. He was especially regarded for his prints and drawings of subjects from nature. In the late 1930s he founded the Woodchuck Press in Thornhill, Ont. to produce bookplates and labels along with illustrated publications. Thoreau MacDonald died in Toronto in 1989. His work is in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Hart House at the University
of Toronto, the McMichael Collection and the National Gallery of Canada.
Alfred Harold Howard (1854–1916) was a British Canadian graphic artist, calligrapher and decorative designer in Toronto in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Liverpool, England, he apprenticed as a lithographer with the Liverpool branch of the firm Maclure, Macdonald and Macgregor. In 1876 he immigrated to Canada and eventually opened an office of graphic design in the Temple Building in downtown Toronto. He received the Marquess of Lorne’s Medal for Design in 1881 and was made an academician of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1883.
Howard’s commercial design work took the form of illuminated addresses of welcome, certificates and diplomas and addresses of condolence. In 1891 he produced the City of Toronto address of condolence presented to Lady Macdonald on the death of the Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. Howard exhibited with the Ontario Society of Artists at their Applied Art Exhibition in 1900 and with the Canadian Society of Applied Art in 1905. He was a member of the Toronto Art Students’ League and the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. When he died in Toronto in 1916 (26 February), the Art Museum of Toronto held a memorial exhibition of his work.
Howard’s artworks are in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Toronto Reference Library, the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.