[A] growing realization that White Figure, White Ground is one of the good ones can be justified if you consider the relationship of this self-portrait of the creative imagination to the Canadian tradition as well as the broader context of North American and English letters.

From Wilhelm Meister onwards the novel of the artist has had a strong picaresque bias and has traditionally tended to favour vagrancy…. However, Hood's equivalent of the American story of going out west isn't getting the hell out. It's the exploratory journey from Montreal to Barringford (Shelburne N.S.)—therefore to the east, the rising sun, the sea, Jerusalem and Eden—followed by the return to the big city and Alexander MacDonald's exhibition in cosmopolitan New York. First because the country is mature when the artist wants to stay at home. Second because Hood wanted MacDonald's quest to transform the east coast into...