Margaret Kathleen Nichol, known as “Pegi Nicol” was born in Listowel, Ontario, in 1904. Her parents moved to the Glebe district in Ottawa while she was still very young. In 1921 MacLeod enrolled at the newly re-established Art Association of Ottawa school. She studied under Franklin Brownell, a competent and forward-looking academician from 1922 to 1923. In 1923 she moved to Montreal to study at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal.

MacLeod travelled west in 1927 – 1928 and until 1934, Pegi Nicol painted chiefly in the Ottawa district countryside. This watercolour while not dated probably was painted by Pegi Nicol between 1930 and 1934, before she moved to Toronto in 1934.

She grew up in the “Group of Seven” tradition of artists who painted the Canadian northland and the Laurentian shield in clear bright colours and stylized pattern, devoid of the human form. This painting of c1930 shows the Gatineau river bend with rolling hills, all carefully worked out as to design, but overlaid with a mosaic of curved brush strokes which betrays a an emotional force that cannot be quite suppressed into any rationalized and stylized pattern. But Pegi Nicol’s inner fire and feelings towards life gradually asserted themselves, and changes were certain to result in her later works.